Thank you.
My name is Julia Deans, and I'm the CEO of Futurpreneur Canada, and we're the only national, not-for-profit organization that's helping young Canadian entrepreneurs launch businesses across Canada.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today.
On a personal note, I, like you, spent last Wednesday in this building and I am very grateful that you got back to the nation's business as you did.
Some of you might have noticed that since I was last before you, we have a new and improved name. We changed our name to Futurpreneur Canada in May because young people, young entrepreneurs, told us they really couldn't identify with the name Canadian Youth Business Foundation. We wanted a name that spoke better to what we do, and also that worked in both languages. We received really positive feedback about it, and I hope you like the name as well.
At Futurpreneur Canada, we help 18- to 39-year-old entrepreneurs with no security and no track record, people considered too high-risk and too time-consuming by traditional lenders to give money to. We were founded by bank philanthropy in 1996, and since then we've invested in 6,740 young Canadians. Last year alone we helped to launch over 800 new businesses, which was almost 40% more than the previous year. These businesses have created 26,000 jobs and $191 million in tax revenue.
We offer four things that young entrepreneurs need most to launch. The first is to help them develop a strong business plan. About 10% of the people who come to us have one; the rest need a lot of support. We then provide them with loan financing of up to $45,000, which is from us and the BDC. Our loans are based on character, not collateral, and also the strength of their business plan. Then we equip them with mentors and we have almost 3,000 volunteer mentors across Canada. We also provide mentors to young people who don't need money, but do need mentoring through our MoMENTum program. Then we give them business resources, counselling, and networks to help them as they navigate those really tricky first years of business.
This combination gives young people the confidence, competence, capital, and connections they need for success. You probably know that the normal five-year success rate for a Canadian start-up is about 50%. Ours ranges from between 50% and 60%, and these are young people without collateral, and up to 80% to 90% repay their loans. So even if they're not in business, they've sold, they've closed it down, whatever, they still have the economic wherewithal to pay back a loan. We think that these great numbers are due to the strength of our mentoring program and our comprehensive business resources.
Futurpreneur Canada has a proven track record of advancing economic growth by supporting emerging entrepreneurs in their growing businesses. We also help build Canada's economy by helping our clients develop the entrepreneurial skills they're going to need whatever they do in their lives. We have seven regional offices—Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., and the Atlantic—and we have reps in some of our really busy centres like Ottawa and Quebec.
We work with young entrepreneurs and about 250 community partners in 1,400 communities, and we have other strong partnerships, including with the federal government, which has been a key and long-standing partner investing in our Futurpreneurs. We used this support to get complementary support from other governments and also the corporate sector.
In 2012, the federal government committed $18 million over two years to help us help young entrepreneurs launch new businesses, and that runs to March 31, 2014. We see now that young people are more interested than ever in starting their own businesses. Millennials are twice as likely as others to start their own business, and we're indeed seeing a rise in demand for our offerings. We see a great opportunity to seize on this momentum and provide more aspiring young entrepreneurs with the investment and programs they need.
We're wanting to meet this demand and grow the number of businesses we help to launch by 10% each year. We're asking the Government of Canada for a contribution of $37.5 million over five years to support our full start-up program, as well as an additional $2 million to support the expansion of our stand-alone mentoring program. This is a reduced annual contribution—we're going to do more with less—and it's going to allow us to help a lot more of the young entrepreneurs we see potential in across the country. We're currently helping 2% to 3% of that potential market, and we want to double that number. With this support, we'll be able to help 5,600 young people with our full start-up program, and 2,000 more young people with our expanded stand-alone mentoring.
ln addition to helping young Canadians realize their entrepreneurial potential, supporting youth start-ups will respond to some of our other key economic challenges. One is youth unemployment, which I know you're well aware of, and the second is dealing with the impending tsunami of retiring small-business owners. We help young entrepreneurs in all sectors of the Canadian economy from high-tech businesses to skilled trades, and we help almost every kind of business.
I was going to share with you some of the things people say about us, but I'm going to leave you with a package that has those notes so I don't have to say it now. I would just to leave off saying that we're very efficient and effective. We have a fantastic track record, we're recognized as a global leader, and we hope very much to count on your support and to have you take part in our global entrepreneurship week activities at the end of November.