Access - The Foundation for Social Investment

How social investment helped IndiRock transform an empty unit in Southend's Victoria Shopping Centre into a vibrant community hub, bouldering wall and coffee shop. Sporting Assets INDIROCK

The Reach Fund is the longest running of Access - The Foundation for Social Investment's programmes, and has now supported more than 1,000 charities and social enterprises to take on social investment.   Our flagship investment readiness programme has been delivered by the expert team at Social Investment Business since 2016. The model was carefully designed to balance the needs and incentives for the prospective investor and the advisor or consultant, and at the same time give as much power and control as possible to the charity or social enterprise. We also wanted to drive value for money in this sort of capacity building programme and, as the name suggests, reach more deeply to support organisations from marginalised communities to access the investment they need. Today it is great to join those investors and many of the consultants involved in the programme to reflect on progress so far and look to the future. Over the last few years we have worked to increase the diversity of the organisations being supported. The latest data from the programme looking at grants awarded since 2022 shows that 22% of grantees in the programme are led by black or minoritised leaders and 47% are led by women. There is more to do to support those led by people with other protected characteristics. The average grant size is just £12.5k with a strong focus on organisations based in the most deprived parts of the country. It's clear that targeted support at the right time makes a real difference. A sample of 50 organisations who have completed their investment readiness projects from that group were cumulatively awarded £650k in investment readiness grants went on to receive £9.7m of investment - an almost 1:15 leverage ratio. https://lnkd.in/erCdbnyT

"This investment will help to continue making us what we are here, so we can live and breathe our creative lives, and make our livelihoods from them" Livv Housing Group, a social-impact focussed housing association, has launched Livv and Flourish, a significant social investment fund with £4.25m of support in the form of blended finance available for social enterprises and charities across the Liverpool City Region over the next three years. Make CIC applied to the Livv and Flourish fund to support the development of its new premises in Birkenhead. Make unites and enriches communities through creativity, art and culture at its 'makerspaces', which create places for makers and artisans to turn their passions into prosperity. Read our special feature in partnership with Livv Housing Group: https://lnkd.in/ezRm9qhW Livv Housing Group | Make CIC | Access - The Foundation for Social Investment #Liverpool #LiverpoolCityRegion #LCR #socialinvestment #socialimpact #socialenterprise #socialenterpriseinvestment #impactinvesting

We are pleased to see the Government has reconfirmed the allocation of funds from the Dormant Asset Scheme to social investment. Over the next four years, trading charities, social enterprises, co-operatives and other forms of community enterprise will benefit from £87.5 million from the Dormant Asset Scheme. As is currently the case, a significant proportion of youth-focused organisations will be supported through social investment with at least £12.5 million of the £87.5 million social investment allocation enabling organisations that support improved youth outcomes to build resilience and expand their impact. This will enable finance to flow to charities, co-operatives and social enterprises looking to grow or diversify their business models, particularly those unlikely to have taken on social investment before such as smaller organisations or those based in deprived areas. Partners from across social investment and social enterprise sectors, with backing from civil society, philanthropy, and mainstream businesses, have developed the Community Enterprise Growth Plan which sets out proposals for deploying Dormant Assets via social investment. A three-pronged approach will deliver tailored enterprise support, increase the availability of affordable and flexible loans, and build a robust and equitable social investment market. Seb Elsworth, CEO of Access – The Foundation for Social Investment, said: “This is a major opportunity to unlock new growth and tackle inequalities through investment in communities that need it most.” #SocialInvestment #CommunityEnterprise #DormantAssets  https://lnkd.in/ecBfhrTd

📢 Exciting news to share! We're honored to be featured in a new story by Access - The Foundation for Social Investment, who supported our journey last year. Their funding has been instrumental in strengthening our organisation's foundation as we build towards long-term sustainability. The Library of Stuff is committed to promoting a circular economy and reducing unnecessary consumption. Through Access, we're creating lasting impact in our community. Read our story here: https://lnkd.in/eZGtaszQ #SocialEnterprise #Sustainability #SharingEconomy #CommunityImpact #SocialInvestment

Welcome news in the Budget today on mobilising private investment to tackle complex social problems. Responding to the announcement, Seb Elsworth, chief executive of Access – The Foundation for Social Investment said: “The country faces a number of entrenched social issues and systemic under-investment in more deprived areas. The development of a social impact investment vehicle is significant and hugely welcome. While details are yet to emerge, a fund of this kind could play a crucial role in delivering the five missions and creating growth in all areas of the country and we look forward to learning more about how this vehicle will operate. “This would build upon important work – facilitated by the Dormant Assets Scheme – to build viable community enterprises. By supporting charities and social enterprises to access the finance they need, we can create vital jobs and address social problems. We remain optimistic that further allocations of dormant assets will build on work to date and drive support further into communities, especially places and communities not well served by mainstream finance. This is crucial to kickstarting the growth of community enterprises, laying the groundwork for a larger fund focussed on tackling complex social problems, and could and should include taking approaches that build on tried and tested mechanisms such as blended finance, enterprise grants, and tailored business support.”  

🚀 Kicking off Day 1 of our Blended Finance Partners Meeting🚀 Excited to dive into discussions about the successes, challenges, and learnings from our blended finance programmes. We were joined by The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC), leading conversations on evaluating our blended finance programmes. Discussing how we address power dynamics, embed equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and amplify the voices of VCSEs, as we evaluate our work and continue to shape the blended finance landscape in England. 🌍 A huge thank you to GMCVO for hosting this gathering. 🙏 It’s fantastic to have our amazing partners here with us with an opportunity to share experiences, and learn from each other’s work, including: The Architectural Heritage Fund, Bristol & Bath Regional Capital, Big Issue Invest, Charity Bank, Co-operative and Community Finance, Co-operatives UK, Crowdfunder UK, Do it Now Now, Fredericks Foundation, Homeless Link, Key Fund Investments, Livv Investment, Pathway Fund, Resonance, Social Investment Business, Sporting Assets, Sumerian Foundation, UnLtd.

We are recruiting for a Senior Finance and Operations Manager at Access! This role is essential for managing the daily functions of our finance and operations, working alongside our Director of Finance and Operations and Business Support Officer. If you are detail-oriented and skilled in finance and operations, we'd love to hear from you. Access is a small friendly team with a big impact. The successful candidate will play an integral role in the Access team, supporting our refreshed strategy and expanded operations. If this sounds like the right fit for you, please apply through the Applied platform. We use anonymised applications to ensure a fair hiring process for everyone. 👉 Interested? Apply by 3rd November 2024: https://lnkd.in/e-HwHrAm

Useful webinar from the The Diversity Forum on inclusive funding practices in social investment ⬇️

£10bn is a very big number! The massive growth in the social impact investing market over the last decade is hugely encouraging. What has particularly struck me in looking at BSC's latest numbers is how all forms of social lending are growing at an even faster rate than the 7% overall annual market growth.   Non-bank lending, the part of the market which to which Access mostly contributes grew 9% from £627m in 2022 to £680m in 2023. Blended finance is playing an increasingly important role here.   Lending from social banks grew even more - a 10% jump from £2.5bn to £2.7bn over the same period.   It was really encouraging to see the growth in the charity bond market, which saw 58% annual growth from £454m in 2022 to £719m in 2023. Access has been an investor in charity bonds since 2016. Through our spend-down endowment we have managed to get up to 50% of our assets invested in UK based charities in this way. We would have done more, but the constrains on how long we could lock money up for and the limited number of bond issuers over that period meant there weren't enough options for us. I very much hope that more foundations and other investors seeking to align their investment strategy with their mission will be able to take advantage of the growing charity bond market. https://lnkd.in/eCi8PdJm