Project: Disabled People’s Organisations and Social Investment

Grant: £60,000

The project aims to research and explore practical means through which user-led organisations (ULOs) can better engage with social investment, and to develop Disability Rights UK (DRUK) as a social investment broker. DRUK will gather evidence from ULOs to determine their levels of awareness, perceptions and experience with social investment and identify clusters of organisations that are likely to find social investment useful and appropriate. DRUK also want to scope and segment ULOs to understand how they could better advise, serve and broker social investment for their member base via improved relationships with social investment intermediaries. An element of the project involves determining barriers to and opportunities for social investment, both in terms of making it more accessible and inclusive, and identifying new product development recommendations that better recognise equality and diversity.

DRUK would like to become the ‘go to’ organisation to support ULOs with social investment advice and guidance; to be positioned as the ‘voice’ of the disability sector to work with social investment intermediaries to improve and expand their offer; to shift the culture and awareness of key players in the social investment sector to make current and future social investment products and information more inclusive and accessible; and to improve engagement of the segments of ULOs most likely to benefit from social investment.