Project: Social Investment for Social Businesses

Grant: £59,100

The project will address a significant gap in the East Midlands for voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations (VCSEs) seeking to build financial resilience and move towards social investment. This project will deliver a package of support that includes awareness raising events, investment readiness workshops, network-building, and webinars alongside in-depth capacity building.

The proposal is to establish a range of advisory services to lay the foundations for an ongoing social investment brokerage service across the East Midlands. 1) Awareness – CASE plans to establish a number of awareness-raising activities to promote and support social investment. 2) Let’s Talk Finance – CASE plans to launch the project with 5 Let’s Talk Finance events run jointly with Big Society Capital and the local infrastructure bodies, including VAL. 3) Workshops – CASE will hold 10 themed investment readiness workshops, which will bring groups together by sector to collaborate on the development of market opportunities. 4) Training – CASE will offer a further 5 webinars and workshops on the most in-demand skills, such as financial modelling, cash flow and social impact. 5) Capacity Building – 15 VCSEs with ‘good ideas’ will be identified for one-to-one bespoke consultancy support and advice to bring their ideas to market. This will be followed by further in-depth support to 5 community businesses, supported in part with funding secured from Power to Change. 6) Brokering – An ongoing activity for CASE will be to connect VCSEs in the region to established social investors, existing resources and programmes and broker introductions to social investment intermediaries.

CASE expects that more VCSEs in the East Midlands will have access to information on social investment; understand how to apply for and use social investment; make use of the enterprise development support available in the region; successfully secure social finance; and be aware of the different repayable finance options available to them. It also expects that social investment intermediaries will improve their reach into regional markets.