Project: 2020 South West Social Invest

Grant: £59,120

Voscur will work in partnership with BBRC to provide business planning and enterprise development support. Organisations will initially complete a diagnostic test to assess the income potential of their assets followed by capacity building workshops to support them to articulate their social impact. One-to-one support will enable the development of business plans and move them closer to an investment-ready stage, allowing them to be passed on to BBRC for further business plan development and investment brokerage support.

Voscur and BBRC’s overall project plan is divided into five phases. Voscur will lead on the first phase (outreach and engagement) and second phase (capacity building), jointly deliver the third phase with Quartet, and provide additional support in the final two phases. Voscur’s support will include a mixture of capacity building activities delivered to the whole cohort, and more specific one-to-one support as the organisations begin to develop their proposals further. Quartet will be brought in to provide additional technical and market liability support in phase three.

The overall aim is to give VCSEs a better understanding of the potential of using assets to generate an alternative income source, enabling them to become sustainable in the long-term. Voscur and BBRC expect to deliver a replicable model of support and enterprise development for organisations managing community assets and address the cultural barriers to social investment within Boards by appropriately discussing risk. The projects will also demonstrate the added value of collaboration and peer support in developing investment readiness alongside the provision of specialist expertise and capacity, resulting in a number of VCSEs that have been through the investment journey and are primed for sharing their experience to support others.