uk Task force members

Social Investment Business

Social Investment Business provides finance to create fairer communities and improve people’s lives. They do this by providing the money and support they need directly, partnering to support them effectively and, using their knowledge to inform their own work and influence others.

Since 2004, SIB has deployed and managed over £400m of loans and grants into over 2,000 organisations and enabled almost 1,000 more to get dedicated support through programmes.

SIB has been applying EII principles and strategies across several of its funds and programmes and has focused on being a host to projects with a focus on people and equalities. Our Diverse Ambitions pilot programme provided practical support, knowledge and referrals support to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) charities and social enterprises. We are a partner and grant administrator for Access Foundation’s Enterprise Development Programme, which includes a strand focused on the equality sector. The Covid-19 Community-Led Organisations Recovery Scheme had an emphasis on BAME-led or BAME-supporting community-led organisations. Read more

UnLtd

UnLtd finds, funds and supports social entrepreneurs - enterprising people with solutions that change society for the better. Our mission is to find social entrepreneurs with bold solution to today's challenges. Through funding and support, we help them to realise their potential.

UnLtd has been integrating EII strategies and practices within fund design and internally within our organization, through focusing on diversity and inclusion values and culture as well as considering the make-up of our staff and Board. We carried out an analysis of past awards to social entrepreneurs, after which we developed a series of actions to diversify future awardees. We have started ring-fencing funds from our endowment for leaders with lived experience of inequality. Our Inclusive Recovery Fund had a target of awarding 50% of its funds to BAME-led and disability-led organisations, and introduced a number of innovative methods to increase reach and access to groups who have previously not benefitted from funding.

Access - the foundation for social investment

Access – The Foundation for Social Investment works to make charities and social enterprises in England more financially resilient and self-reliant, so that they can sustain or increase their impact. We do this through supporting the development of enterprise activity to grow and diversify income, and improving access to the social investment which can help stimulate that enterprise activity.

Access is both responding to specific EIIP recommendations and piloting/demonstrating a number of core EII strategies..

In terms of the recommendations we have:

• Commenced a dedicated programme of Enterprise Development Support for VCSE organisations whose primary purpose is to tackle inequalities and discrimination (https://www.enterprisedevelopmentprogramme.org.uk/)

• We are supporting the strengthening of EII infrastructure via dedicated equality and diversity strand with the Connect Fund. This has supported a number of projects including the EIIP itself.

We are also piloting and demonstrating a number of key EII strategies including:

• Targeting funds at work that directly seeks to tackle inequalities via our Local Access programme that focuses specifically on place-based inequalities, with certain places addressing within-place inequality

• Providing dedicated support to charities and social enterprise led by people from black and minoritised communities to develop enterprising activity via a partnership with the Ubele Initiative as part of the Enterprise Development Programme

• Integrating EII strategies into our investment policies. For example our Flexible Finance for the Recovery programme requires social investment intermediaries seeking finance to set our how they will advance equalities / and what EII strategies they will utilise and this forms one of three core assessment criteria.

• Working to improve our own internal diversity and equality practice including in the make-up and processes of our board and investment committees.

• Reviewing historic and current data collection to be better able to monitor the achievement of our EII objectives

big society capital

Big Society Capital, the UK’s leading social impact investor, exists to improve the lives of people in the UK through investment with a sustainable return. We unite capital, expertise and ideas to create social impact investment solutions for the UK’s social challenges – spanning homelessness, mental ill health and childhood obesity. With others who have invested alongside us, we have made over £2 billion* of new capital available to create opportunities for investors and enterprises.

Big Society Capital has an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion action plan (2021-2025) that sets out our intentions and the concrete actions we will take to put equality, diversity and inclusion at the forefront of our organisation and the social impact investment sector. Read more

Impact Investing Institute

The Impact Investing Institute’s vision is for lives to improve, as more people choose to use their savings and investments to help solve social and environmental challenges, while seeking a financial return. We want to accelerate the growth and improve the effectiveness of the impact investing market in the UK and internationally, so more capital contributes to the well-being of people and the planet - as set out in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. We launched in 2019 as an independent, non-profit organisation.

The Impact Investing Institute is advancing the EIIP recommendation to integrate equality impact goals across each element of our theory of change, engaging with the work of EIIP and others to create the wider conditions needed to build the EII market. For example, we are seeking to include specific interests, skill areas and themes related to equality impact investing via our work on learning, professional standards and competencies; developing a programme of work around the Just Transition and running a project focused on increasing the flow of capital to address place-based inequalities.

Equally Ours

Equally Ours is a UK charity that brings together people and organisations working across equality, human rights and social justice to make a reality of these in everyone’s lives.

Through our members and networks, we join up research, policy and communications to shift public opinion and policy in positive and powerful ways.

Equally Ours runs the equality strand of the Enterprise Development Programme (EDP). Funded by Access, the Foundation of Social Investment, EDP supports equality organisations to develop trading activity through a mixture of grant and learning support.

In addition to this, learning from the programme is fed into the Equality Impact Investing Project with an eye to shape the social investment sector's understanding of what is happening on the ground within the equality sector, consequently shaping social investment opportunities that best work for the needs of the sector.

The connect Fund

The Connect Fund was set up to strengthen the social investment market in England to better meet the needs of charities and social enterprises. Previously known as the ‘Social Investment Infrastructure Fund’, it is a £6 million fund for grants and investments that Barrow Cadbury Trust manages in partnership with Access – the Foundation for Social Investment.

The Access Foundation chose Barrow Cadbury Trust to deliver the Connect Fund because of its experience in social investment, expertise in voluntary sector infrastructure, and its approach, which is to work in partnership with those we fund towards a common goal. The Fund provides grants to develop shared infrastructure resources for a market that supports impact. It supports tools, partnerships and initiatives that advance a more open and accessible social investment market.

The Connect Fund has a dedicated funding strand to support work that addresses diversity and inclusion in the social investment sector as well as issues of inequality in the social investment market. We support projects that address the barriers experienced by BAME-led, disability-led, LGBTQ+ -led and women-led organisations (i.e. those organisations that exist primarily to serve a community, or a section of that community, with decision making led by members of that community). The projects we fund will: take actions to increase diversity and inclusion in the social investment sector; maintain and strengthen diverse voices in the social investment market; and address the need for appropriate support and products to enable groups experiencing barriers to accessing social investment.

The Connect Fund has provided support to EIIP, the Diversity Forum and a wider range of projects addressing the issues highlighted above. Through its social investment arm, the Barrow Cadbury Trust also holds a number of social investments that further the aims of the Trust to promote gender, racial and economic justice. The Trust also applies a gender and racial lens when considering grant proposals across all its programmes.

Social Investment Forum

The Social Investment Forum (SIF) is the national forum for UK social investment and finance intermediaries (SIFIs). The SIF exists to provide a collaborative space to develop and test ideas, share information, and champion and amplify our work. The SIF brings together members from across the sector to work towards the betterment of the UK’s social investment market, through advancing the work of cross-sector initiatives, as well as advocacy and policy work to influence the legislative and regulatory agenda.

The SIF will work closely with the EIIP to ensure that all of its work and activities are aligned with equality impact goals – particularly around strengthening the market infrastructure and building investor capacity in the field of EII. Equality is a cross-cutting theme for the SIF and each workstream will have explicit equality impact outcomes that aim to contribute toward these goals.

Diversity Forum

The Diversity Forum’s mission is to drive inclusive social investment in the UK, through the convening of sector-wide groups, commissioning research, and knowledge sharing.

The Forum is leading work with the social investment sector to diversify who works in and who accesses investment. Our work encompasses three sector-wide initiatives to improve diversity among social investors in the UK; The Diversity Working Group, the Diversity Champions Network and the Diversity Training Group.

big issue invest

Founded in 2005, Big Issue Invest extends The Big Issue’s mission by financing the growth of sustainable social enterprises. We offer social enterprises, charities and profit-with-purpose businesses loans and investment from £20,000 to £3 million. Since 2005, we have invested in more than 400 social enterprises and charities across the UK. We currently manage or advise on over £250 million of impact funds, and are creating the UK’s first ‘Social Merchant Bank – ‘by social entrepreneurs, for social entrepreneurs’.

Big Issue Invest’s EII actions have mainly focused on improving diversity, equality and inclusion practices and creating a set of policies and standards to align to internally and within our investment products and processes. We are developing tools to support organisations to measure diversity characteristics and KPIs internally, as well as assessing our portfolio annually to measure representation within investee leadership teams and provision of capital to marginalised entrepreneurs.

We are on the steering committee of the Diversity Forum, working with other social investors to change internal practices in the social investment sector more broadly. We have added new staff members to work exclusively on these processes and are working with The Big Issue Group to ensure our DEI work aligns to our group mission: Building a world that works for everyone. Challenging, innovating and creating self-help and sustainable business solutions, that dismantle poverty now and for future generations. Read more

Social Tech Trust

At Social Tech Trust, our vision is a world where social transformation drives tech. Over the past 14 years, we have distributed more than £31m of funding, directly supporting over 300 ventures and benefiting over 30 million people. Our latest report, Listening to Founders: Designing Approaches for Investing in Social Tech, raises awareness of the inequities that exist in funding for social ventures, and we are committed to addressing these barriers through increasing the supply of equitable finance.

We work in partnership to deliver inclusive and accessible programmes that support tech ventures to create sustainable solutions that transform people’s lives. We focus on creating greater equality, inclusion and empowerment through our work with transformative ventures.

Social Tech Trust has applied EII principles across our work and we know when technology is guided by these principles it can be transformative. We’ve developed our approach to EDI, ensuring these core principles are integral to our strategy and embedded in all that we do.

We are a signatory of the Diversity Forum Manifesto and will be working with our team, Board, partners and ventures to develop our learning and work dynamically to further develop our EDI plan.

City of London Corporation

The City of London Corporation’s charitable funder City Bridge Trust provides grants totalling around £20m per year towards charitable activity benefitting Greater London. Its mission is to create a fairer London and it achieves this through grant-making, social investment, encouraging philanthropy and influencing social policy.

Alongside grant making, the Trust manages the City of London’s £20m Fund to support charitable organisations that want to access funding through social investment, and also provides investment readiness support. The Trust aims to position the City of London as a leader in social investment, develop the UK as a global centre for social investment and by so doing, help to grow the market.

Deparment for digital, culture, media & sport

The Civil Society Impact Funding Team is a part of the Civil Society and Youth Directorate at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. We believe the future of solving complex social issues lies in building innovative and effective partnerships between the public, private and social sectors which build an inclusive economy and maximise social value. Catalysing the social impact investment market is an integral part of what we do, in addition to championing innovative public service delivery such as Social Impact Bonds, and unlocking funding for impact through the Dormant Assets Scheme.

DCMS supports the EIIP’s UK programme, including strategic work to build the wider conditions for a thriving EII culture and market, improving equality impact management practice, setting and developing professional EII standards and harnessing EII to address place-based underinvestment and regional inequalities. DCMS also participates as a member of the EII UK taskforce. Our work has included catalysing and supporting a number of organisations which build, develop and convene the social impact investing sector in the UK, such as Big Society Capital, the Access Foundation and the Impact Investing Institute. With policy responsibility for domestic impact investing, we steward the sector which the EIIP works with and through to achieve its aims. We are interested in the opportunity for equality impact investing principles to align more closely with policy design and supporting the infrastructure which drives this important agenda.

British Council

The British Council builds connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and other countries through arts and culture, education and the English language. Building on our Global Social Enterprise portfolio which is now winding down, our involvement in the Investment Climate Reform Facility (co-funded by the EU, the OACPS, BMZ and the British Council) is focused on supporting business environment reform and investment climate improvement initiatives across Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific. Eligible organisations such as government departments and ministries, business associations and investment networks may request technical assistance for developing reform initiatives often with the facilitation of public-private dialogue playing a key role. Recent interventions have included supporting the implementation of the national MSME policy in Nigeria and the development of new social enterprise policy in Ghana. As part of our ‘sharing best practice’ remit under the ICR facility, we have also produced two policy papers exploring how access to finance can become more inclusive, which can be found here.

 Looking forward, the ICR is increasing its focus on women’s economic empowerment and youth economic empowerment. In the coming months we will be putting together a training programme for requestors of support (which may include investors, and influencers of the investment climate) to learn about approaches to increase women’s economic empowerment through their work – including the structural barriers, bias and behaviours, and internal barriers that many women experience across ACP countries. Our youth economic empowerment work will similarly focus on creating a more enabling environment for young people to thrive, including through improving the investment climate for youth. Themes of interest include employment, entrepreneurship and youth business associations.

Ariadne

Ariadne is a network of European funders supporting social change and human rights. Its membership includes more than 150 foundations from 22 countries. As a member of the UK Taskforce, Ariadne contributes specialist knowledge and perspectives generated from its work with progressive human rights funders.

Women’s Resource Centre

WRC is the leading national umbrella organisation for the women’s sector with a network comprising of predominantly small local specialist women’s organisations. WRC strives to give voice to the most marginalised and disadvantaged organisations and is working towards transformational and substantive equality for women. We understand women’s inequality to be both structural and systemic and we push for empowerment in its true sense by supporting women and women’s organisations to achieve their full potential.

As a member of the UK Taskforce, Women’s Resource Centre provides specialist expertise on equality and human rights (EHR), helping to build greater understanding of inequalities and to build bridges between the social impact investor and the EHR communities.

WRC’s work spans many areas, examples of current projects include the Feminist Leadership programme, Financial Inclusion for Black, African and Asylum Seeking Women, coordinating the London VAWG Consortium and the Ascent project, coordinating the UK’s CEDAW Shadow Report, and managing the Black & Minoritised Women’s fiund as part of Comic Relief’s Global Majority fund.

Key Fund

At its very core, Key Fund is an anti-poverty and empowerment organisation, focussed on enabling people to take opportunities and stimulate economic activity in disadvantaged communities and within disadvantaged groups, as articulated in our vision: ‘Key Fund supports the creation of diverse, successful and resilient communities, where local people develop and run the assets and services that they need.’ Linked to this, one of the founding principles for the development of the Key Fund model was a belief that people with ‘lived’ experience are best placed to find positive and long term solutions to the issues facing their own communities. We know that this isn’t always an easy journey though, and so to enable equity and inclusion we work actively alongside applicants, breaking down barriers and building long-term and honest relationships.

To date as a fund we have largely targeted our activity on increasing applications from disadvantaged communities, with some success – c80% of our investments are from the top 30% most disadvantaged communities on the IMD. However, in a world where inequity is clearer than ever, we must do more. As such, we have produced an outline Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Paper which has been accepted by the Board of Directors and is currently being adapted in to a focussed Action Plan for the next twelve months, which will then be reviewed and updated annually. The plan will focus on the following:

· How we reach potential investees – (eg our marketing activity and referral networks)

· Who we invest in and how – (eg a review of our Investment Process to remove barriers and biases)

· Who works in Key Fund (in the widest sense) and how we support them – (eg reviewing recruitment and working practices to remove barriers)

FAIR FOR ALL FINANCE

Fair4All Finance was founded to increase the financial resilience and wellbeing of people in vulnerable circumstances. Our ambition is to improve access to fair, affordable and appropriate financial products and services. We do through this investment, research & collaboration with financial services and community finance.

Our work to date has aimed at bringing equality and diversity across all stakeholders we engage with as well as ourselves. We continue to develop and improve our work in this area, for example, forthcoming research, co-funded by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, NatWest Group and StepChange, that intends to build a better understanding of the potentially-different access to financial services for Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in the UK which we hope will help financial services to improve their service offering. Read more

Disability Rights UK

Disability Rights UK works to create a society where disabled people have equal power, rights and equality of opportunity.

We campaign for the rights of all disabled people to be included in every aspect of life. We bring the lived experiences of disabled people to everything we do. We challenge policy makers, institutions and individuals to remove the barriers that exist for us.

Equality Trust

As a member of the UK Taskforce, The Equality Trust provides specialist expertise on social and economic inequality, helping to build greater understanding of the impact and role of structural inequalities and to build bridges between the social impact investor and the EHR communities.

Nesta ARts and Culture finance

Nesta’s Arts & Culture Finance team supports arts and cultural organisations that benefit the lives of individuals, communities and society through their work and use our investments to help organisations to become more sustainable and resilient.

Arts & Culture Finance is committed to being an equitable and inclusive social investor for the arts and cultural sectors.

This means that we seek to ensure fair treatment, access, and opportunities for the diverse people and organisations that we aim to serve, as well as to identify and eliminate barriers to participation, so that everyone has an equal opportunity to engage with our offer.

It also means that we aim to foster a culture of respect in both words and actions, so that all people and organisations from across the arts and cultural sectors can be and feel welcomed, heard, and supported when they work with us.

Association of Charitable Foundations / Social Impact Investors Group

ACF is the membership body for UK foundations and grant-making charities. Driven by a belief that foundations are a vital source for social good, our mission is to support them to be ambitious and effective in the way that they use their resources. We do this through the provision of policy and advocacy, research and information, and a wide-ranging programme of events and learning. Our 400 members collectively hold assets of around £50bn and give over £2.5bn annually. ACF convenes the Social Impact Investors Group (SIIG) which exists to support foundations interested in or currently undertaking social impact investing.

The Social Impact Investors Group is actively applying a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion lens to our work, this includes monitoring of those participating in and speaking at SIIG events, addressing barriers to participation and developing tools for foundation social investors with regard to analysing their investments through a DEI lens. The Association of Charitable Foundations published its Stronger Foundations report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in 2019, and is expanding this programme of work to offer practical tools for foundations to implement effective DEI principles in their work and organisations. In addition, ACF’s investment learning programme features consideration of DEI within broader investment practice.

The National Lottery Community Fund

The National Lottery Community Fund distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes. At the heart of everything we do is the belief that when people are in the lead, communities thrive. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.

As the largest funder of community activity in the UK we want others to feel inspired and reassured by the community spirit we see across our funding. National Lottery players raise £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Whether small grants to local projects, partnerships with civil society organisations or long-term investments into systemic change, all our funding has the same purpose, which is to help people and communities to thrive.

The National Lottery Community Fund is for everyone. We recognise, however, that not everyone has the same starting point. We are building on existing work to dismantle barriers and will take bigger steps to tackle inequalities by listening, learning, and working with others. Longer term, our vision is one of an equitable and fairer future for all. The four areas of focus for our ongoing work on equity, diversity and inclusion are: listening and external engagement; our funding priorities and processes; inclusive workplace culture; and working collaboratively with others.

Women in Social Finance (WISF)

WISF is a private community that fosters connection, advancement and collaboration between experienced women in the field of social finance and impact investing.

Our approximately 100 members include partners, CEOs, investment managers, programme directors, policymakers and consultants.

Our Strategy:

To raise the visibility of women working in social finance and of WISF itself

To increase insight and knowledge of women in social and sustainable finance with a particular focus on empowering our members’ through learning, professional and personal development.

To advance control of capital for and by a diverse group of women

Recent concrete actions include:

- Learning and co-creation on blended finance, gender and climate, gender smart investing. and the SDGs.

- Co-mentoring and job board for senior leadership positions

- Support on how to join and manage tenure on Investment Committees

- Public Speaking Support and a Speaker’s Bureau

LGBT+ consortium

As a member of the UK Taskforce, LGBT+ Consortium provides specialist expertise on equality and human rights (EHR), helping to build greater understanding of inequalities across diverse LGBT+ communities and to build bridges between the social impact investor and the EHR communities.

With respect to equality impact investing, Consortium has pursued a range of activities to improve connections between LGBT+ organisations and investors and funders, increase the understanding of the wider social investment market of LGBT+ issues, and enhance the confidence of LGBT+ organisations when accessing specialist advice around social investment. Through support from the Connect Fund, Consortium co-produced an Outcomes Framework with six LGBT+ organisations. This Framework is designed to support the LGBT+ sector to engage with the social investment market by providing a common language through which to communicate with social investors and other external stakeholders about their impact. As additional piece of work has just been completed to highlight organisational use of the Outcomes Framework, designed to encourage others to adopt an outcome-based approach. A set of case studies, a short briefing for social investors, and an Outcomes Toolkit for LGBT+ organisations can be found here.

Resonance

We work with social enterprises and charities to help them raise capital from like-minded investors. We also create and manage award winning impact investment funds, which deliver a financial return and a targeted social impact.

Esmée Fairbairn FoundatioN

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation aims to improve our natural world, secure a fairer future and strengthen the bonds in communities in the UK. We unlock change by contributing everything we can alongside people and organisations with brilliant ideas who share our goals. As well as being one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK, we have a £45 million allocation to social investments for organisations with the aim of creating social impact.

Good Finance

Good Finance is a collaborative project to help improve access to information on social investment for charities and social enterprises.

Addressing Imbalance is an engagement programme that exists to connect with black and ethnic minority led organisations. The aim is to work alongside charities, social enterprises and networks to improve access to information, knowledge and resources on social investment.

The Jargon Buster tool aims to break down all the jargon associated with social investment, helping users to understand the key social investment terms, providing more clarity and accessibility for all.

Social Investment Unpicked is a free online interactive course that’s designed for anybody who wants to be able to explain social investment to others and answer questions about it; such as infrastructure organisations, membership bodies and capacity building organisations.

The Outcomes Matrix tool provides a useful starting point for you to consider the social impact that you are trying to deliver and how you will measure it. This can then be used to created a matrix that has been tailored to your organisation’s activities and impact. A new version of the Outcomes Matrix is currently in development.

Voice4Change England

Voice4Change England is a national advocate for the Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic voluntary and community sector (BAME VCS). As the only national membership organisation dedicated to the BAME VCS we speak up to policymakers on the issues that matter to the sector, bring the sector together to share good practice and develop the sector to better meet the needs of communities.