When I read about the difficulty some organisations have securing social investment, I can’t quite believe how straightforward mine was back in 2018-2020. Prior to meeting my social investor by happenstance, I’d had a fairly cursory explore of social investment and how it worked. I found precious few examples of organisations of the size I was running and absolutely nothing in East Anglia.
They say you have to see it to be it. It feels like this is as true for social investment as anything else. With no examples on offer in East Anglia, I struggled to envisage how it might work.
That’s because the East of England is a social enterprise ‘cold spot’ According the the Social Enterprise UK State of the Sector report at the end of 2024, just 2% of organisations in the East of England applied for social investment against 11% nationally. Just 25% even considered it compared to 35% nationally.
Social investment always felt like something that much more sophisticated and larger organisations in London, Manchester or Birmingham did. Today, unfortunately, the paucity of options on view alongside no visible effort to capacity build in the East continues to contribute to a lack of skills and confidence in pursuing investment.
It’s also worth stating that securing opportunities has to be a two-way street. But whilst saying ‘yes’ to a lot of opportunities that meant I was in the room at the right time, being in that room in Bethnal Green on a learning programme was also only possible because I could find time time as someone without caring responsibilities, am able-bodied, able to work long hours to make up the time and able partly to self-fund my travel.
This is not equitable and means social investment is being inequitably distributed – and we’re missing out.
With the Dormant Assets Scheme Strategy recently launched, £87.5 of dormant assets will be distributed to social investors from Access, the foundation for social investment. The consultation states that the money will flow into underserved places and communities. Rightly, £12.5 million is earmarked to support youth-focused organisations and £12 million to scale-up funding for a Black and Ethnically Minorities-led social investment fund – the Pathway Fund. I don’t want the East of England to have to compete with these communities, but equally, the East of England, with its impoverished coastal communities, high levels of child poverty and the average house price now over seven times the average income, is sill unfathomably often skipped over in favour of more obvious urban impoverishment.
It’s time to start a conversation about what it would take to develop an eco-system for social investors to want to set up shop in the East of England. Hand in hand with this long-term ambition, goes accessible, bite-sized and relevant information about social investment that means leaders in the voluntary sector, whilst they might have to get on a train to London for the time-being, at least know that sustaining their organisation in this way is an option.
That’s why on 24th July, Amy Gutcher of Sumerian Partners, who were the investors of the organisation I was running in 2020, is coming to Norwich to hold an informal FREE accessible event where she and I will discuss social investment as investor and investee and provide a space for questions and answers too.
I hope to see you there and to be a part of the conversation. You can book here.