Bristol Together

Key facts

Area: South West

Grant recipient: Bristol Together CIC

Project: Next Steps

Programme: Next Steps

Date of award: 28 Mar 2012

Amount awarded: £92,620

Big Lottery Fund (BIG) has been a pioneer in the field of social investment. The growing demand for its funding, has meant it has been important to look for new ways to bring improvements to communities, especially ways of attracting investment from outside the public sector, in order to address some of society’s most difficult problems.

As a result, BIG set up its ‘Next Steps: Supporting Social Investment in England’ programme. This is exploring the potential of new approaches to raising finance that will help address significant social issues. It is also promoting as wide a range of learning as possible about the range of social investment products and a learning network has been set up, for the projects to share their experiences.

Bristol Together Community Interest Company has been funded through a Next Steps grant of £92,620, part of a total of 13 organisations that have been funded nationally.

As Paul Harrod, of Bristol Together says:

"The Next Steps award helped to complete our capital fundraising, and to demonstrate the great potential of social impact bonds as a means to finance job-creation programmes for long-term unemployed people. We are also grateful for the support as it is enabling us to establish a mentoring programme which we believe will help our employees look beyond the job they have today - important though it is - and plan for their future".

Bristol Together is a new social enterprise partnership that was launched in October 2011. Their aim is to create full-time jobs for long-term unemployed people and ex-offenders in particular. They do this by buying empty properties, working with the Restore Trust and Aspire their social enterprise partners to employ ex-offenders in all aspects of the repair, refurbishment and restoration.  Once the properties are fully restored they are then sold, and the original capital, plus any profits, reinvested back into the business to finance further property purchases, and further job creation.

All the employees are mentored and supervised by highly experienced project managers.  Bristol Together hope that the skills and experience the employees develop as a result of their employment will be the launch-pad to accessing other full-time jobs in the future.

Bristol Together was established in October 2011 after raising £600,000 in investment capital. They then raised a further £1 million in May 2012 to complete their first Social Impact Bond. Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) are designed to help reform public service delivery. They improve the social outcomes of publicly funded services by making funding conditional on improvements and are focused on achieving social outcomes, for example: improved health. Find out more about how Social Impact Bonds work, https://www.gov.uk/social-impact-bonds

Bristol Together are working with Triodos Bank to explore the possibility of replicating, or developing their social enterprise in other cities in the UK. In Bristol they expect over the course of the next five years to create jobs for up to 200 ex-offenders, and to bring over seventy empty properties back into use. 

Sam is someone who has been working with Bristol Together for 12 months. Sam had had a one year period of sustained unemployment, following two years in prison and Bristol Together gave him a second chance. Now he has excelled in a number of areas of property redevelopment, including painting, decorating, gardening and plastering and his confidence has really grown. As Sams says:

‘I wanted a new direction but it seemed impossible, no one was willing to help ... I was applying for so many jobs, but as soon as they hear you have a criminal record, that’s it, you hear nothing again. I’m constantly learning now and I’ve seen there are people who are willing to give you a chance. It’s refreshing.’

At the end of 2012 Bristol Together was named ‘Start Up Social Enterprise of the Year’ for the UK by Social Enterprise UK. They were presented with their award as part of the 2012 Social Enterprise Awards at Lord’s Cricket Ground, London.