This programme is closed for applications
BIG believes social investment has the potential to increase the amount of funding available to civil society organisations, bringing additional resources to bear on some of society’s most difficult problems.
This programme will assess this potential by making available up to £6million to help realise a range of specific and already well-developed social investment proposals. We are interested in funding:
- Investment ready proposals – to set up a social investment vehicle that will achieve outcomes for people in need.
- ‘Nearly there proposals’– to complete the development of a social investment vehicle that will achieve outcomes for people in need
- Pilots – to test out a social investment concept and/or establish its feasibility
Proposals will need to achieve both the following outcomes to be considered for funding:
- improving the lives of communities and people most in need through the development of robust social investment vehicles
- learning more about social investment ‘in practice’.
By ‘social investment vehicle’ we mean a specific financial product (for example, a social impact bond) or fund (for example, a portfolio of loans).
This funding is focused on the development of specific vehicles, as we are interested in developing and learning about how newer and more complex forms of social investment can address issues faced by those most in need. It is therefore not about things like one-off loans, though supporting these may form part of our longer term strategy in this area.