Funds & Projects

Our Corporate Social Venturing Programme develops early stage social businesses through investment, business support and cross-sector partnerships. To date, more than 100 corporate mentors have been involved from partners including Barclays, Aberdeen Standard Investments, Edinburgh University and Experian, and 54 social businesses have benefited from the programme.

Our Power Up Scotland Programme develops early stage social businesses through investment, business support and cross-sector partnerships. Power Up is open to organisations across Scotland and has made £1 million available to lend over the next two years. The funding available is to enable organisations to build on the good work they currently do within their communities.

Big Issue Invest offers loan finance between £20,000 to £150,000 to social enterprises and charities in England. This new £5 million lending scheme is aimed at enabling smaller social enterprises to access unsecured loan funding. The loans can be structured to your individual needs.

This is a £10 million fund to finance the provision of new affordable housing in London.  We aim to invest the funds into community organisations, charities and smaller housing associations, helping them to renovate empty homes or buildings and convert them into quality affordable housing for Londoners to rent or part buy. The fund offers loans of between £50,000 and £2 million at competitive rates and flexible terms.

Our first Social Enterprise Investment Fund (SEIF I) launched in 2010 and invests up to £3 million to support the scale up of social organisations. Its successor Fund, SEIF II, currently supports ambitious social enterprises and charities with sustainable business models looking to grow and extend their social impact.

Our Outcomes Investment Fund (OIF) provides finance to charities and social enterprises delivering payment-by-results contracts into the public sector, a growing source of revenue for many social sector organisations. The OIF investment terms are aligned with the contract being financed, including flexible repayment profiles and a variable financial return linked to the success of the contract.

BII is an experienced outcomes-based investor and provides support to investees before and after a contract launches.

Our Outcomes Investment Fund currently stands at £10m.

The UK Social Bond Fund was launched in January 2014 in partnership with Columbia Threadneedle, and was the first fixed income fund to offer ordinary people, as well as institutional investors, an opportunity to see their savings and investments do social good, as well as produce a financial return.

We believe that everyone should be treated equally, no matter if you are a tenant or a homeowner. Working with Experian to tackle digital and financial exclusion faced by social housing tenants 630,000 tenants given a digital identity. To date, 1.5 million tenants engaged.