Financial Products for Social Enterprise

Posted on 20 June 2011

By Kevin Maton, SEWM Network Director

Last week I had a very useful meeting with Roberta Blackman-Woods, the Member of Parliament for the City of Durham. Roberta’s role as Shadow Minister for Civil Society has concentrated on the impact of Government cuts to the voluntary sector especially as the Government has suggested a bigger role for the Independent Sector and Social Enterprises. However, she is now very interested in funding models for social enterprises. In particular what do social enterprises need in terms of future funding to help their business grow?

I suggested that one of the key messages we have coming back from our members is the need for small levels of grant funding to assist with testing the feasibility of loan/equity investment and ensuring that the social enterprise is ‘investment ready’.

Also, I said that there is a lot of anecdotal information and research that can be tapped into both from social enterprises themselves but also from CDFI organisations like Aston; Black Country; and Coventry and Warwickshire - Reinvestment Trusts.

So if you have a view on how funding for social enterprises should be structured, if you have found a form of financing that works really well, or if there are still finance barriers holding your social enterprise back; send the details to me at: [email protected] and I’ll make sure these are passed onto Roberta so that they can contribute to her work on finance for social enterprise.

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