Designed to disrupt the social investment market, we focus on increasing the number of charities and social enterprises that can access social investment. One of the key tools we use for this is blended finance, where grant is blended with repayable finance in various ways to make a social investment deal viable. This means that […] The post Our data – How do we know we’re expanding the reach of social investment? appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

This month at Access A record-breaking quarter – Our partners deployed £9 million of investment into charities and social enterprises in the last quarter alone. This volume of investment hasn’t been delivered since 2021 when our partners delivered an Emergency Lending programme to provide immediate support to those facing challenges because of the Covid-19 pandemic. More here. […] The post News from Access – March 2024 – includes new data from our busiest quarter since the pandemic appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

Since December 2016, Access has been regularly publishing dashboards. These provide insight into the work we do with our partners to support charities and social enterprises to access the finance they need to sustain or grow their impact. We share data that cuts across all programmes and specific data for each programme. In Autumn of […] The post Access publishes new data from Cost-of-Living programme appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

This month at Access Access in numbers – Those familiar with our work will know that we focus on building a social investment market fit for the future, as well as delivering finance to the frontline.  Through our partners, Access has now supported over 2,200 charities and social enterprises and enabled over £100 million of investment to […] The post News from Access – January 2024 – including updates on our Cost of Living programme appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

I’m just over six months into my role at Access, and one of the things I’ve been looking at during this time is how to make progress on our commitments around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Most of my career has been in the international development sector, and when I joined I was interested to […] The post Equity, Diversity and Inclusion – reflections on one year as signatory to the Diversity Forum manifesto appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

This month at Access Energy resilience – following the announcement earlier this year that charities and social enterprises will receive additional support from the Dormant Assets scheme to improve their energy resilience, we have now launched the window for social investors to express interest in our new energy efficiency fund. Alongside this, we are also looking for partners […] The post News from Access – August 2023 – including updates on energy resilience appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

Earlier this year it was announced that Access and Big Society Capital would receive £12m and £8m (respectively) to support charities and social enterprises with energy resilience. It has been a challenging year for charities and social enterprises with rapid rises in energy prices coupled with increased demand for their services. Recent data from the […] The post Emerging themes on energy resilience appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

This month at Access Shaping the future – With more Dormant Asset funding due to flow to charities and social enterprises via social investment – we want to make sure this money is being used in the most effective way possible. We are looking for a broad range of views to feed into a cross-sector […] The post News from Access – June 2023 – including updates on Dormant Assets and EDI appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

CEO Seb Elsworth reflects on our progress in relation to equity, diversity and inclusion over the last year and our priorities for the year ahead. The post Sharing our diversity data and EDI action plan – reflections and next steps appeared first on ACCESS ..read more

We are looking for a broad range of views – from charities and social enterprises to infrastructure bodies and those in the social investment market itself – to feed into a cross-sector plan designed to ensure that all communities have access to the capital and enterprise support they need to thrive.    The post Shaping the future appeared first on ACCESS ..read more