Engaging investors
We engage with investors to raise awareness and understanding of investments that help to solve some of the most pressing social issues in the UK.
From individuals to large institutional investors, we help them navigate the impact investment market, sharing how investing for social impact can form part of their overall investment strategy. Many of the investors are ‘impact first’ investors, where social investing is just one tool for creating impact. Others want to embed impact into their overall investment strategy, giving it the same emphasis as financial returns.
We also work with organisations and individuals who have the expertise to co-develop solutions to social issues, and who may benefit from using social impact investment.
Our most significant activity in 2020 was launching an investment trust product designed to allow ordinary investors access to private market impact investments for the first time.
We have been working in partnership with fund managers including Resonance, Social and Sustainable Capital and Bridges Investment Management on fundraising additional capital, alongside a £30 million investment from us, as part of the Everyone In project to tackle homelessness.
We continue to support investors on their journey towards investing capital into social impact through developing networks. These include the now-established Social Impact Investors Group for trusts and foundations, and more recently the Responsible Investment Network – Universities, which has been successfully growing this year. We are now exploring the creation of a similar network, to support individual investors with significant wealth to deploy into social impact. These networks help deepen understanding of different investor needs, and facilitate greater collaboration between asset owners with shared financial and impact goals. Other networks we are involved in include Pensions for Purpose, the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association and the Global Impact Investing Network.
Despite the restrictions in place due to the global pandemic, we continued to engage with investors through meetings, speaking opportunities in the media and events, and helped raise awareness of social impact investing among key target investor groups.