Resonance Community Developers Fund

Blended, patient and flexible finance for the development of community assets; affordable housing, sports facilities and renewable energy.

Challenge

There is a lack of resources within communities and from local authorities to tackle local housing shortages and finance non-essential services such as sports and leisure facilities. Local community groups often lack the operational and financial expertise to develop assets, and to attract and manage funding, for local community-led solutions to these problems.

Approach

We worked alongside Resonance to invest into their Community Developers Fund, which provides end-to-end financing and wraparound expert support across the different stages of community asset development. This includes support for pre-development, through to planning, land acquisition and construction, for community groups who want to create and own income-generating assets such as affordable homes, sports facilities, and renewable energy generation.

Fund

Resonance Community Developers Fund was set up as a blended structure that combines grant funding from funders such as Access – The Foundation for Social Investment and repayable finance from investors such as Big Society Capital. This structure has two vehicles managed by Resonance: 1) Resonance Community Developers (RCD) Ltd, an evergreen investment fund and 2) Community Land and Finance (CLF) Community Interest Company (CIC), a grant funded asset-locked vehicle. CLF receives the grant funding, some of which is used to invest into community groups set up as Community Benefit Society (CBS), to finance the pre-development work (planning, viability, feasibility, etc) and purchasing of land; the remaining grant funding is invested into RCD Ltd, to be used as leverage to attract further capital, such as the social investment from BSC.

In the first 3-5 years, the Fund aims to invest £40 million into locally developed and owned assets, with an ambition to reach a £100 million fund size.

• Fund size

  Target £40 million

• Big Society Capital commitment

  £5 million