Areas of investment

The challenge

The UK faces a significant shortage of affordable homes with an estimated £250 billion by 2031 of investment needed to address this shortfall.

Our approach

Better Society Capital invests into best-in-class social property funds aiming to attract institutional capital at scale that will unlock new, affordable housing supply.

The Fund

Will deliver a combination of new, affordable homes and acquire existing stock from housing associations and registered providers, thereby freeing up capital for these organisations to develop more homes and reinvest in existing homes. The fund will deliver affordable and social rent, as well as shared ownership homes, via an open-ended fund structure.

The Fund’s assets will be owned and managed by the Fund’s Registered Provider, Simply Affordable Homes RP Limited. The Fund operates under enhanced impact frameworks and a sustainable investment strategy.

The challenge

Small businesses are essential to local communities, creating jobs and bolstering economic activity, however many are unable to access mainstream finance. While they can access finance from socially motivated lenders such as Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs), the CDFIs themselves face barriers to achieving long-term sustainability and securing capital at scale to meet the demand of small businesses.

Our approach

We established the Community Investment Enterprise Fund (CIEF) in 2018 to provide CDFIs with the capital they need to meet demand, and to help increase understanding of the financial and social impact of CDFI lending to attract other investors to achieve growth and long-term stability.

The Fund

The fund provides capital for three CDFIs based in Wolverhampton, Doncaster, and Bradford, to help them lend to small businesses operating within surrounding areas.

The first phase of the fund saw the deployment of £72m by four CDFIs, to meet the needs of more than 960 businesses, with co-investment from Triodos and Unity Trust Bank. In April 2020, the Community Enterprise Investment Facility was adapted as part of Better Society Capital’s response to the coronavirus pandemic to ensure it could access the Government-based Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, meaning CDFI’s could provide smaller, emergency loans on a no fee, no interest basis for 12 months for underserved businesses affected by Covid-19.

In 2024, the second phase of the fund begun, with co-investment from Lloyds. Lloyds has become the first mainstream lender to support the CDFI sector, underlining its commitment to investing in sustainable business and regional development including within disadvantaged areas of the UK. The fund continues to be managed by Social Investment Scotland.

The challenge

Income levels are not keeping up with the rising cost of living due to: stagnant wages, reduced social mobility and the rise of the gig economy, with volatile revenues and an economic system not built to optimise them. In addition, while lower-income households are disproportionately affected by the Poverty Premium, the Cost of Living Crisis has driven up the cost of essential goods, impacting a broader segment of the population. This has further exacerbated the negative impact of the pandemic on health outcomes. The pandemic disproportionately hit lower income or underrepresented communities, which affects the ability to earn, increases average spending and in turn creates structural disadvantages in a rising cost environment.

The Fund

Ascension III is a pre-seed/seed stage venture fund aiming to reduce social inequality by investing in tech businesses that tackle the Cost of Living Crisis through 3 key themes: increase income opportunities; decrease costs of essential goods and improve access to healthcare.

One example of their recent investments is Juniver which is a neuroscience-based programme created by eating disorder clinical experts and a team with experience recovering from eating disorders. Juniver is aiming to transform the eating disorder market through a first-of-its-kind digital solution with an AI-powered assistant for on demand help through urges, personalised insights from health data, peer support and telemedicine care.

User Voice

All of Ascension III's investment decisions are supported by a lived experience panel embedding user voice across the investment process. The findings from the user panel showed a strong interest in using the AI-driven Juni to curb binges, with 81% of respondents saying they would use the app for managing their eating disorder.

The challenge

Public sector commissioners are looking for more flexible ways to drive innovation and improve lives in key policy areas such as homelessness and youth unemployment by using outcomes-based contracts. But social enterprises and charities often lacked the upfront working capital to deliver these contracts.

Our approach

We issued a call to establish a specialist fund that could provide social enterprises and charities with the capital and support they need to deliver outcomes-based contracts. As the first fund of its type in the world, this would also help catalyse the broader market. There have since been over 40 of these projects commissioned by Government in the UK.

The Fund

The original Bridges Social Outcomes Fund was designed to offer mission-driven providers with the working capital and management support they need to deliver these contracts, where payment is dependent on measurable improvements in the lives of service users.

This fund was the first of its kind; so as well as delivering demonstrable social impact, the intention was to develop a replicable fund model that allowed socially-motivated investors to support these contracts.

Its successor fund – Bridges Social Outcomes Fund II – is building on these learnings to support larger projects and help this market succeed on a bigger scale.

Find out more about Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, a social enterprise that supports impact-driven delivery organisations to develop and deliver outcomes-based contracts.