Social and Sustainable Capital
Social and Sustainable Capital (SASC) was founded in 2012. Its mission? To help social enterprises, charities and social purpose organisations deliver scalable and sustainable solutions to social issues across the UK. We have made three investments into funds managed by SASC – the Community Investment Fund, the Third Sector Investment Fund and most recently, the Social and Sustainable Housing fund. We have also had a representative sitting on SASC’s board since its inception.
- £117m Amount of assets under management – All data from Social and Sustainable Capital
- 32 Number of social enterprises, charities and social purpose organisations in their portfolio
- 4 Number of funds
The SASC founding team had commercial experience but building a new manager and developing a team track record still took time. Since our first investment in 2014, they have called on a range of our support and training. They were one of the first organisations to use our Building Blocks programme, a tool that helped them understand their strengths, weaknesses and prioritise areas to improve. They then decided to repeat the exercise 18 months later, to see what had changed, and identify further areas to refine. In 2019, members of SASC’s management team took part in the ASPIRE (for teams) and INSPIRE (for CEOs) leadership programmes, run by us and external moderators over the course of a year. In the last year, SASC has also engaged with our non-executive director search firm to recruit three new board members and two Investment Committee members, helping them achieve diversity while adding excellent capabilities. During this time SASC has expanded both their team and their assets under management.
Ben Rick, Managing Director of SASC
In February 2020, Zamo Capital, a new organisation established by Big Society Capital to invest directly into fund managers to help them scale their impact, invested into SASC. This first investment is focused specifically on helping SASC grow their housing fund to over £100 million in assets under management.
SASC has grown to become one of the leading fund managers with four funds, more than £50 million invested, and £117 million AUM. They have 32 social enterprises, charities and social purpose organisations in their portfolio and in 2019 won the NatWest SE100 Social Business award alongside one of their investees, Hull Women’s Network. SASC has raised investment from Santander, the Social Investment Business and the University of Edinburgh, as well as a range of trusts and foundations including the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation and Barrow Cadbury Trust. In 2019, they won the Better Society Awards ‘Best Asset Manager of the Year’.
