The Editor’s Post: Lost in data?

Better Society Capital, the UK’s social investment wholesaler, published its latest UK social impact investment market sizing data this week, showing that the market continues to grow, and reached £10bn at the end of 2023. This is undoubtedly cause for celebration – thanks to this funding thousands of social enterprises and charities have more money to tackle social and environmental problems.

Better Society Capital’s PR team certainly spun the story to reflect the numbers in the best possible light, highlighting that the market showed an 18% increase since 2021, a twelve-fold growth in 12 years and that there were 7,000 outstanding deals into social impact investment as at 31 December 2023.

But it’s always worth digging a little deeper, and, as our reporter Laura Joffre points out in her story, growth has slowed compared with previous years. It’s also important to understand the specific marketplace that Better Society Capital is focusing on, especially as the UK’s Impact Investing Institute recently published figures showing that the impact investing market reached £77bn in 2023. I urge you to check out Laura’s story for the fuller picture.

Better Society Capital must be applauded for publishing the data online in an open-access and user-friendly format. This allows anyone to interrogate the numbers to draw their own conclusions. And this is what a few impact investment experts have done already. 

Dan Gregory, who has a wealth of experience in research into social enterprises and their funding sources, pointed out on LinkedIn that the number of investments in 2023 is the lowest for five years at 1,107, compared with a peak of 1,391 in 2020. He also wonders if it’s “game over” for social outcomes contracts (often referred to as social impact bonds) which saw just one new investment in 2023 compared with 10 in 2019 and 2020.

Impact investment expert Jamie Broderick, also posting on LinkedIn, called the Better Society Capital data a “unique treasure” and urged impact investors and social impact funds to explore it further. He pointed out that it was particularly interesting that it showed the types of investments that different types of investors prefer. 

As Dan says: “Data can tell a range of stories” – take a look and see what you can discover (and let us know if you find something interesting).

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The Impact World this Week: 12 October 2024