The Impact World This Week: 6 February 2025

UK: More than 70% of Black-led social enterprises and charities in London have less than six months of operational reserves. That’s according to Do it Now Now’s Resilience in Motion report, published on Monday. The report is drawn from responses from 35 organisations with annual incomes between £30,000 and £150,000. Funders must prioritise targeted, unrestricted funding and capacity-building resources to better support Black-led charities and social enterprises, says the report. 

• Read more: UK social investment making ‘slow and disappointing progress’ in meeting social entrepreneurs’ needs – Adebowale

UK: Moving ahead with its commitment to establish a social impact investment vehicle, the Treasury and Department for Culture, Media and Sport has formed a Social Impact Investment Advisory Group. The group will advise the government on blending impact and philanthropic capital and targeting investment to government commitments. The Impact Investing Institute’s chair emerita and board member, Dame Elizabeth Corley, will chair the new group. The government was unable to confirm the other members of the group before Pioneers Post’s publication deadline this week. 

• Read more: Budget 2024: UK Government will create social impact investment vehicle to deliver its missions

Scotland: For the first time since 2018 Creative Scotland has awarded multiyear grant funding, including to a number of social enterprises and cooperatives. 251 organisations will receive a total of £200m funding over the next three years. Social enterprises receiving funding include the cooperative Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland (£1.8m), Arika Heavy Industries CIC (£911,950) and Dance North Scotland CIC (£775,388). Creative Scotland, the public body which supports the country’s creative and cultural sector, said the funding provides “significant” support to the country’s local and national economy, through direct employment, by creating opportunities for freelancers, and by supporting individual artists and creative practitioners of all types.

UK: The government’s National Youth Strategy is about to receive an injection of ‘state school pride’ after appointing Sophie Pender, founder and CEO of the 93% Club, to its Youth Advisory Panel. The 93% Club aims to bridge the state-private divide in education and foster a sense of community and support for state-educated people both on campus at university and in the workplace. Pender won the 2024 WISE100 Social Business Star of the Future award. Responding to her appointment to the Youth Advisory Panel on LinkedIn, Pender said: “Excited to be part of the team providing expertise, challenge and perspective as the government navigates the development of this strategy, and looking forward to seeing how I can add a bit of #StateSchoolProud magic into the mix”.

• See Sophie interviewed after the WISE100 awards: Insights from the WISE100 Women in Social Enterprise 2024

England: It has been a bumper harvest of payouts for employee-owned B Corp Riverford, after the veg box firm’s profits more than doubled last year. Riverford made pre-tax profits of £5.3m in the year to 4 May 2024, up from £2.4m a year earlier as sales rose by 11% to £110m, according to accounts filed at Companies House. The company’s 1,023 staff will get around £1,000 each as a share of a £1.3m payout. The staff each receive an annual profit share, are paid at least the independently verified living wage and participate in the running of the business. 

England: A lack of funding, competition with commercial providers and a limited pipeline of skilled workers are holding back social enterprises and charities which offer ‘retrofitting’ services to make buildings more energy efficient. That’s according to a new report from Access – the Foundation for Social Investment, published on Tuesday. The report found social enterprises and charities bring unique benefits to retrofitting, such as their deep local knowledge, commitment to community needs, and ability to build trust. But, the report says, targeted support and systemic changes are required to fully unlock the potential of the social enterprise and charity retrofitting sector, including shared infrastructure and mentoring, inclusive funding schemes and the provision of patient and risk-tolerant funding for fledgling organisations.

Movers and Shakers

• Michael Lohmeier has been named president of Impact Community Capital. Lohmeier has been the firm’s chief investment officer since 2017 and will continue to lead investment strategy alongside overseeing day-to-day operations..

In case you missed it

Global: 17-year-old social entrepreneur Mohammad Tamzid Rahman, who established a blood transfusion management system in Bangladesh, is one of the nine Impact Heroes of 2025 named by Earth Company, a social enterprise that supports changemakers in the Asia Pacific. The nine Impact Heroes also include Richa Gupta, a teacher turned social entrepreneur reshaping the future of education in India and Freshta Karim, who provides safe learning opportunities through mobile libraries to children in Afghanistan. The Impact Heroes will receive monthly online training, mentorship and support identifying relevant opportunities to increase their impact. 

• Read more about Richa Gupta in: Meet the ‘solutionists’, Asia’s new generation of social problem-solvers