Despite the UK's rainy reputation, a sunny future lies ahead for Low Carbon Hub’s Ray Valley in Oxfordshire, set to power 6,000 homes and generate £10m locally, after a hugely popular community share offer and £4.4m loan from Triodos.
Crunching the numbers from social sector organisations that have closed could help others to predict and prevent financial fragility. From salary spend to income type, financial benchmarking specialist MyCake suggests key questions to explore.
Ordinary people can help ‘build back better’ by choosing to invest in those community-owned businesses putting social and environmental goals first. Here are five places to start.
Must social enterprises take what they can get – or can they shape the (patient) social finance they need? Lisa Ashford draws on experiences with community shares and investment platforms in the UK and Africa to explore a way forward.
In the first of a series looking at 'patient, risk bearing' capital, Duncan Brown asks why social investment is so dominated by short-term, rigid debt instruments – and why there's so little support for higher risk, high return social innovation.
PLUS: BNP Paribas and European Investment Fund create €10m impact bond fund, SIS Ventures' second fundraise, US foundations back affordable food business Everytable, Dutch firm Tony’s Chocolonely secures new investment, and more.
House prices seem out of control and not building enough properties in the UK over several years has made the problem worse. In Leeds, the community has decided to do something about it.
Got a good idea for a community business? Independent trust Power to Change has committed £1m to help build the community share market in the UK. Ged Devlin explains why.
