BSC’s have published the latest data on social investments made in charities and social enterprises up to the end of 2018.

There is a handy toggle on the bottom right of the visualisation which allows you to see the Growth Fund in isolation, or in the context of deals with BSC money in, or all other social investment deals.

Three striking stats which show how blended finance is transforming social investment:

• It allows for deals to be smaller, much smaller: The average size of investments, excluding those made through the Growth Fund, was £1.2m with a median of £250k. The average size of Growth Fund loans (excluding the grant element) was £57k with a median of £40k.
• In fact when you exclude the Growth Fund from the data the average deal size has been going up each year prior to that, from £862k in 2013 to £1m 2017, so blended finance is making deals smaller against a trend moving in the opposite direction.
• There is loads of demand for this sort of smaller finance: In 2018 the Growth Fund was responsible for 29% of all social investment deals made (and 36% of all those involving BSC money).

The social investors delivering the Growth Fund are due to make even more loans in 2019 than in 2018, so it will be fascinating to see the even greater impact of the programme on this data next year.