Where our money comes from?

Our funds come from a variety of sources, some is public money via Government and some is ordinary people’s money through a scheme which takes unclaimed bank accounts and puts them towards good causes.

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Endowment

Access was given a £60m endowment by the Cabinet Office in 2015 to spend over ten years on funding programmes which help charities and social enterprises to engage with the social investment market and become investment ready.

Growth Fund partnership

Access also manages the Growth Fund, a £50m partnership which uses a combination of £22.5m grant funding, made possible thanks to National Lottery players, and £27.5m loan finance from Big Society Capital (originating from Dormant Assets) and other co-investors, to address specific gaps in the social investment market.

Dormant Assets

To date, Access been allocated £40 million from dormant assets. This includes £10 million in 2018 to fund Local Access, a place-based blended finance programme. The £10m is blended with £15-20m of debt from BSC and an aligned commitment of £8m from Access’s endowment to support social change in specific places.

This also includes £30 million from Dormant Assets in 2021 to support COVID19 recovery. £6 million was distributed in the early phases of the pandemic to 70 charities and social enterprises in grants in order to make £15.5 million investments viable and we are now building a £22 million + programme aimed at creating more sources of patient and flexible repayable finance for charities and social enterprises during the recovery phase of the pandemic. 

2021 update

Earlier this year, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that Access is set to receive an additional £20m in 2022 from dormant assets to extend its support for charities and social enterprises in England. This will fund a successor programme to the Growth Fund and increase the supply of small flexible unsecured loans to organisations seeking to use the funds to create more social impact

By the end of 2022, Access will have been allocated over £140 million to support enterprise development and blended finance programmes in England.  

It’s important to be open and transparent about how we spend money and where that money comes from.