Access – The Foundation for Social Investment has announced the appointment of Chloe Stables as Director of Partnerships and Advocacy.

Now in the second half of its planned ten-year life, Access is seeking to develop and implement a legacy for its work, with the goal to ensure long-term support for blended finance and enterprise development in the sector. The appointment builds on Access’s existing commitment to partnerships, and through focused advocacy will leverage the significant learning from the foundation’s programmes to date.

Chloe is currently the Chief External Relations Advisor at the Charity Commission, an interim post she has held since the start of the year. Previously she led NCVO’s communications and influencing work, playing a key role in several high-profile coalition-led campaigns that resulted in the £750m package of coronavirus support for charities, and challenging the use of anti-advocacy clauses in government contracts.

Chloe will join Access’s team of nine in mid-September where she will focus on working with partners including foundations, infrastructure bodies and government to help secure long-term support for blended finance and enterprise development in the sector.

The move follows a recent positive independent review of Access which concluded that the organisation has made a ‘significant positive impact’ to date. Commissioned by the Oversight Trust, who oversee the organisations that receive and manage funds from dormant assets, the review also identified the opportunity to further build on the learning from its programmes by doing more to help shape the future investment and support ecosystem for charities and social enterprises.

Seb Elsworth, Access’s Chief Executive, said:

“This is a critical phase of Access’s work as we look to build on and share what we have learnt over the last six years. In the longer term, we want to build the resilience of the sector and foster a social investment ecosystem that better meets the needs of charities and social enterprises. This appointment marks our commitment to working with partners to deliver that vision and Chloe was the standout candidate from a strong field.”

Chloe Stables said:

“I’m thrilled to be joining Access at this important point. Partnerships are such a fundamental part of social investment and are crucial to creating long-term systemic change. I hope to use my knowledge and networks to influence how charities and social enterprises access investment and support over the long term.”

Ends.

Editors Notes

About Access

Access – The Foundation for Social Investment works to make charities and social enterprises in England more financially resilient and self-reliant, so that they can sustain or increase their impact.

Access does this by supporting the development of enterprise activity to grow and diversify income, and improving access to the social investment which can help stimulate that enterprise activity.

Access is a ten year spend-down foundation, but the need for this work will continue well beyond that. So the approach of the Foundation is to work through others to create partnerships which can outlive us, test and learn from new approaches, and generate knowledge which improves the work of others seeking the same goals.

Set up in 2015, Access was endowed with £60 million by the Government to support more organisations to access social investment. It also runs the Growth Fund, a blended finance programme supporting small scale lending to the sector, on behalf of the National Lottery Community Fund and Big Society Capital.

Over the last three years Access has received a further £40m of funds from dormant bank accounts to develop blended finance programmes in six communities around England and support the sector recover from the pandemic.

Contact

Seb Elsworth, seb.elsworth@access-si.org.uk, 07759 045419