Evolving together: Making social investment work better for charities and social enterprises

Our new strategy is the product of many months of thought and reflection from across the team and our partners. It’s an evolution, not a revolution. As we prepare for new funding through the Dormant Assets Scheme and enter a major new phase of our programmes, we want to be as clear as possible about how we see our work - and the wider social investment landscape - evolving.

The key shift is this: our strategy isn’t just for Access. It’s for everyone in the wider system that plays a role in making social investment work for all charities and social enterprises (whether they realise it or not). 

This is Access’s fourth strategy. With each update, our field has expanded. 

• Initially, in 2015, we saw our role in a straightforward way – filling gaps in the market around supply and demand, and moving money in a targeted way through a supply chain of delivery partners.
• By 2018, we realised that to really expand the reach of social investment, we needed to build the capacity of a wider range of organisations to develop their enterprise models. Our approach focused on doing this across different themes and, as we developed the Local Access programme, in different places. Our learning work became more focused on providing insights which others would value.
• By 2021, we were facing an existential question. Should Access continue beyond the life of our original endowment,t due to be exhausted by 2026? Could we realistically imagine the system serving the needs of community-based charities and social enterprises without the concessional finance we provide? Feedback from partners and stakeholders was clear; the answer was “no”. This led the board to conclude that Access should not work towards closure, and the in-principle commitment for further support through the Dormant Asset scheme gave us access to a unique funding stream. The strategy that followed placed our work in the wider ecosystem, but it was still very much about us.

Our new 2025-2028 strategy is the next logical step in our journey. It places our work within a vision of an investment eco-system that works for all charities and social enterprises, helping to create stronger communities. 

The strategy takes the reader through different stages. 

Firstly, we explore the nature of that ecosystem, the main actors and the elements which make it work: access to finance, access to support and access to markets. Given our specific role, it’s easy for us to focus on access to finance, but it is access to markets which is most fundamental. Being explicit about the limitations of our ability to bring about change in this area is one helpful element of this ecosystem approach. 

We then explore the barriers to our vision, why hasn’t it already been achieved? We identify six key challenges which the system needs to address. To bring this to life,  we wrote a future history of the vision being realised and those challenges being overcome. Examining what real change looks and feels like, and who makes it happen.

From there, we define our levers of change—the stakeholders involved—and how we aim to influence them to help achieve this vision. 

What does all this mean for Access over the next few years?

Firstly, our funding programmes will contribute to the delivery of the Community Enterprise Growth Plan (CEGP). The CEGP was co-developed with a wide range of partners during the Government’s consultation on Dormant Assets in 2022.  Within this, Access will continue to focus on four main funding themes of blended finance, pre- and post- investment support, enterprise grant making and market development but with a focus on eliminating silos between them. In particular, we will ensure greater alignment between enterprise grant-making and blended finance initiatives.

We will also place greater emphasis on leveraging both concessional and non-concessional finance alongside our own funds from a wider range of partners.

Our funding will be designed with more emphasis on building the resilience of our delivery partners. Direct funding for projects which develop the social investment market’s infrastructure will be more focused on the specific challenges identified in our strategy. 

We will continue to share learning widely and build the evidence for our work. Our advocacy will focus more sharply on areas where we can mobilise further concessional finance. We’ll build on areas where we have the greatest levers for change: promoting knowledge and familiarity with blended finance structures through the Blended Finance Collective, encouraging more foundations and funders to support the enterprise agenda through the Enterprise Grants Taskforce and work on total impact endowment approaches.

It is encouraging to see that our approach to a systems change strategy is resonating. We were proud to be featured as a case study in the new work from the Shifting Systems Initiative from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. In particular, the PRA team highlighted our approach to measuring ecosystem health as one of our five KPIs. 

Thanks to all our partners for helping to shape our approach, and a particular nod to our colleagues at Fair for All Finance, whose Financial Inclusion Plan was a key inspiration.