10 Years of making social investment work better for charities and social enterprises

Over the past decade, Access has worked to “rewire” how finance flows, ensuring that social investment reaches the charities and social enterprises that need it most. 

Central to our approach has been partnership: collaborating with place-based and specialist social investors, enterprise organisations, co-investors, and government to ensure a flow of finance that is patient, flexible, and designed around the realities of delivering social impact.

Our recent 10th anniversary celebration brought together this broad network for an evening of reflection, connection, and recognition of the progress made. 

Over the past decade, Access and its partners have deployed more than £162 million in investment to over 3,300 organisations, transforming the supply of small-scale, patient finance. Many of these organisations would have struggled to secure investment elsewhere — particularly those in underserved communities or at early stages of trading.

At the event, Seb Elsworth, our CEO, reflected on the importance of collaboration, highlighting the “power of partnerships” in enabling Access to reach more organisations, support innovation, and strengthen the social investment market. We also heard reflections from Simon Bevan, Chair of the Bromley By Bow Centre, on the central role of enterprise; Nick Hurd, Chair of Access, who thanked Seb for his work leading the organisation over the last 10 years; and Emilie Goodall, Trustee of Access, who thanked our partners and recognised the collective achievements made. 

To mark this milestone, we published a series of ‘Reflections on change’ from voices across our wider community, offering different perspectives on what has changed and what needs to come next:

• John Kingston, our founding chair, reminded us why we were set up: “to bring flexibility, patient capital, and real collaboration into social investment.”
• Bonnie Chiu emphasised equity, noting that “diversity alone isn’t enough. Real equity means confronting bias and shifting power in who makes decisions and how money flows.”
• Practitioners from Pathway Fund, Better Society Capital, Power to Change, Key Fund, Unity Trust Bank, IntraQuest, and Voscur shared how investment has been designed to reach communities and support resilience.
• Nick Hurd, our Chair, argued that the “real test for our work is whether we leave behind a system that is stronger, more confident, and truly accessible.”

More on our impact over the last decade is detailed in our latest Impact Report, which highlights how our investment has supported organisations in underserved communities, enabled innovation, and strengthened the social investment market. 

We also published a blog looking back at 10 Years of Impact, pulling out some of the key shifts that have happened over the last decade as a result of the work of Access and our many partners.