Building resilience in times of crisis

Crises, whether natural disasters, pandemics, or socio-political upheavals, often bring sudden and unpredictable challenges. 

While the needs in these situations are hard to foresee or plan for, social investment has proved a useful and adaptable tool to respond to urgent needs, in addition to other measures. 

To facilitate this, we’ve taken a flexible approach to addressing these unexpected needs – working closely with partners to shift resources around, offering extra funds or easing restrictions on how existing funds can be used.

Covid-19

In 2021, Access and its partners deployed £27.7 million

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Access adapted many of its existing approaches to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on charities and social enterprises and the partners we work closely with. 

With an additional injection of £30 million of Dormant Asset funding we were able to offer a range of interventions – £12 million emergency loans to frontline organisations, £1 million emergency support for social investors and £XX million for more patient and flexible products during the recovery period. 

Access also freed up £1 million from our endowment to support capacity building to existing Growth Fund investees. 42% of those recipients said this was “fundamental to survival” and many were able to unlock additional funding as a result, totalling £909k of additional finance leveraged. 

Cost of Living pressures

By October 2022, the ‘cost-of-living’ had become one of the most popular google search terms in the UK. With the impact of rising prices and surging energy costs leaving many communities – and the charities and social enterprises that support them – in crisis. 

Following receipt of a new commitment of Dormant Assets, our £11m Cost of Living programme got underway in Autumn 2023. It is focused on getting support to charities and social enterprises that are using trading models to support those facing the brunt of acute cost of living pressures. 

10 of 12 programme partners distributed £10.5m of investment in 2024 through blended finance or enterprise development grants. To date, this support has focussed predominantly on those working on food distribution, indebtedness/financial advice and mental health with a large proportion (40%) going to the most deprived areas (IMD1).

Alongside this work, Access worked at pace to understand how Blended Finance could bolster the energy resilience of charities and social enterprises by helping them to reduce energy costs, improve energy efficiency, and promote a just transition towards a greener future. This meant directly supporting energy efficiency measures and other non-financial barriers (such as lack of data and the need to navigate a complex web of suppliers). This culminated in the launch of a £20 million Energy Efficiency programme (£12 million from Access plus £8 million co-investment from Better Society Capital) in late 2023.