Our impact on charities and social enterprises - Resilience

Increasing reach and resilience

We help charities and social enterprises to access the right finance and support - especially those in underserved places and communities or led by marginalised leaders. This helps them to trade, build resilience, and increase their impact.

RESILIENCE, even during times of crisis

At Access, we focus on building resilience at all levels. This means increasing the resilience of the charities and social enterprises we fund, strengthening the organisations that provide finance and the wider social investment market they operate in.

A more resilient system at every level can better withstand shocks like the Covid-19 pandemic, or the Cost-of-Living crisis, and brings us closer to a future where our support is no longer needed. More resilient organisations are equally better placed to respond to opportunities when they arise, whether that be the opportunity to expand their impact, trading or diversify their activities.

We gather data on the resilience of the charities and social enterprises receiving funding through our quarterly programme monitoring and evaluations. This consistently shows that our enterprise development and blended finance programmes improve the financial resilience of the organisations participating in them.

A review of financial accounts of the participants in the Emergency Lending programme during Covid-19 showed that 73% had improved their position in terms of Net Current Assets 12 months after investment
Our Emergency Lending Programme during the Covid-19 pandemic produced some particularly interesting results. A year after investment, a survey showed that not only did the funding help charities and social enterprises get through the crisis, but many were also able to grow and diversify as a result.
The annual Ecorys Growth Fund Evaluation survey of VCSEs looks at a number of measures of resilience, including whether the investment has helped them to reduce their reliance on grants. Most years the data demonstrates that it has done.

Our programme evaluations are also showing promising findings- with both blended finance and enterprise development support helping VCSEs to improve their resilience on key metrics.

How we measure resilience

We have built the financial resilience of the charities and social enterprises we fund through our programmes, helping them to plan for the future and handle unexpected challenges or shocks.

Measuring financial resilience is complex, and we are always working to improve how we do it. You can find our KPIs below, and we will continue to evolve our thinking and approach to this.

We think that measuring resilience of those receiving social investment involves triangulating:

Publicly available data – financial accounts and balance sheets
Organisation’s self-assessment (mostly through surveys)
Assessment from fund managers or social investors
Qualitative insights on what financial resilience means to an organisation

We’re working closely with Better Society Capital to improve how we measure resilience, but also have work to do to understand some of the ‘why’ around how organisation’s build their financial resilience. We hope to explore this more in our ongoing evaluation of our Blended Finance programmes.

Boosting growth and job creation

Beyond helping organisations to weather crises, resilient organisations are more likely to grow, and then increase their number of full-time employees.

An independent evaluation of the Growth Fund found that almost half of organisations surveyed felt that the investment helped them to “significantly improve” their income and a further 25% said that it “slightly improved” their income.
Many attributed these income increases to diversifying revenue streams.
Evidence suggests this also translated into job creation – with analysis of a sub-sample of 157 VCSEs (where data was available) showing that 42% increased their full-time employees after receiving Growth Fund investment.

Developing enterprise models and supporting organisations to be investment ready and resilient

In order to become more resilient, charities and social enterprise need support to develop trading and enterprise approaches.

Our Enterprise Development programme has supported 325 organisations across six different sectors to develop their trading ideas, become more resilient and deliver more impact to their communities.

The programme has only recently finished, and the full independent evaluation results are not yet available, but emerging insights suggest that the programme results include:

Improved confidence around and ambition to trade, with 97% rating their confidence as positive or very positive following the programme, and 96% rating their ambition to trade as positive or very positive
Interviews with EDP participants found that the programme was seen as responsive, flexible and human, with it enhancing finance, marketing, governance and social impact for them.
Robust business and marketing plans helped many organisations to find investment and funding, and to grow their businesses.

Access programmes and funding have supported organisations at many stages of their journey, from when they are first starting to consider trading as an option, all the way to them being ready to take on social investment.

We know there is also a need for charities and social enterprises to receive investment readiness support, to bridge the gap between exploring accessing finance, and being ready to take on social investment.

Access’ Reach Fund has provided this since 2016, with 1120 grants totalling £13.7m awarded up to the end of 2024.

An independent evaluation of The Reach Fund between October 2018-December 2020 found that 58% of organisations went on to access social investment following their involvement in the programme.
For each £1 of grant spent, at least £7.37 of investment was secured, with £5.2m of grants raising £38.5m of investments.

Creating jobs and opportunities

CAST

“We help our young people gain useful skills for employment, such as how to use tools safely and carry out basic construction and horticulture tasks. But we also help with their confidence.”

CAST support young people to develop their skills through fishing and hands-on work in nature. Based in an ex-colliery village in Nottinghamshire, they took on social investment from Key Fund to buy their own building and take on five staff members.

What we’re measuring

Building Resilience

KPI 3: Organisations that have been supported through our programmes/funding are more financially resilient than they were before or would otherwise be.

This KPI looks at whether the charities and social enterprises we are funding are more resilient after receiving support from us. This matters because more resilient charities and social enterprises will be better able to cope with shocks (such as Covid-19 or the cost of living crisis) and will be able to more effectively deliver impact in their communities. For more information on how we understand financial resilience, please see the ‘How we measure resilience’ box below.

This KPI is measured using two metrics – firstly financial resilience survey data from our programme evaluations, on which we are currently scoring amber, and secondly results from our 12-month follow-on monitoring, for which we do not yet have scores, given when most of our investment were made, for which we are also scoring amber.

See our full set of KPIs and our progress against them.