Here at Access we are committed to taking an evidence-based approach to our programmes, and making a contribution to our collective understanding of social investment through funding research. We’re very pleased to announce that our first funded report, ‘Prospecting the Future’ by Nick Temple of SEUK, has now been published. Through detailed analysis of the data from their 2011, 2013 and 2015 ‘State of the Sector’ surveys, SEUK have been able to identify trends in their membership’s experience of social investment, and offer up practical recommendations.

“This report makes a really valuable contribution to our understanding of the needs of the sector. Indications about the demand for working capital, the level of investment going into deprived areas, and the use of grant funding alongside finance, are useful insights which will help us to ask better questions as our programmes develop.”
Ed Anderton, Strategy and Policy Manager for Access.

This work also highlights the potential for increasingly data-driven analysis and research: both making more extensive use of the data we have, and guiding us to collectively build stronger ‘data infrastructure’. With our partner Big Society Capital having recently published its first historical deal-level data, this is a growing trend. As Nick Temple notes in this report:

” this analysis should be viewed as the start of a programme of work to better use and mine the data the sector has.”