Project: De-mystifying social investment through power sharing

Grant: £64,500.00

Stakeholders at major health charities, hospital-based charities, NHS partners, and foundations agree that whilst in-roads have been made into normalising social investment, it remains a mystery to the sector. This comes at a ‘moment in time’ for the sector, following the NHS Confederation’s statement that ‘every ICS should have a portfolio of social investment’ and seeks to get under the bonnet of ‘but how?’ and provide practical tools for key stakeholders to use to make this a reality.

Building on Social Finances work on the Care and Wellbeing Fund, the aim of this project is to increase awareness, understanding and ultimately the use of social investment by the VCSE sector by 1) Sharing open and honest reflections from social finance’s current partnerships with VCSE organisations about what is working well and what could be improved (both for VCSE’s acting as investors and those in receipt of social investment); 2) Creating open-source tools that can be adopted by other intermediaries, support organisations and VCSEs and 3) Hosting a learning event, targeted at NHS ICBs and Hospital Charities, together with pre and post blogs about the social investment journey with Oxford Hospital Charity.