Social Investment Business and Social Enterprise North West announced the first local impact fund pilot in Liverpool, making £2m available to charities and social enterprises in the region.
The Liverpool City Region Impact Fund will offer unsecured loans of between £50,000 and £250,000 for up to five years to about 20 charities and social enterprises to help them scale up their activity.
It is financed with £1m from Social Investment Business, through its parent charity the Adventure Capital Fund, and £1m from the European Regional Development Fund’s 2007-2013 programme.
The local impact fund model has been designed to use EU structural funds for economic development from the EDRF and the European Social Fund, which are controlled by Local Enterprise Partnerships in England and aims to attract match funding from investors like Big Society Capital, local authorities Clinical Commissioning Groups and others.
Social Investment Business predicts that if the idea takes off £100m will be made available throughout England, with ten other regions already looking at setting up a local impact fund.
Organisations need to submit expressions of interest for loans by 28 February and will then be able to apply on the Social Investment Business website from 1 April.
