School for Social Entrepreneurs welcomes the government’s announcement on future Dormant Assets Scheme funding

At the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE), we welcome today’s decision on the future Dormant Assets Scheme by the Government, to evolve Social Investment as a Dormant Assets category. 

The Community Enterprise Growth Plan (CEGP) devised in partnership with Social Enterprise UK, Access – the Foundation for Social Investment and Big Society Capital amongst others, sets out a clear plan of how Social Investment will evolve to embrace –  

1. Extending the availability of small, flexible affordable loans to smaller community enterprises through blended finance. This will include a Black-led social investment fund as recommended by the recent Adebowale Commission on Social Investment.
2. Improve access to finance for promising community enterprises and small businesses – that struggle to access lending from mainstream banking – by investing in non-profit community lenders.
3. Introduce Match Trading® to enhance the reach of dormant assets, which coupled with business support will catalyse growth.

Match Trading has proved to be a useful on-ramp for trading Social Enterprises which go on to secure social investment. 

In 2019, Beautiful New Beginnings attended SSE’s Lloyds Bank Match Trading programme. Carolyn Whitehead, CEO and founder says “Match Trading allowed me the time and space to learn the skills needed to scale my community interest company and invested in me as a business owner. Had I not had the support from SSE, I would not have felt confident or ready to then go on to apply for and be awarded funds of £45,000 worth of social investment from Kindred. Both Match Trading and social investment have enabled us to take extremely worthwhile calculated risks which have allowed us to propel our business forward and have this year resulted in us securing our first contract with Liverpool Public Health and Alder Hey for £75,500 as part of the healthy weights programme”.