Social Enterprise

Access to Finance for Social Enterprises

Access to finance is one of the most important issues facing social enterprises of all shapes and sizes. This section provides background information on this topic.

The Bank of England Report 'The Financing of Social Enterprises' provides comprehensive information on the social enterprise market and makes a number of recommendations.

Following the publication of the Bank of England Report, the Social Enterprise Unit organised a series of working seminars with key practitioners in the sector to probe these recommendations and develop specific actions for both Government and the sector to take forward. These recommendations can be viewed below in 'Summary of Key Proposals from the Finance and Funding Working Groups'.

One of these recommendations was for a report containing a series of case studies to illustrate some of the ways in which banks and community development finance institutions have provided loan finance to the social enterprise sector.

There are links to all of these documents below.

The Financing of Social Enterprises: A Special Report by the Bank of England- published May 2003

Making the Market Seminar - June 2003

Finance and Funding Working Group Seminars - July, August and September 2003

Summary of Key Proposals from the Finance and Funding Working Groups - updated October 2003

Lending to the Social Enterprise Sector Report - updated June 2004

Sources of Finance for Social Enterprise – updated December 2003-