We are pleased to announce that Resonance’s Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) Funds have received a £2.25 million top-up facility from Big Society Capital (the UK’s leading financial institution dedicated to social impact investment), to support our ambitious plans to grow our existing SITR Funds and launch more regionally focused SITR Funds.

This top up facility means that investment from individual investors will unlock matched investment from Big Society Capital, enabling Resonance to scale up its regionally focused social investment solutions into further regions across the UK.

Resonance has already successfully launched three regional SITR Funds: in the South West, the West Midlands and the North West, tackling poverty and disadvantage in specific areas in the UK through investment into high impact social enterprises seeking to scale their businesses and their social impact.

Big Society Capital’s ambition is to help create a fair society by improving the lives of people through social impact investment. To date, over a thousand social enterprises and charities creating positive social impact across the UK have received investment from Big Society Capital through fund managers and social banks.

One of Big Society Capital’s key investment focus areas is ‘place’. Big Society Capital intentionally invests in place-based investments designed around the needs and ambitions of communities (places), so that local people can benefit from reduced poverty, local issues can be addressed and sustainable, long term income for communities can be generated.

To support its place focus, Big Society Capital collaborates with partners and invests in like-minded funds - including this investment facility for Resonance’s SITR Funds - focusing on improving the lives of communities experiencing poverty, inequality or disadvantage.

Hayley Hand, Investment Manager at Big Society Capital, explained: “The Big Society Capital facility will support Resonance to build on its place-focused foundations. We are keen to support the development of such joined up investment eco-systems as this creates the possibility of greater change in places than isolated transactions would otherwise do.

“We are also keen to grow the evidence base for SITR funds which we believe opens up the market to new pools of investors and supports the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector through growing the debt finance market.“

The Resonance South West SITR Fund is Resonance’s most established SITR Fund and had a record year of investing in 2019, that amounted to £984,000 in seven social enterprises. Since the start of this year, it has already invested into an additional two social enterprises with a number of other deals in the pipeline.

Whilst our West Midlands and North West SITR Funds launched more recently, the West Midlands SITR Fund has already invested into four social enterprises with three more investments to be announced shortly. As both Funds progress, a variety of investment conversations with social enterprises with significant growth potential in their regions are taking place. Resonance is working to scale investment into these Funds in which the Big Society Capital facility is set to play an invaluable role – not only through providing investment itself, but also through leveraging in additional investors. We are delighted that by enabling the Fund to scale more quickly, the Big Society Capital facility will also support SITR Fund expansion into new regions, enabling more individual investors to invest for impact across the UK.

For investors, Resonance’s SITR Funds provide the potential opportunity for a financial return and tax relief benefits, whilst also investing in a diversified portfolio of social enterprises committed to social transformation, tackling poverty in some of the most deprived communities in each region.

Grace England, Resonance’s Investment Manager said: “We are thrilled to be making our first draw down from the Big Society Capital facility so that we can support more social enterprises access affordable social investment opportunities and scale their impact. It’s great to see Big Society Capital supporting our place-based social approach to SITR Funds, which we think is crucial to ensuring social enterprises can access the investment, support and networks that they need to flourish. We’re looking forward to seeing many more individual investors backing these social enterprises and utilising SITR through our regional funds, following Big Society Capital’s commitment.”

For more information about investing in our SITR Funds click here.

If you’re a social enterprise looking for investment click here.

Big Society Capital has created a useful Get SITR resource - which provides free SITR support for social enterprises and investors – to help make social impact investment easier and more effective to access.