Resonance has made another investment from its Health & Wellbeing Challenge Fund (South West) (H&WCF) for £150,000 into Effervescent (Eff). With an innovative revenue-generating financial model, Eff is an award winning social enterprise with a growing international reputation for developing exceptional advertising campaigns to catalyse social goodness.

The investment will help Eff to support public services, higher education institutions, NGOs and charities, and conscientious commercial brands that want to make a difference and change society for the better, by bringing them together with children and young people to design and deliver transformational campaigns with impact.

Eff is run by CEO Eloise Malone and they will use the investment as working capital, enabling them to employ some additional key staff as well as expand the offering from their premises in their home city of Plymouth to include a creative co-working community for local start-ups, freelancers and entrepreneurs. 

The Health & Wellbeing Challenge Fund seeks to make social impact investment more accessible and relevant to smaller social enterprises looking to expand their operations and impact in the South West linked to the broad theme of Health & Wellbeing. Effervescent is an ideal social investment opportunity as it has been able to demonstrate high impact through developing powerful campaigns for leading international brands around key health issues.

Eloise Malone of Effervescent said of the investment: “We are proud and grateful to be recognised by Resonance with this important resourcing.  Over the past ten years we have been in a period of constant research and development, working on regional and local contracts and supported by small project grants.  This investment allows us to approach our future with the resources to match our audacious vision for the possibilities of creative practice with vulnerable children.  Over the next five years we will grow our team and our offering until we are financially self-sustaining; reaching five times the number of children and young people that we currently nurture and training thousands of people in techniques that help them help young people more effectively.”

Leila Sharland, Investment Manager at Resonance, describes the deal and how it came about: “Eff approached Resonance as they needed working capital to expand. The result was an investment structure that allowed the organisation to build capacity through employing additional experienced staff for each business unit that Eff operate. Crucially, the investment will allow Effervescent to market their service to more councils, brands, NGOs and international clients who have the most to gain from Eff’s unique approach to building campaigns around pressing social and health issues of today.”

“We try to be flexible with the funding we offer.  Effervescent is the tenth organisation that we have provided with “permanent capital” alongside a standard loan. The use of “permanent capital” is an innovation Resonance has introduced in direct response to the needs of growing social enterprises. In essence, it involves a loan for which there are no initial repayments and no set repayment dates, allowing the organisation to focus on building capacity and scaling its impact.  Instead, a share of the enterprise’s revenue is paid once they are operating at a level where repayment is less of a burden.”

The Health & Wellbeing Challenge Fund is an impact investment fund established with investment from the Growth Fund and the South West Academic Health Science Network (SW AHSN). The Growth Fund is managed by Access - The Foundation for Social Investment, and funded by Big Lottery Fund and Big Society Capital.

Find out more about Effervescent.