Resonance is delighted to announce the first investment of £80,000 to The Severn Project CIC. The Community Interest Company grows salad for the Bristol commercial restaurant market whilst providing apprenticeships and employment for people from socially excluded groups such as those recovering from drug or alcohol misuse, with poor mental health or from offending backgrounds.

The funds will enable The Severn Project CIC to expand its growing capacity on a site it has in Bristol, building more polytunnels and expanding its product range and team to respond to the demand for high quality produce grown locally. This expansion will provide 8 more apprenticeships for people in the city who are seeking to rebuild their lives.

Steve Glover, CEO of The Severn Project CIC, said “We’ve been expanding steadily over the past few years, but this injection of cash enables us to make a step change in our production and our team to prepare us for the next phase of growing the business. Working with Resonance has been both a supportive and challenging experience, helping us get to grips with our financial modelling and our social impact.”

The team at Resonance has been developing a social investment fund for Bristol, alongside a group of business ‘angel’ investors, all of whom are committed to dismantling poverty and inequality in the city and the surrounding area. This is the first step in Resonance’s commitment to the fund that will launch in early 2015.

Resonance hopes to announce a second investment from the same group of investors before the end of the summer.

Daniel Brewer, Managing Director of Resonance, explained the thinking behind the fund: “These first two projects are pilot deals where we can test the social enterprise market. If there are a sufficient number of social enterprises where an injection of capital would make a sustainable impact on the poverty in the City, we will establish a fund. Bristol was already on our radar, and so when some angel investors who were aware of the poverty on their doorsteps and also wanted to respond in a sustainable way approached us, we started to explore how we might work together. These investors have a host of skills and they do not just bring money to the table, they bring support, business acumen and local knowledge and are willing to share it with the right projects.”

One of the angel investors states “Investing at this scale with a small group of us is great, but if we could create a larger pool from a wider number of people, we could invest some significant sums that we believe will have a significant impact on poverty in our city. Bristol is known for its persistent inequality and we’re determined to do something about this.”

Resonance intends to launch a Bristol Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) fund before the end of the tax year, believed to be the first of its kind and focused on dismantling poverty, leveraging and harnessing funds and skills from across Bristol in order to grow and develop sustainable interventions. Already a group of business leaders and professionals have started to come together to offer their support to investees of the fund when it is launched.

Daniel Brewer said: “It is a real shame that the investment in the Severn Project CIC was not eligible for SITR because it is classified as an agricultural project. Though it is encouraging that Community Farms in general are being considered for an exemption. Had this been eligible, we could have reduced the cost of capital to the business without putting pressure on generating a risk adjusted return for investors.”