Big Society Capital is calling for feedback on a new transparency policy after admitting earlier this year that it had not been open enough to scrutiny.

The policy outlined in the report An Open Conversation About Transparency, proposes three streams of transparency for its functions as “investor”, “market champion” and “corporate entity”.

BSC said that although some of its “proposals may have wider consequences that we have not yet fully understood”, testing the proposals was “the purpose of this open conversation”.

Nick O’Donohoe, chief executive of Big Society Capital said: “Transparency is a key issue for Big Society Capital. We were asked to work harder to increase our transparency and have examined best practice in the UK and internationally.

“We have now established a set of measures that we hope will improve the understanding of Big Society Capital and the wider social investment market. We want our stakeholders to engage with us and let us know which proposals they disagree with as well as what more we could do to increase our transparency.” 

The report proposes that BSC publish anonymised data on investments made in social sector organisations by each Social Investment Finance Intermediary (Sifi).

It also proposes to publish by default, a one page summary of each Sifi investment and to publish “semi-annually” the breakdown of its portfolio.

Proposals to make BSC’s “investment process” more transparent include a bi-annual blog series called ‘Reflections from our investment committee’, in an attempt “to be more explicit about how we’ve considered the various trade-offs in investments”.

Other suggested proposals include publishing an “abridged version” of its internal investment manual and working in partnership with the Social Investment Forum to provide “tools to encourage transparency”.

The report also questions whether BSC should publish a “summary of key governing principles and constraints derived from Big Society Capital’s governing documents”; hold a “town hall meeting with board members” and publish an online version of its annual report.

The transparency report follows claims in March by the Alternative Commission on Social Investment, that social investment in the UK needed ‘less hype and more transparency’.

Its report After the Gold Rush, contained 50 recommendations to improve the social investment market – with a key element being changes to the role of Big Society Capital.

Comments for BSC’s transparency policy can be emailed to [email protected] or posted in a blog on BSC’s website. Responses are requested by 14th August. Final transparency proposals will be published in September 2015.