Charities Aid Foundation has recruited an experienced social enterprise manager to head up CAF Venturesome.

Stephanie Sturrock will become CAF’s director of social investment, a role that will also involve leading on the development of a range of new social investment funds and services and overseeing the growth of the CAF Social Impact Fund, the UK’s first retail risk capital fund.

Sturrock (pictured) will join CAF on 9 January from Seachange, a Yorkshire-based social enterprise, where she is currently chief executive.  Under her leadership, Seachange has secured funding to create community hubs in Scarborough and Whitby, providing facilities for thousands of local people.

Previously she was managing director of Shared Interest, the award-winning £30m fund that provides social finance to fair-trade enterprises in developing countries.

Over the last ten years CAF Venturesome has provided capital investment of £24m to 300 charities and social enterprises.  It was led during that time by John Kingston, who left recently to launch an investor advisory service for Social Finance.

Sturrock said: “This is a particularly attractive role for me as I have experience of both providing social investment and actually delivering services on the ground.

“One of my objectives will be to widen CAF’s social investment activities, to ensure that we continue to allow charities to access capital where traditional sources of funding are not available to them.”