Social investment will be at the “heart” of the government’s agenda when world leaders meet for the G8 forum later in 2015, Rob Wilson said this week.
The minister for civil society was speaking at a Social Finance UK conference on the future of social investment and public services on Tuesday. He said the UK has the “most developed social investment market in the world and we need to be using it”.
Among measures put in place by the government to encourage the growth of social investment is a new social investment foundation named Access – the Foundation for Social Investment.
The Foundation was announced last month with the aim of helping smaller and newer voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises to access finance.
It was created by the Big Society Trust, working in collaboration with Cabinet Office, Big Lottery Fund and Big Society Capital, and will launch early this year.
Wilson said charities and social enterprises are the key “to delivering public services and government contracts” but that they often “don’t have the money required to deliver those government contracts".
According to Wilson, a pot of £140m is being pumped into the sector through both the Access Foundation and the Global Sustainability Fund.
The money will “help charities and social enterprises reduce running costs and explore different ways of diversifying their income,” he said.
Wilson said £10m has been committed to social impact bonds through the Social Outcomes Fund since 2012.
Social impact bonds “are of a bigger picture in which we as the government want to unlock more opportunities to charities and social enterprises to deliver public services, opening up public money and contracts for the sector”, he said.
“The government faces many difficult and troubling issues that it isn’t best placed to resolve – even if it had the money – but there are brilliant charities and social enterprises who do have the knowledge and skills to help the most vulnerable people in society,” said Wilson.
“Social investment has a key role to play in enabling them to turn people’s lives around.”
