St John’s Hospital in Bath has launched a £4m social investment programme to support local charities and social enterprises with social, cultural and environmental aims.
The charity, which was founded in 1174 to provide refuge for the elderly, poor and sick, and provides almshouse accommodation at sites in and near the city centre, said loans from £25,000 will be available over the next four years.
The programme is designed to help local people and communities make a step change in the services they provide. Loans can be used to grow and develop the organisation, support day-to-day expenses needed to set up a new project, buy and refurbish a property, employ more people, and buy vehicles and other equipment, St John’s said.
Sue Cooper, the charity’s head of social investment, said the programme was being launched to help struggling charities and social enterprises sustain their services.
The new fund will operate alongside the charity’s existing grants programme, which has been running for more than 20 years and last year made grants totalling £450,000 to individuals and organisations working with disadvantaged people.
Cooper said: “St John’s has engaged with a wide range of local charities through its community grants programme and identified a number of organisations with turnover that was too large to qualify for a grant, but who were struggling to access capital to help them sustain their services.
“A fund such as this enables social enterprises to expand in a way that makes them more resilient, able to deliver more and wider services and ultimately be more sustainable, rather than relying on smaller one off grants.
“These are loans that will make a considerable difference to the impact enterprises can make on the local community by enabling them, for instance, to purchase equipment, expand premises or employ more people.”
The charity is running a series of seminars about social investment and enterprise to explain how the programme will work. Information about applying to the fund can be found on its website.
