Following a decade of economic stagnation, and then a pandemic, public policymakers are grappling with increasingly complex challenges which require new thinking beyond a ‘business as usual’ approach or a simple reversion to traditional models and practice.

This study follows on from research conducted on community businesses in the Liverpool City Region (LCR) described in a report published in March 2019 (Heap et al., 2019).

The objective of this report has been to build an evidence base that can demonstrate how growth can be achieved in the community business market.

“Can Social Finance Meet Social Need?” is co-authored by Robbie Davison and Helen Heap.

A detailed look at the loan portfolios of Futurebuilders England, CAF Venturesome and The Key Fund between 2002 and 2014

This research was conducted by Helen Heap of Seebohm Hill and Alan Southern and Matt Thompson from the Heseltine Institute of Public Policy and Practice at the University of Liverpool. It is an independent piece of work, funded through the University and provides an overview of the scale, scope and value of the social economy in the Liverpool City Region, conducted between October 2016 and June 2017.

As governments, businesses and societies look to tackle the health, social and economic consequences of COVID19, there seems to be widespread acknowledgement that there can be no return to “business as usual”.

We want to see a world where those social enterprises capable of providing alternative, innovative and thorough business solutions to social need are able to access capital which provides them with the capacity they require and buys them time to find and develop markets for the social impact they can deliver.