Resilience and Recovery Loan Fund approves over £28m worth of total funding to social sector
Social Investment Business (SIB) has today announced the Resilience and Recovery Loan Fund (RRLF) reached £28m in total funding approved following its final Investment Committee. The Fund closed to new applications on Wednesday 31 March.
RRLF was a fund for social enterprises and charities who were experiencing disruption to their normal business model as a result of COVID-19. It was established in six weeks in April 2020 to make an existing government scheme (the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) more easily accessible to charities and social enterprises. Of the final £28m total, RRLF approved funding to 77 charities and social enterprises across the UK, with £24.0m worth of loans and over £3.9m worth of grants approved. SIB published real-time, weekly social investment data through the RRLF dashboardsthroughout the course of the Fund.RRLF was run by Social Investment Business (SIB) with an initial £25m investment and support from Big Society Capital. In August 2020, £4m in grants from Access – The Foundation for Social Investment – was made available alongside loans for organisations in England. SIB was the lender and worked with experienced social investor partners on the design and delivery of the fund: Big Issue Invest, CAF Venturesome, Charity Bank, Resonance, Social Investment Scotland, Social and Sustainable Capital and Wales Council for Voluntary Action.
RRLF was the only CBILS-backed fund that was created especially for charities and social enterprises. Organisations with funding approved included Autism Plus, Big Issue, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust and the Royal Society for Blind Children.
SIB is developing a successor loan fund under the terms of the government’s Recovery Loan Scheme, which it hopes to launch during the Summer of 2021. More information will become available on this over the coming weeks.
Nick Temple, Chief Executive of Social Investment Business, said:
“We are hugely proud of the successes of the Resilience and Recovery Loan Fund. We established the fund in record time, got money rapidly to organisations who needed it most across the UK, and worked in true collaboration throughout. We simply could not have achieved the success we did without the support from our investors Big Society Capital and Access, the effectiveness of the British Business Bank, the hard work of our delivery and referral partners, and the efforts of the whole SIB team and Board. We have learned a great deal from the Fund, and we will be using those insights in designing the successor loan fund, as well as building on the partnerships that have helped us achieve so much in the last 12 months. This will mean continuing to support charities and social enterprises with patience, flexibility and responsiveness in the post-Covid recovery.”
Jeremy Rogers, Chief Investment Officer of Big Society Capital, said:
“We are delighted to see how many charities and social enterprises have been able to access this funding at a time when they faced huge challenges as a result of the pandemic. The success of this fund is testament to the fantastic collaborative effort across many partners and we are very proud to have played a part in that.”-Ends For further information, please contact: Miranda Love Marketing and Communications Lead Social Investment Business Miranda.love@sibgroup.org.uk