big society capital

Big Society Capital, the UK’s leading social impact investor, exists to improve the lives of people in the UK through investment with a sustainable return. We unite capital, expertise and ideas to create social impact investment solutions for the UK’s social challenges – spanning homelessness, mental ill health and childhood obesity. With others who have invested alongside us, we have made over £2 billion* of new capital available to create opportunities for investors and enterprises.

Big Society Capital has an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion action plan (2021-2025) that sets out our intentions and the concrete actions we will take to put equality, diversity and inclusion at the forefront of our organisation and the social impact investment sector.

People and culture

We want to be an employer of choice to anyone who wishes to join the social investment sector, we will do this by living up to our values and building an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive and succeed with us.

Key activities underway include assessing the equalities, diversity and inclusion training needs across the team.

Investments and portfolio

We want to embed equality, diversity and inclusion considerations into our investment strategies, process and impact management and measurement approach where relevant and meaningful.

We have made a number of investments in our portfolio that support equality, including investing in Ada Ventures, a venture fund that invests in overlooked and diverse founders, the Women in Safe Homes fund that aims to provide safe homes for those fleeing domestic violence and the Fair By Design Fund, focusing on addressing the poverty premium.

We have also committed to collecting and sharing data from our fund managers on the diversity of their Board, senior leadership and Investment Committees. This will be published on an annual basis.

Engagement and market building

We want to work with others to develop shared tools and resources, including shared metrics and frameworks for embedding and measuring equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Several initiatives are underway, including ‘Addressing Imbalance’, a project in partnership with Good Finance focused on building partnerships with black and ethnic minority led organisations. We are integrating an equalities lens to the Outcomes Matrix to better enable organisations to set and monitor equality impact goals. Building on the Nothing About Us Without Us report from the Young Foundation which was funded and supported by Big Society Capital and Barrow Cadbury Trust, we plan to strengthen the voice of those with lived experience in social investment.

In our commitment to bring greater transparency and put diversity and inclusion at the forefront of our sector, we’re sharing examples of diversity practices in the social impact investment sector.

*as at end June 2020