Impact

Our investing and market-building work is underpinned by a robust approach to impact management and measurement, and systems practice.

Reboot

Key stats

  • 3,500+

    Number of organisations that have received social investment from Big Society Capital since 2012

  • 60%+

    Percentage of enterprises that have received investment are located within the most deprived areas of the UK

  • 70%+

    Percentage of committed (£) outside of London

Our approach

Our investing and market-building work is underpinned by a robust approach to impact management and measurement, and systems practice. Beyond our own operations, we are committed to help improve impact practice across the fund managers and social banks we invest in, and we play an active part in supporting advance impact and systems practice more broadly across the global impact investing community.

We consider BSC’s contributions to impact essentially at two levels.

  1. Changes at the market system level, across different market stakeholders (from investors to enterprises) and market infrastructure (system change)
  2. Changes in outcomes for people and end-users (impact on people)

Both levels of impact are considered throughout the investment life cycle, as well as within our broader market-building practice. ESG is similarly embedded throughout our investment process, for more detail please read about our ESG approach.

We fully acknowledge that a change in people’s outcomes is the impact that enterprises and charities directly contribute to. We contribute to such outcomes through our capital, as well as broader market-building activities. We consider both as BSC’s “investor contribution”.

We consider the understanding of impact important in its own right – it is the very reason we exist – and we believe it can be a powerful competitive advantage for funds and enterprises we invest in. It can help reduce risks and create broader long-term business value.

  • Impact along the investment cycle

    Impact is firmly embedded along the entire investment cycle, from setting investments strategies, making and managing investments, to existing and learning from them. Find out more about our impact management approach and its alignment with the Operating Principles for Impact Management.

    Learn more
  • Systems practice

    We consider social impact investment markets and most of the social issues we seek to affect as complex social systems. Find out more about our work to improve our understanding of these systems and how we embed this into our market-building efforts.

    Learn more

Impact report 2023

We want to be clearer and more transparent about the impact we intend to achieve, and the progress we are making towards it. Our latest impact report highlights what we are learning across our market building and investing work, and what we think good impact and impact practice looks like across these areas. Find previous impact reports on our key documents page.

Impact team

If you want to learn more about how we measure impact, or to find out how you can measure impact in your organisation, get in touch.