It’s time to look at another case study from Breaking the Binary: Policy Guide to Scaling Social Innovation! This time we’re heading to the UK (we are over there a lot lately – see what I mean here and here) looking at Big Society Capital (BSC). BSC was created in 2012 and deploys assets to social investment intermediaries in order to reach the UK’s poorest neighborhoods. As of December 2012, BSC has made $83.5 million in investment commitments and is a bona fide impact investor! It wasn’t a short road to making this kind of impact though. This idea is 15 years in the making – check it out:
1997: Governments in power begin expressing a commitment to social investment.
2000: The UK Social Investment Forum establishes a Social Investment Taskforce, chaired by Sir Ronald Cohen, which was tasked to make an “urgent but considered assessment” of how the UK should use capital to tackle social problems.
2005: The government creates the Independent Commission on Unclaimed Assets. This super cool program, also chaired by Sir Ronald Cohen, looked at “unclaimed assets”. Unclaimed assets are funds that have been sitting untouched in accounts for 15 years or more. These accounts are considered “dormant”. The Commission looked at these accounts are realized that the unused funds could be used for social investments.
2007: The Commissions’ final report recommends creating a “social investment bank” that is independent from government and uses these unclaimed assets from dormant accounts to act as a wholesaler of capital.
2008: The Commission’s recommendation is memorialized in the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act. That money sitting in dormant accounts can now be accessed and redistributed responsibly!
2010: UK Government commits to use all dormant account money to establish a social investment wholesale institution.
2011: An outline is submitted to the government by (you guessed it) Sir Ronald Cohen for a “Big Society Bank”.
2012: The “bank”, now called Big Society Capital, is officially authorized by the UK Financial Services Authority and launched by the Prime Minister.
2013: BSC releases its first annual report, providing details on the £19.4m invested in its first year.”
BSC is just one more example of the innovative and creative ways that governments around the world are using business to create positive social change. Read more on our website, and be sure to check out our other Cheat Sheet blog post!