Social Investment Business and Access - the Foundation for Social Investment have announced that their Reach Fund, set up to help charities access social investment opportunities, is to continue for a further four years.

They plan to make at least £10m available by 2025 to support up to 1,000 charities and social enterprises to develop their access to social investment.

The fund works by linking social investors with charities to support them with issues such as business planning, financial modelling, and forecasting.

Independent evaluation has shown that for every pound spent on the fund, charities were able to raise £7m of investment, with £5.2m of grants raising £38.5m investments.

This evaluation also found that 44% of Reach Fund grants allocated so far have gone to organisations in the UK’s 30% most deprived areas.

Also highlighted is a lower take up for women led organisations and a lower application success rate for black and minority community-led organisations, LGBTQ+ and disability organisations.

The Fund says it aims to put in place “a renewed and strengthened focus on reaching people and organisations from marginalised groups”.

Neil Berry, Access’s director of programmes, said: “The recent independent evaluation shows the fund provides excellent value for money in comparison to similar programmes.

“It’s great that Access is able to extend this programme and continue opening up investment to charities and social enterprises that would not otherwise be able to access it.”

He added: “While the fund is successful in getting to parts of the country that have not benefited from this type of this investment in the past, there is more to do to ensure that the programme is serving marginalised communities to the same degree. Alongside our partners we will have a particular focus on this as we look to the next phase of the Reach Fund.”

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