The Bridges Social Entrepreneurs Fund is an initiative of the Bridges Charitable Trust to address the funding gap often faced by fast growing social enterprises looking to scale. Launched in November 2008, the fund has so far raised £4.25m for investment in scalable social enterprises delivering high social impacts and operating sustainable business models.

The Bridges Social Entrepreneurs Fund will invest in social enterprises that have:

• a clear social mission
• a robust business model
• the ability to grow to scale and increase their social impact
• a financially sustainable model
• the ability to generate surpluses to repay financing
• a strong management team

The Bridges Social Entrepreneurs Fund will invest up to £1m in each social enterprise. The investment will be through equity-like capital providing social enterprises with the risk capital funding they need to grow. The funding will be repayable with an appropriate return, and the fund will re-invest all repayments and returns into further social enterprises.

The diverse investment, managerial and entrepreneurial experience of our team enables us to work closely with social entrepreneurs to help them maximise their social impact. We work closely with the enterprises we support helping them to realise their ambitions and maximise their social impact. In addition, the social enterprises that we invest in have the opportunity to benefit from consulting advice from Monitor Group to help them reach scale. Bridges Ventures also works closely with UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, to help social entrepreneurs seeking funding to become investment-ready. For more information about UnLtd, please email ventures@unltd.org.uk.

Founder Partners
The Founder Partners for this fund include NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, who made the first commitment to the fund and foundations, institutions and individuals from the financial sector including the Apax Foundation, The Generation Foundation, Lehman Brothers Foundation Europe, Deutsche Bank, 3i, Sir Ronald Cohen, Nigel Doughty and Harvey McGrath. In addition, the Bridges Ventures team has allocated funds from their profit share in the Bridges CDV funds.

To submit a business plan, please click here and complete the online application form.

The launch of the fund follows on from Bridges Ventures’ 2005 report entitled “Equity-like Capital for Social Ventures”, which was based on its experiences and research in this area. Please click here to read the report.