Place-based social impact investment ‘could solve key city issues’ as partnership convenes

Place-based social impact investment could be the solution to many of Cambridge’s most challenging issues following the announcement of new frameworks for multi-organisational partnerships.

AchieveGood, Cambridge City Council and It Takes A City CLT (Community Land Trust) have been working in partnership to explore how finance can be secured to improve the lives of local people, and build a better and more sustainable city for the future. The initiative, part of the council’s Our Cambridge programme, is outlined in a report published today.

The report posits that social investment could be used to support charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises to build and purchase housing, reduce homelessness, promote skills, and help people prepare for employment, as well as promoting community resilience, biodiversity and combatting environmental harm.

Cambridge City Council, It Takes A City and AchieveGood are now engaging with local charities and social enterprises, as well as potential investors, who can assist the goal of creating a significant positive impact.

“It’s how do we create the conditions for this to succeed,” says Robert Pollock, CEO of Cambridge City Council. “This wouldn’t be a city council organisation, it needs community involvement, along with the voluntary and private sectors.”

Today’s report is to put the concept of place-based social investment into the public domain: the second phase of the project, which will define a funding model and secure investment, is expected in the spring. Funding could come from a mixture of philanthropic individuals or organisations, the public and low-cost patient capital from investors – an approach successfully used in Bristol, Liverpool, on Tyneside and in Camden.

“We need a vehicle which suits everyone, one which includes equity, grants, and pro bono involvement,” Robert says of the initiative’s future structure. “This first report is to say we think the conditions are there, and part two is the structure.

“If it’s the right structure then the council would be interested in contributing, but the key is coming up with a pipeline of initiatives to put money into the city.

“In Bristol the investment has gone into local skills, carbon-free delivery, low carbon homes, even a migrant scheme. So in Cambridge we’re asking what the city council can do. We don’t have resources – so can we do it as a collective?”

Dom Llewellyn co-founded AchieveGood to create cross-sector collaborations – between governments, foundations, businesses, individuals and charities – to resolve today’s complex societal challenges by harnessing their unique skills, experience and insights to solve them.

“This is about ‘how can the city come together and solve some of the challenges?’,” says Dom.

“Every part of the city has a different role to play. If you have an endowment of £20m, how are you using that to address social impact? In Cambridge, how are you using your capital for good? So it could be about modular housing investment, or creating schemes where people can invest in an ISA for the environment, as has happened in London. It’s about ‘how do we use all the assets together?’.”

The modular housing suggestion is a case study in itself. The New Meaning Foundation, which built the city’s first modular homes in 2019 at Waterbeach Barracks, employed tradespeople who were rebuilding their lives after a period of homelessness.

“New Meaning is a good example of how this might work, it’s part of a circular economy model,” Dom notes, and Robert adds: “Expanding the number of modular homes in Queen Edith’s is now a public-private project with New Meaning homes and the It Takes A City community land trust – it’s public-private project.”

Martin Clark, board member at It Takes A City CLT, said: “Social investment is a powerful tool if used well, but also one that hasn’t yet fulfilled its full potential to help achieve social and environmental impact, so this initiative is really welcome and should work well in a place like Cambridge where there is a combination of great need as well as great resource.”

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