This guide will help you to understand:

  • What social investment is

  • How to decide whether social investment is the right tool for you

  • How to use social investment to deliver sustainability and impact.

It also includes a diagnostic tool that you can use to think about social investment. Nonprofits have always relied on three main forms of funding: grants, donations, and public-sector contracts.

Now that grant levels are falling, and competition for donations and contracts is greater, the sector needs to evolve to maintain its impact and the scope and scale of its work.

This is where social investment has a role. It is a more commercial way of funding activities, and is becoming a more important tool in a nonprofit’s funding mix. It has considerable potential to fund the sector and help secure its future.

By Cass Business School