In June and July 2012 Urban Forum, together with local partners, organised a series of FREE half-day workshops on ‘Getting to Grips with Social Finance'. 

21st June 2012, Wakefield - in partnership with Voluntary Action Wakefield District
26th June 2012, Newcastle - in partnership with Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service and VONNE
26th June 2012, Rugby - in partnership with WCAVA
27th June 2012, Bournemouth- in partnership with Bournemouth Council for Voluntary Service
27th June 2012, Liverpool - in partnership with LCVS United Way
19th July 2012, Barnet, London - in partnership with Community Barnet

The Getting to Grips with Social Finance workshop programme was supported by the Santander Foundation.

To help us report back to the funder, here's an EVALUATION FORM which we would encourage attendees to complete and submit by 24th August 2012 to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Social Investment? Community Finance? Charity Bonds? Crowdfunding? What does it all mean and what does it have to do with us? In these times of austerity, public service transformation and changes to voluntary and community sector funding there is greater emphasis on new forms of financing social action through social investment. In a nutshell it's about using money to achieve both social outcomes, or ‘returns', as well as financial ones.

The workshops aimed to provide an overview of social investment and community finance, share some practical examples of how new funding models can be used,  discuss practical implications for community organisations, enable participants to explore how to assess whether social finance can work for them and signpost  to available sources of support. 

We were grateful to have a number of speakers covering various aspects of social finance. Here are presentations from the events.

 Garry Brown, Key Fund (Investing in Social Enterprise) 

 Dan Gregory, Common Capital (Social Finance)

 Jim Brown Associates (Community Shares) 

 Mark Heskett Saddington, Sustainable Enterprise Strategies (Social Finance)

 Michael Norton, Buzzbnk (Crowdfunding)
 
 Paul Humphray, Merseyside Social Investment Fund

 Peter Gilson, Entrust (Microloan fund)

 Peter Hughes, Charity Bank (Social Finance)

 Bruce Wood, London Rebuilding Society

You can find more information on Social Finance in the Winter 2011/12 edition of Urban Forum's Clearway magazine http://www.urbanforum.org.uk/clearway/clearway-76-%96-social-finance.