The Big Venture Challenge, a programme delivered by UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, with support from the Big Lottery Fund, has in its first six months successfully leveraged early-stage co-investments for seven social ventures with high growth potential. The programme has seen:

• A total of £420,000 of funding from Big Lottery Fund used to attract £680,000 of external investment – a leverage of 162%
• 74% of this co-investment has come from a total of eight private Angel investors who have not invested in the social venture sector before
• 66% of the co-investment is equity and 34% is loan

The Big Venture Challenge works with 25 of the most ambitious social entrepreneurs in England to provide access to finance, support and powerful connections.  The seven confirmed co-investment deals are outlined below:

• Spacehive is an online platform that puts communities in control of neighbourhood planning by tapping private sector investment for capital projects like playgrounds and community centres – helping to offset public spending cuts.

• Match funding leveraged in £200,000 of equity investment from two angel investors and a small private equity firm.
• Reds 10 addresses long-term unemployment through supporting Local Authorities, Developers and Contractors in meeting local labour and apprenticeship targets on construction projects.
  • Match funding leveraged in £150,000 of equity investment from one angel investor.
• Squease produces award-winning therapeutic garments that help individuals with autism to self-manage their anxiety.
  • Match funding leveraged in £100,000 of equity investment from three angel investors.
• The SWEET Project provides early intervention support to families at risk to prevent social problems from escalating.
  • Match funding leveraged in £80,000 of loan investment from Big Issue Invest.
• Patient Choice is a prescription home delivery service for ostomy products that provides impartial product information empowering individual patients to make their own choices about their care.
  • Match funding leveraged in £50,000 of loan investment from one angel investor.
• Blue Sky Development & Regeneration is establishing a prison industry in a women’s prison to stimulate employment through manufacturing goods for a fashion brand.
  • Match funding leveraged in £50,000 of loan investment from Big Issue Invest.
• Beyond Youth CIC is launching an ambitious social franchising model to scale their Chance 2 Change programme, which uses therapeutic interventions to tackle the root causes of offending.
  • Match funding leveraged in £50,000 of loan investment from CAF Venturesome.

The nature of these deals is in stark contrast with the experience of UnLtd’s investment readiness work over the previous two years which saw just 8% of money raised as equity, with 54% as loan and 38% as grant and no deals involving angel investors.

Jo Hill, Director of Ventures at UnLtd, said

“The Big Venture Challenge programme is designed to plug the gap in early-stage, high-risk capital and stimulate the social investment market. The programme has enabled conversations to happen between social entrepreneurs and investors, giving them the chance to dip their toes in the social investment sector for the first time.

 “In addition to these deals, we have had a further £500,000 of co-investment lined-up from investors, pending match funding.  There seems to be a real momentum building across the social venture sector.  I’m so excited to see such a high level of interest from new investors who can see opportunities to back creative, high growth business models that address social issues such as youth unemployment or the prevention of re-offending”.

Dharmendra Kanani, England Director at the Big Lottery Fund continued,

“This is People Powered Change at its best, enabling people in communities to unlock solutions to social problems. The Big Venture Challenge provides a platform for spotting and backing people with solutions to social problems but also importantly creates a blend of a private sector analysis of the bottom line with social return and benefit.

“These are social entrepreneurs who have a shared ambition to deliver impact at scale whether that is working with disengaged youth, supporting vulnerable families, providing employment, reducing re-offending or enabling disabled people to have more choice. We are proud to be backing social entrepreneurs who have the courage, resilience and commitment to respond to need and social issues, but also those making a difference by scaling up impact to make a measurable difference to thousands of people in the community.”

One of the successful Big Venture Challenge Award Winners, Tom Storey of Reds 10 commented about the programme,

“The Big Venture Challenge Award and the obvious attraction of the match-funding really accelerated the whole process for us and our investor.  Being a part of the programme has opened doors for us, given us credibility and focused our minds on delivering a coherent growth plan.  We see this as the beginning of the next stage of our journey as we look to rapidly scale the social impact of our work – creating employment opportunities for young disadvantaged people up and down the country.”

All of the ventures are receiving hands-on one-to-one support from the team at UnLtd, regular bootcamps as a cohort plus mentors, pro-bono legal support, financial modelling and Marketing / PR support. To see the 25 visit http://bigventurechallenge.com/the25

Based on the success of this programme in stimulating the seed investment market, UnLtd are looking to raise more match funding to support ambitious social entrepreneurs in regional and themed cohorts, to deliver impact at scale in health, education, employment, youth and social inclusion.

All this week we’ve be publishing guest blogs from projects we funded 12 months ago under the banner People Powered Change. To conclude the series, today we hear from the Young Foundation’s Mandeep Hothi about their Building Local Activism programme.

The Young Foundation is now one year into our Building Local Activism programme, which has two strands: Scaling Proven Models and Digital Activism. We’ve already learnt a lot and are excited about the year ahead.

Mandeep Hothi

Through our Scaling Proven Models strand we want to help grow the field of community organising. To do this, we are working with Church Action on Poverty, Citizens UK and People Can (formerly the Novas Scarman Group) – supporting each to operate in new areas of the country on a long term, sustainable basis.

At the core of community organising is the development of relationships. Organisers need to get to know local residents and support them to come together around common issues. This is an on-going process but is most crucial during the first twelve to eighteen months, after which new community organising groups begin to emerge and existing groups become strengthened.

Over the next year we expect to see new and strengthened groups in areas of the country like Salford, Birmingham, Nottingham, Middlesbrough, Bristol and Liverpool. These groups will be equipped with the skills, experience and vision to influence the decisions that affect their areas and we look forward to sharing more over the coming year.

Our second strand of work, Digital Activism, is supporting several community groups to campaign and lobby for change using digital media. We’ve spent the past six months working with these groups to develop their capacity to use the technology and to define the kinds of campaigns they want to work on.

Some of these campaigns are underway. Hackney Citizens Advice Bureau has launched a campaign to map and raise awareness of the impact of housing benefit cuts on Hackney’s residents (find out more on Facebook here). The Leeds Older People’s Forum is planning a series of activities to campaign for a more accessible city centre, and the Women’s Networking Hub, based in the West Midlands, has been redesigning its website to make it more conducive to campaigning.

Digital Media for Older People training – video interviewing from Building Local Activism on Vimeo.

We’ve also been developing new tools to support community activism across the country. In collaboration with www.thumbprintcity.com we will soon be launching Activist SMS, an online text message mailing list tool that allows community activists to broadcast text messages to their networks and receive replies. It will also be optimised for mobile browsing – so messages can be sent on the fly.

We’ll continue to share updates about Activist SMS and our Digital Activism work via our blog http://yfweb.wordpress.com. You can also follow us on twitter @yf_web.

Mandeep Hothi
Programme Leader

Young Foundation
mandeep.hothi@youngfoundation.org

Launched in October last year, Your Square Mile (YSM) is a citizens’ mutual open to anyone in the UK over the age of 16. It gives inspiration, practical advice and tools to anyone seeking to bring about positive change in their local community. Our annual subscription is £10 but much of advice and tools are free and can be found at www.yoursquaremile.co.uk

YSM is an action-oriented organisation: “A safety-net, barrier-buster and citizen negotiator” creating happy, healthier communities.

Last year we worked successfully with 16 of the toughest neighbourhoods in the UK achieving tangible results: doubling regular, constructive contact between citizens and the local authorities; increasing from 50 percent to 63 percent of people who feel they can influence local decisions and from 37 percent to 50 percent of people having weekly contact with their neighbours.

One projects we are proud of is the Something for the Summer event – a youth community event completely coordinated by young people. The Cumbrian town of Wigton was one of the first in the UK to have a youth curfew for under 16s in 2004. Young people were not seen in a positive way and were considered a problem rather than a solution. An article about the curfew can be found here.

Sam Massey – A Youth Station Worker, presented an idea of a Youth Community Festival which was chosen as a project that would be taken forward by the community. This involved young people taking the initiative and organising the community event.

Young people in Wigton, Cumbria, took the lead and ran their own youth community festival

YSM helped the young people secure a £500 grant from O2 Think Big. The event was really well received by the community and was backed by Cumbrian MP Rory Stewart. Given how well it was received in the community, the Wigton Youth Station are in the process of planning another youth festival this summer.

YSM now offers member benefits that include the cheapest Street Party, Event and Public Liability Insurance covering all community events and volunteering activities; discounted Community Gardening Kits, Clean-up Kits, printing deals; incentives to use local shops and services.

YSM: Wigton from Your Square Mile on Vimeo.

YSM has been recommended as the central, enabling hub for community activists envisaged by Baroness Newlove and DCLG. We work with Business in the Community on the Business Connectors programme. We partner with OCS, CDF and Locality on Community First and Community Organisers. We play a key role in driving forward People Powered Change.

A YSM neighbourhood will in the future:

• Educate people on how to be Savvy Citizens
• Be led by local citizen leaders who are members of the YSM Mutual
• Have a Community Organiser and Business Connector(s) as expert catalysts
• Have a local “Our Square Mile” on-line hub
• Use our national hub as an exchange to trade ideas with other communities
• Use YSM as the portal for local volunteering, resource sharing and time-banking

YSM offers:

• Proven, tangible success in increasing social capital at a local level
• Best Practices for getting communities to come together; define, name and own their neighbourhood; generate and action a manageable number of projects
• A digital platform that presents a host of tools, ideas and inspiration
• A Citizens’ Mutual, FSA registered, offering a range of tangible member benefits
• Connection to over 90 voluntary sector partners
• The ability to bring the Government, Business and Voluntary Sectors together
• A brand that “does what it says on the tin”, operating at local, regional, national and UK-wide levels, cascading ideas and benefits

Paul Twivy

Founder & CEO -Your Square Mile

paul@yoursquaremile.co.uk

This week we’ve been publishing guest blogs from projects we funded 12 months ago under the banner People Powered Change. Today we hear from UnLtd’s Dan Lehner about their Big Venture Challenge.

A year ago, it was announced that UnLtd would deliver a three-year investment called Big Venture Challenge under BIG’s People Powered Change initiative. Big Venture Challenge (BVC) was designed with three core objectives:

• to support ambitious social entrepreneurs to scale up their impact
• to stimulate the early stage social investment marketplace 
• to learn what it takes for social ventures to reach scale. 

After months of intensive scouting and filtering we announced the 25 winners in October 2011 – those that we felt had the most potential to deliver impact at scale.  Each of the winning entrepreneurs has access to an UnLtd Development Manager to help them diagnose major strategic challenges and to broker access to early-stage finance, business mentoring and powerful connections.

In addition, the BVC winners can apply for £50,000 or £100,000 match funding grants if they attract loan or equity from co-investors. The purpose of the programme, and the match-funding in particular, is to attract new investors to the sector, plugging the gap in early-stage high-risk capital.

So what has happened so far?  One of the most pleasing discoveries is the level of interest in the cohort from co-investors who are new to the social venture sector and how quickly they have been drawn to the sector. In the first 6 months:

• Over £1m of co-investment has been lined up by ten of the winners to apply for our match-funding
• 75 percent of this co-investment is from investors who are new to the social venture sector including 13 Angels who have never made a social investment before
• 70 percent of the co-investment is equity and 30 percent is loan

In contrast, during the two years prior to the BVC, UnLtd’s work on investment readiness (via UnLtd Advantage) saw only 8 percent of the money raised for social entrepreneurs as equity and the deals involved no angel investors at all. So we know how hard it is to attract early stage high risk capital.

Successful entrepreneur James Caan has shown his support for Big Venture Challenge

Whilst this is obviously a tremendous result, it does mean we are already over-subscribed for our match-funding.  Of the ten applications for match-funding only six have been approved. This has sometimes led to challenging conversations with investors. 

Our biggest challenge now is identifying new sources of match-funding to take advantage of the clear momentum building in our cohort and the wider marketplace. 

Thankfully some of our ventures are sourcing investment without the need for match – and others are leveraging in much more investment than just that required for match.

We are learning that there are four key ingredients in our model that are attracting these new investors to invest at an early stage:

• The Filter: Extensive scouting to find high potential social entrepreneurs and rigorous due diligence to select the very best. Our ‘seal of approval’ gives investors confidence in the calibre of the ventures.
• The Support: Intensive, tailored support to prepare the selected social entrepreneurs for growth and investment. We have been proactive in identifying key barriers to growth and have worked together to tackle them.
• The Networks: Introductions to co-investors and strategic partners in public, private and social sector. Networking events and connections to key decision-makers have opened up growth opportunities.
• The Match Funding: A powerful magnet to de-risk investments, attracting new private investors to dip their toes in for the first time.

As the investment deals are closed, the really exciting work begins. Over the three-year programme we will be tracking how the impact delivered by our winners increases in line with their organisational growth – and how our support and the growth capital sourced affects this. We are committed to sharing our ongoing learning with the rest of the sector.

 A year ago we started working with the Big Lottery Fund on the People Powered Change initiative with a view to unlocking the potential of local stories and community reporting to bring about positive social change in our communities.

Mediat Trust's Gavin Sheppard

The rise of People Powered Change throughout the Arab world is well documented and attributed in no small part to social media. Giving people the power to communicate, to express their wishes and aspirations and to connect with like-minded individuals is undeniably awesome when it gathers momentum.

And even in a western world where we have come to take this power in our pockets and at our fingertips for granted, many were astounded at how quickly the paradigm shifted. But whilst overthrowing a long-standing dictator might grab the international headlines, there are numerous examples of People Powered Change at home.

When the Butcher’s Arms in Lyvennet was closed due to ill health of the landlord, The Lyvennet Community Trust decided to form a co-operative to purchase and re-open it. The community rallied around a blog that was set up to champion the cause (lyvennetcommunitypub.wordpress.com) and in August 2011, in the ownership of a new cooperative of 300 local residents, the Butcher’s Arms was open for business. OK, so there’s not exactly a strong smell of revolution in the air, but for the residents of Lyvnnet this was a triumph of people power that changed something that mattered in their lives and brought about a positive social change for themselves and those around them.

It’s a picture that could be repeated around the country. And one which local newspapers and radio stations may have once championed. But therein lay a fundamental challenge: local media is in serious decline. As local newspapers and radio stations close, many remaining outlets regionalise and reduce their journalistic footprint. The result is a worrying vacuum of hyper-local news and views, within which it is exceptionally difficult for communities to come together, form a consensus about the change they want and find a vehicle around which to congregate and campaign.

Research we commissioned in July 2010 by Goldsmith’s Leverhulme Media Research Centre into the news needs of local communities confirmed what many of us with an interest in the role of communications in community engagement had feared. It reveals “an explicit relationship between local and community news, local democracy, community cohesion and civic engagement” and a “crisis in the provision of local news”.

And that feels quite serious if you’re in Poynter Street and up in arms about a council bin confiscation scheme and the problems that followed. Thankfully their case was taken up by the local Blog Preston (blogpreston.co.uk) and the council stepped in and cleaned up the affected area.

Media Trust believes that the experiences of the residents of Poynter Street and Lyvennet are typical of a movement of people powered change around the UK and that with some coordination and support for local people to learn how to tell their own story, connect with others who can help or share their views and experiences and share their news with others, many more communities can come together to create a better future for themselves and those around them.

That’s why, with the support of the Big Lottery Fund, we launched newsnet. It’s the latest in Media Trust’s news projects, bringing charity and community stories to new audiences, inspiring positive social change around the UK. Our online and on TV Community Channel is showcasing the best community content from around the country, led by our groundbreaking UK360 and London360 programmes, our Press Association partnership Community Newswire is giving charities and communities direct access to the national and regional media and now, thanks to funding from the Big Lottery Fund, our newsnet project is providing all the connections and support to empower everyone to play their part in creating and sharing their local stories.

We want to bring together communities from around the UK with an interest in creating positive social change through the power of citizens, whether a hyper-local website, blog or Facebook page, a community radio station or a printed newsletter, and give them the tools and connections to change their worlds. We’re pretty sure that bringing local stories to a wider audience, by working with the mainstream media to bring a greater depth and diversity of voices, we can inspire many more people change their communities for the better. Good news.

Gavin Sheppard

Marketing Director

Media Trust

gavins@mediatrust.org

Over the next few days we’ll be publishing guest blogs from projects we funded 12 months ago under the banner People Powered Change. Today we hear from NESTA’s Alice Casey about their Neighbourhood Challenge.

Neighbourhood Challenge from NESTA UK on Vimeo.

Many people who work within communities are used to doing a needs assessment to begin a new relationship or project; however, many of the groups NESTA has been working with through the Neighbourhood Challenge programme over the past year turned this concept on its head and began by mapping the strengths and ‘assets’ that already exist in the local area. Groups actively searched for and connected up a variety of existing local assets, whether that was unused buildings or equipment to new ideas, or people with the skills, talents or time to support locally led change.

 We wanted to understand what funders of all kinds could do to help communities do this more effectively, reach new people and create their own projects, focused on the things they care most about in their local area. So we set up a learning programme called Neighbourhood Challenge to find out more.We searched for groups with innovative ways of finding and supporting community potential in their neighbourhoods. We learned from all 17 of them over the course of the programme as they turned those ideas into real projects. The approaches they used were as varied as the neighbourhoods they worked in.

Brixham YES held an awesome Monster Madness party involving live bands and a fancy dress competition

Many groups used asset-based thinking to unlock community potential such as Shiregreen in Sheffield, Lower Green in Surrey, and Speke in Merseyside. The Mill in Walthamstow and Brixham YES in Torbay both worked with local people to refurbish unused buildings on their local high streets, turning these empty places into vibrant and creative community-owned spaces where everyone is asked what skills and talents they have to give, and supported to build on them and create their own initiatives. Brixham YES has used a challenge prize to catalyse action around this, and the Mill has been using a community time match fund.

Bolton Interfaith council and Bradford Moor both worked with UnLtd to test out ways of reaching and supporting new social entrepreneurs launching a range of projects from a personalised care service for older people, to The Zoo catering unit, a local mobile cafe run by young people, which provides training, work experience and accreditation. Stand out in Darwen and Peckham Settlement also showed what can be done through encouraging communities to be enterprising and innovative– they both took travelling living rooms out on to the streets of their local area, and set up an inviting space to reach and inspire many new people, who wouldn’t normally participate, to contribute ideas. They both then took very different approaches to encouraging, developing and selecting those ideas into community-led projects.

These are just a few very brief examples, I can’t mention them all or do them justice here, but you can read a profile of each in the project launch paper – Seventeen Stories Begin. We have learned a huge amount from every project that has been involved, they all have been working incredibly hard, overcoming challenges on the way – and putting in significant volunteer time to make things happen.

One of the Bolton Neighbourhood Challenge Award Winners, Upbeat Media, have set up DJ, music and video workshops for young people in Great Lever

But how could funding and support agencies enable more local groups like these to be catalysts for change, to access untapped potential, across the UK and beyond? We don’t have all the answers, but we have begun to explore these issues through our new publication “Learning from Innovative Communities.”

We’ve learned that funders need to challenge themselves to be innovative too; rather than only granting funds to plug top-down gaps, and address needs after they have arisen, they could also invest in local potential, catalyse new relationships and enable groups to unlock local ideas, skills and talent for themselves.

It is clear that if neighbourhoods are to reach their full potential, they need more flexible support and investment, freedom to learn from mistakes and support to develop their own capabilities. More innovative funders, supporting more innovative community organisations could unlock that existing creative potential to make a difference in neighbourhoods everywhere.

Alice Casey

NESTA

Alice.Casey@nesta.org.uk

In March 2011 we announced that our funding in England would be driven by what we called People Powered Change (PPC).

In developing this approach it became clear that we also needed to start to develop how BIG operates and engages as a funder. To this end we started some thought provoking work with David Wilcox, John Popham and Drew Mackie under ‘Social Reporters’ that is documented on a blog here. 

Linda Quinn

This included a workshop with some of those people with ideas and a shared interest in this area, informing a paper to our England Committee on future ways of working. 

The Committee supported the paper and as a result we are developing a number of ideas which we hope will make us a more engaged, open and social organisation. I also hope it will help us support projects to share their stories, inspirations and ideas. 

So what’s changing? Well perhaps it’s better to say how we’re evolving… 

Going social – we had some very good advice here from Tom Phillips, that if we wanted beneficiaries of our funding to share their stories and impacts then we needed to start doing a better job of that internally ourselves. BIG Connect is an internal online network that we’ve created to enable just that. We’ve also started to implement some tools around social reporting – a good example can be found here from an event our Eastern Regional team held. There’s still some more work to do here but we’re attempting to make sure that we make efforts to extend our reach beyond those that can attend our events. 

One of the key learnings from this work is the rich experience and insight people are willing to swap and share. We’re looking to draw on this by crowd sourcing ideas on how we can best map where our funding goes and the impact it makes. This will be a  feature of our new website (launching in the summer) which will provide greater opportunities for projects to share their stories and for us to support them. Perhaps it can be extended to other funds and investments? 

A clear message from our work has been the need to provide support for projects so that they are better placed to tell, share and learn from stories. Our regional teams provide outreach support and surgeries for our grant holders and have used games to help communities decide how to spend funding.

But it is clear that there is a role for something more focussed on social media that gives projects the confidence and skills to blog, tweet, film and report on their project. This feels like it could fit under our broader Building Capabilities offer but I sense it needs to be something more formal than that. So we’re going to test some of these approaches with projects funded under our Silver Dreams Fund and the Jubilee People’s Millions. 

In a future world I’d love all our evaluations and grant management to be socialised so that stories and impacts are available to the armchair auditors, enthusiasts and others working in similar areas – this very much reflects the open data work we blogged about here at our joint event with NCVO and Nominet Trust. Such a social approach not only shows the impact of National Lottery funding but also provides an opportunity for projects to promote and showcase what they do, share and inspire others. 

We’ll also develop our focus on some place and people based initiatives that strongly reflect People Powered Change. For example, our Big Local Trust investment recently announced a further 50 areas that will receive at least £1million for local communities (around ward size) to decide how they wish to spend that money over a ten year period. This is taking decisions out of central committees and into local communities and giving them the space and time to make those decisions. 

People Powered Change informs a way of working that will develop overtime and we’re keen to continue to hear what others are doing, where we can share and where we can learn. And talking of sharing, you may recall that in March last year we also announced a number of awards under People Powered Change. These were to UnLtd’s, ‘Big Venture Challenge,’ Young Foundation’s ‘Building Local Activism’ project, Media Trust’s ‘Newsnet’, NESTA’s ‘Neighbourhood Challenge’ and Your Square Mile. We’ll be publishing a blog from each of these over the next week or so updating on their activities, investments and learning.

Developed by NESTA and the Big Lottery Fund, the programme has invested in 17 different organisations and partnerships around England, selected because of their ambition to test out innovative ways of building co-operation, collaboration and action within their communities

At the midpoint of the programme, this paper presents observations, drawing on evidence from the people that are funding, delivering and supporting the 17 projects. Visit the NESTA website for more details and to download a copy of the report

The research also reveals the depths of the UK’s social problems with 1 in 20 Britons knowing no neighbours at all, 71% of people not being involved in any local social activities such as clubs, faith or community groups, and half of all adults feeling they don’t belong to their neighbourhoods.

In the planning for almost two years, but made more urgent by the recent riots, Your Square Mile launches today: the world’s first citizens’ mutual, designed to start tackling these social problems. The mutual has a citizens’ web-site – yoursquaremile.co.uk – available on computers, mobiles and soon to be available via public access screens.

All citizens of the UK over the age of 16 will be able to become a member and shareholder of the Your Square Mile mutual for the deliberately modest annual subscription of £10 per year, which includes £1m of Public Liability Insurance for any kind of volunteering and a free legal services helpline. Other member benefits are imminent.

A mutual is an organisation owned by its members and run for their benefit with no external shareholders. Every citizen joining Your Square Mile will be an equal member and have an equal vote. All surpluses made by the mutual will be ploughed back into helping communities and developing citizen services.

Your Square Mile has been working with 16 of the most challenged communities in the UK for the last several months. Projects are underway in all areas and 5 of them are the subject of a documentary. Learning has been shared between all 16 areas in a recent National Summit. The learning from these pilots is being fed into all of YSM’s work and it will continue to support all the 16 communities.

Paul Twivy, Your Square Mile’s founder said:  “Most of the 62+ million of us live in 8,000 square miles of the UK. We tend to only hear about two of them – “The Square Miles” of the City and Westminster – and have felt badly let down by both of them in recent years. Your Square Mile is about enabling citizens to make changes in as many of the other 7,998 square miles where we live as possible.

“We aim to channel current citizen anger, frustration and anxiety into something practical, positive and constructive, focusing people on their local neighborhood. By encouraging a local exchange of ideas, resources and time, we can greatly leverage the power of existing local community groups and social enterprises, as well as fostering new ones.“

Your Square Mile’s research shows that 1 in 5 people (18%) don’t know how to go about changing their neighbourhood and 1 in 6 lack the confidence to get started, while an overwhelming 42% feel they lack the time.

Your Square Mile aims to help people overcome these barriers, by providing a one-stop shop and portal of advice for any form of volunteering or civic action.

The digital platform includes a Personal Planner that generates ideas based on your passions, hobbies, skills, life experiences and needs from your neighborhood; an interactive “Savvy Citizen” section that shows how local areas work and how to pull the levers of change and live, up-to-date information on your local area.

Paul Twivy further commented, “At a speech I gave with the Prime Minister last year, I suggested that we should stop talking about the Big Society and rather provide the best resources for communities to change themselves. That way, in a few years we might find ourselves living in a big society. “

David Cameron added his support, “I’d like to congratulate Your Square Mile on its launch today. We all want a bigger, stronger society where people get involved and do their bit. There are already thousands of people right across Britain taking responsibility and making our communities better places to live. Your Square Mile will make it easier for people to do more and learn from the great things that are going on. That’s why I wish Your Square Mile all the best in every one of the 93,000 square miles that make up our country.”

55% of Britons say they like the idea of Your Square Mile and 1.4 million adults would like to lead local Your Square Mile neighbourhoods.

Your Square Mile believes that no ideology born out of party politics can unite and inspire the majority of citizens, particularly coming at a time of cuts. The urgent need for a genuine and everyday empowerment of citizens should unite The Big Society, The Good Society and Localism under one banner. This idea has received widespread support from across and beyond the political divide.

Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civil Society, “Your Square Mile is a systematic, ground-up approach to empowering citizens and strengthening communities. It provides a supportive and well-thought through toolkit of advice, tools, benefits and case histories to empower citizens and community groups, whilst recognising that local leaders will want to do things in their own unique way. I am particularly pleased that Your Square Mile can help leverage the work of 5,000 Community Organisers and the Business Connectors programme.”

DCLG Minister Baroness Hanham, “My Ministerial colleagues and I have been excited to hear about the innovative and proactive approach of Your Square Mile and applaud their work in helping communities access the tools and skills they need to allow them to harness their talents and enthusiasm in support of their neighbourhood or area.

The work of Your Square Mile resonates with what the Government is trying to achieve in shifting power to local people. Whether that is making the mutual option work better for communities, supporting truly localist working or helping people make better use of the Community Rights enshrined in the Localism Bill.

So I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Your Square Mile on their ambition and what they have already achieved. All of us at DCLG look forward to continuing to work with them in the interests of local communities across the country.”

Your Square Mile is supported by funding from the Big Lottery Fund (BIG). Dharmendra Kanani explains why BIG got behind the idea, “Your Square Mile combines the power of technology with a community’s ability to change their locality for the better. Enabling community-led action is something worth investing in and where the Lottery can most add value and power people’s imagination to do good.”

Richard Branson comments, “Business has a massive role to play in rejuvenating the social fabric of the UK. If we could harness the power of the millions of employees willing to volunteer their time and skill for the good of their neighborhoods and use our offices and retail outlets as community hubs, British businesses could pride ourselves as much on our social contribution as on our economic contribution. Your Square Mile enables and leverages business in this vital role and Virgin and I are proud to support it.”

Actress Emma Thompson, lent her support too, “I think democracy is harder work than we assume. It requires constant involvement, especially at a local level and I’m not sure we’re very good at it yet. At least I know I’m not. I hope that Your Square Mile contributes to our taking part in what we clearly need more than ever at the moment – a genuinely democratic, people-led society which actively encourages us to engage with each other, challenge each other and, crucially, support each other. For that reason, I support it whole-heartedly.”

- First half of £1.2m capital invested in innovative solutions in a time of increasing social needs and significant public service budget constraints

- Competition now seeks to encourage new investors to back exciting opportunities in the social venture market place

London, 20th September 2011: Today sees the announcement of the winners of UnLtd’s Big Venture Challenge, a competition to find 25 ambitious and dynamic social entrepreneurs and give them the money and support to help grow their ventures. The 25 were selected after a “Dragons Den” style pitch to an expert business panel, and each receives funding of £25,000 in this first stage. The winners have been congratulated by the Minister for Civil Society and business leaders alike.

The 25 successful ventures reflect the diversity of the problems they are seeking to tackle, and the variety of fields they are working in, from reducing re-offending to climate change, from mental health to disability, and from children’s services to homelessness.

The 25 include:

- Elixir Foundations CIC, a specialist recycling social enterprise which, inspired by founder Ben Donnelly’s own experience, has engaged with and employed nearly 600 ex-offenders and employed over 300 people with substance abuse issues

- London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), a 106-year-old charity which under the leadership of June O’Sullivan has transformed into a social enterprise providing accessible early years services, and is now replicating across the country

- SpaceHive Ltd, a new start-up founded by former journalist Chris Gourlay, which aims to be the world’s first online funding platform for neighbourhood improvement projects

The competition received 638 full applications, more than 25 times the number of available winning places, which demonstrates the demand for this sort of initiative and the sheer number of social entrepreneurs in the country. 41 shortlisted entrants were then invited to pitch in front of a panel of business experts, entrepreneurs and investors – including Pret A Manger co-founder Sinclair Beecham, O2 General Manager (Small & Medium Business) Simon Devonshire, and Big Society Capital CEO Nick O’Donohoe. The judges recommended the 25 winners on the basis of the venture’s potential to grow its impact, the viability of its business model, and the abilities of its management team.

Of the 25 successful ventures announced today, ten will receive a second round of £50,000, with a final two, which demonstrate the fastest growth, receiving an additional third round of £100,000 – a potential additional £150,000, but only if the ventures can match it with loans or equity from co-investors. One of the competition’s main ambitions is to attract new investors into the social capital marketplace, and the search for co-investment will begin today for the 25 winners.

The challenge, run by UnLtd and supported by the Big Lottery Fund and the Millennium Awards Trust, aims to find and support ambitious entrepreneurs who are seeking to change society for the better. This support is provided through a mix of funding, match investment and intensive business support from corporate partners, including Accenture, Coutts, Deutsche Bank, Ernst & Young, Hogan Lovells, and the Supper Club.

Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civil Society, said,
“The Big Venture Challenge is an excellent initiative, and I commend the intention to attract new investors into the social sector and scale up some really exciting, impactful initiatives. I want to congratulate the 25 winning entrepreneurs being announced today. I look forward with interest to following the growth and development of their innovative social ventures. “

Cliff Prior, CEO of UnLtd, said,
“These 25 entrepreneurs are a dynamic and impressive set of individuals, and have the ideas which can tackle the challenges facing the UK. We are hugely excited about helping them to grow their ventures to full potential. This is just the beginning of their Big Venture Challenge journey, but I feel confident that the combination of their entrepreneurial skills and the first-class support from our partners will give each the best possible chance of success”

Dharmendra Khanani, England Director Big Lottery Fund, said,
“’The winners illustrate People Powered Change at its best. These ideas are generated by people in communities who are creating solutions across a range of social issues. In the current climate, these ideas and entrepreneurs restore hope in the art of the possible, and are fired by an ambition to make a better society which the Big Lottery Fund is proud to be supporting.”

Quotes from the judging panel included:

Sally Goodsell, CEO Finance South East, said: “The quality of the shortlisted candidates…shows that this market has reached maturity, and the variety of the businesses has been really quite astonishing”

David Hutchison, CEO Social Finance, said: “The Big Venture Challenge is an offer not just of a significant sum of expansion capital but substantial capacity building support – this is exactly the sort of trigger for entrepreneurs who want to build ambitious businesses to clarify their thinking and come forward with well rehearsed proposals”

See the full list of 25 winners or read more about the judges or the programme as whole

The Big Venture Challenge – The judges verdict.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3