Impact Investing - Thera

Thera, a charity that supports adults with a learning disability at home and in the community, approached Investing for Good with ambitious plans to raise impact investment capital. Thera was looking to fund new projects that will reach a greater number of individuals with a learning disability and transform their lives. Investing for Good provided a range of professional support around strategy, business planning and the financial model, advice on content to be included in an information memorandum and terms that it had tested with its investors before arranging a social bond.

In 2015 Thera issued a 3 year, £1m bond under a £6m programme, offering a fixed 3.5% return to social investors. The social bond was listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and structured by Investing for Good’s partner Linklaters. Investing for Good distributed the bond to investors including ethical funds, socially motivated individuals, wealth managers and foundations. We write and circulate an annual independent impact report to these groups.

Thera has benefited from the bond finance, supporting 120 additional beneficiaries this year and working in six new local authority areas. Asset manager Cheyne Capital has established an agreement with Thera to purchase up to £15m of property to enhance Thera’s delivery of care; the work conducted on the bond was instrumental in leveraging in this level of additional financial support. Investing for Good also helped Thera to strengthen its impact framework making it straightforward for the charity to keep track of their impact and regularly report it to external stakeholders.

Impact Services - Blue Sky Development

Blue Sky Development

Blue Sky Development is a social enterprise that aims to break the cycle of re-offending and challenge perceptions about ex-offenders. Diverse funder and commissioner requirements have shaped Blue Sky’s impact measurement approach, making it project oriented and in need of greater consistency for evidencing its overall social impact.  In addition, while a number of outputs and ‘hard’ outcomes were already being captured, Blue Sky needed to bolster its approach to capturing ‘soft’ outcomes, which are more subjective and relate to ex-offenders’ skills, personal situations and emotional states.

Investing for Good supported Blue Sky in the definition of its Theory of Change during a workshop with members of management and staff. We then carried out focus groups and interviews with beneficiaries to define outcomes based on their own experience. From there we established a list of indicators and related tools to capture the essential outcomes that evidence change in ex-offenders’ lives. The approach was then integrated in a bespoke data collection tool, gathering performance, outputs and outcomes tracking as well as visualisation of progress of outcomes indicators for each beneficiary. Blue Sky now has a thorough approach to impact and a dedicated tracking tool, which allows the organisation to capture, store, analyse and extract precise information for performance management or communication to internal or external stakeholders.