Investment Support

Equity Plus does not have funds itself to invest directly into social enterprises and social businesses. Instead, Equity Plus provides a matching service, linking potential investors with growth-orientated organisations seeking investment.

Our investors do not make donations but rather investments. They are looking to work in partnership with you, sharing the risks and the returns. They will expect you to have a clear financial model that shows how you intend to make profit as well as having strong potential to deliver social and/or environmental benefits.

We do not require your organisation to adopt any particular legal structure, although we may need to work with you to enable investors to have a ‘stake’ in your enterprise if your current legal structure does not allow this. We also do not have any prescribed deal structure – we recognise that each individual enterprise will require a unique combination of finance to enable it to grow including grants, loans and equity.

As our name suggests, we are particularly interested in equity-based investments. We work collaboratively with other finance providers to enable different mixes of finance to be created and once we have got to know you and understand your business model we will be able to provide information about which form of finance might be most appropriate for you and make referrals to other finance providers where appropriate.

Our investors make investments of many types: they may wish to buy property or equipment that your organisation needs but that you may find it difficult to obtain grant or loan funding to pay for. They may also be prepared to provide investment to help you prove that your business model works and will be focused on the quality and ability of your management team to implement that business model.

It is not necessary that you have a long history of trading as an organisation but we would expect your management team to have people with experience of running a successful business or growth-orientated organisation. Many of our investors are themselves successful entrepreneurs or business leaders and will often be interested in sharing their expertise and experience with you. We will therefore work with you to make sure that there is a good match between you and your investor(s).