At our Board Away Day in January we spent the morning looking at how the Oxfordshire Community Foundation could get involved in developing Social Investment Tax Relief Loans as an alternative to awarding grants.
Really interesting to read that UBS are behind the first fund that has been set up in Bristol, as there was much talk at our away about the role OCF could play in hosting a similar regional fund for Oxfordshire.
Very excited that we are already progressing the idea with three aspiring, local social enterprises who could benefit from any investment raised in this way.
A network of local funds making loans of less than £250,000 using social investment tax relief is being developed by UBS Wealth Management and social finance intermediary Resonance. The first fund, worth up to £5m, will be launched in Bristol later this year. It will make investments in charities and community interest companies and other asset-locked bodies. UBS and Resonance hope to expand the model to other UK regions over the next two to three years, and to eventually have funds worth more than £30m. The funds will take advantage of SITR, a relief introduced by the government last year, which allows an investor to claim back 30 per cent of the value of an unsecured loan to charity against their tax bill. The relief is only open to individual investors.
