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| news > SELF-SUFFICIENCY FOR COMMUNITY ENTERPRISES WITHIN SIGHT - 18/7/2003 | |
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SELF-SUFFICIENCY FOR COMMUNITY ENTERPRISES WITHIN SIGHT The baseline report of the £2.5 million Adventure Capital Fund (ACF), ‘Primed for Growth’, was launched at the conference on Patient Capital on 18th July. The ACF is designed to help medium-sized community enterprises active within disadvantaged neighbourhoods to overcome the barriers to achieving scale and financial stability. Community enterprises are able to apply to the ACF for Bursaries of up to £15,000 to fund strategic organisational development and Patient Capital investments of up to £400,000 to increase the scale of their operations or strengthen their asset base. ‘Primed for Growth’ describes the origins and content of the ACF programme, which was launched in December 2002, and outlines the position at the outset of the implementation phase. The ACF was oversubscribed threefold for the Bursary programme and fivefold for the Patient Capital strand. 19 Bursaries and 10 Patient Capital investments were awarded. The evidence to date has identified some of the demand and supply characteristics of the market and shows leading community enterprise practitioners are willing to engage constructively with investment funding approaches to meet their development objectives. The ACF programme has attracted considerable interest from stakeholders in the public, private and voluntary sectors. David Blunkett has announced that there will be a further £4 million allocation to the ACF. This will allow a second round to be launched in the Autumn. The Adventure Capital Fund is funded by three central government departments – Home Office (Active Community Unit), ODPM (Neighbourhood Renewal Unit) and DTI (Social Enterprise Unit) – and four regional development agencies – LDA, eeda, emda and Yorkshire Forward. It is delivered by a partnership of community sector organisations – Local Investment Fund (LIF), Development Trusts Association (DTA), Scarman Trust and the New Economics Foundation (NEF). ‘Primed for Growth’ is published by NEF and drafted by Stephen Thake, Reader in Urban Policy at London Metropolitan University, who is leading the ACF Evaluation Team. |
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