Mission: Access’s mission is to make sure charities and social enterprises can access the finance they need to sustain or grow their impact.
Size of endowment/investment assets: £60 million
Outline: Access takes a total impact approach to its operations, including in investing their endowment. With the intention of spending their endowment over 10 years, Access didn’t want to simply hold their funds in bank. They have sought to use their investments to also achieve social impact and their overall mission.
They have developed a set of priorities for how their endowment should be invested that aligns closely with their mission. Rathbones manage their endowment and invest principally in social and ethical fixed income investments such as charity bonds and other ethical bonds. Over time the ambition is to shift capital to investments that are increasingly more aligned with Access’s mission. Over its first three years their endowment managed to both have positive impact and good financial performance, outperforming the target benchmarks in their investments policy statement. Access also has funds that are managed as capital preservation funds that are invested in a range of social banks.