Triodos Bank social investment – empowering change through capital

As well as supporting around £4.5 m of projects annually through conventional grant funding, Barrow Cadbury Trust could be financing up to £6m of social investments at any one time.  Currently we’re supporting around 20 social investments to the tune of around £4.7m. 

We’ve been doing this important work since 2010.  We have invested in charities and social enterprises, aiming to promote social justice through social investments as an additional source of finance for social organisations and to develop the social investment market, trying to achieve both a social impact and a financial return.  

Triodos Bank has been one of the successful social investments.  For those of you that don’t know Triodos, in their own words it: “believes in the transformative power of money. Through [our] activities as a financial institution, we make money work for positive change and promote the conscious use of money. We do this by enabling individuals, institutions and businesses to use money more consciously to make money work for positive social, environmental and cultural change. We are in business to help create a society that promotes the quality of life of all its members on a thriving planet, with human dignity at its core”.  It is for all those reasons that Barrow Cadbury Trust also banks with Triodos. 

Five years ago we made a £250,000 investment in a 4% Triodos Bank bond which has now been repaid in full, along with the agreed interest.  This represents a successful social investment from both a financial and an impact perspective. We originally invested in Triodos because over 50% of its portfolio included organisations in BCT’s areas of interest, but also because of the important role it plays in social investment infrastructure by providing loans that commercial banks would not.  Finally, we supported it because of its relevance for socially minded savers and investors through deposit accounts and ISAs, as well as the opportunity to invest in the bond offer.   

Triodos produces annual Impact information, including this video.