Big Issue Invest backs Economic Change CIC

Big Issue Invest is committed to capacity building the VCSE sector, and has chosen to invest in our Company CIC, a management consultancy for socially driven organisations to help organisations maintain and improve their competitive position.

Currently, investors are struggling to find enough good investment opportunities, access to grants is becoming more competitive and commissioners are expecting more from their contractors. In response, the sector is having to either better communicate or improve it’s proposition and core infrastructure. Two key areas of attention are perfecting ways to measure and demonstrate impact and harnessing the power of cloud technology to create secure data management systems to achieve efficiency, value for money and quality control.

Capacity building of VCSE is now firmly back on the agenda, with new funding available through Big Potential, Access, Growth Accelerator, Local Sustainability Fund and Big Assist.

our Company CIC is one of the leading consultancies in this area, working with charities and social enterprises on a national to local scale. Launched as brand in 2005, our Company became an independent CIC in October 2012, and has since worked with over 300 organisations. Clients include Locality, Co-operative College, Livity, NCVYS, Peter Jones Foundation, Co-operatives UK, BITC, The Goodwin Trust amongst others.

Our company specialises in helping organisations achieve sustainability and growth. Our clients come to us to improve their competitive position to secure contracts, grants and social investment. We help them to improve their impact measurement process, developing their business strategy and implement cloud technology to create secure and efficient management systems using Salesforce CRM.

With increasing emphasis on transparency, security and accountability in the sector, we provide a full service solution that helps our clients to define what they are monitoring and how they are monitoring it. Our clients successfully compete for contracts, grants and investment. We see their success as our success. ‘

our Company are one of only two non-profit consultancies in the UK who specialise in Salesforce implementation for the VCSE sector. With Salesforce now the 6th largest global software company, it is a well-recognised, credible solution that is available at a considerable discount to non-profits via the Salesforce Foundation. Economic change work closely with clients and grant-makers to help secure funding to realise these management solutions. To find out more visit here.

Steve Ferguson, Big Issue Invest comments:

“Big Issue Invest is delighted to be able to support Heather and her team in delivering high quality services and advice to the social sector. As investors, we recognise that not all socially driven organisations have sufficient resources and bandwidth internally to grow capacity – having a trusted partner such as our Company working alongside Management teams can add tangible and cost effective value to organisations and ultimately help them achieve greater impact.”