Key Fund were early adopters of social impact reporting within social investment. We understand the importance of shining a light on the profound human stories behind the statistics. It has always been about the people who are impacted by the great work our clients undertake.
Every spring I venture across our area of operation to meet, interview and film our clients, always with the ambition to do justice to their remarkable stories.
Why? To try and articulate why social investment is so important, how it’s about way more than contract outputs or financial metrics, how social investment inspires people.
We have been producing an annual impact report for over a decade now, and without exception the word I would use time and time again to describe our clients is – extraordinary.
The beauty often being they have no idea how good they are! They are the very best of humanity.
In the pages of our latest Social Impact report, you’ll see our clients embracing challenges with open arms and hearts. Despite adversity — addiction, homelessness, mental health struggles — they forge ahead, empowered not only to stand on their own feet, but to pay it forward, and help others too.
Their purpose and life force are to make things better. To solve the problems they see around them. Their stories and the hope they inspire should be available on prescription.
I come back each year so inspired and uplifted.
Take the story of Ben, who was adopted as a baby. Aged 17, he ended up moving 20 times with different foster carers. He felt he was never going to be loved again. Suicidal, homeless, the Handcrafted Project in Durham gave him a home, support, and purpose. Ben’s now aiming to study health and social care and support others struggling with their mental health.
Dan Northover set up Handcrafted Project. He was a student at Durham University, who wanted to help the homeless. He was unable to look the other way. He saw the urgent need and set about creating meaningful ways to change it.
Both these individuals are extraordinary.
Then there’s Grace and Jan who left comfortable, better paid jobs with their local authority to set up Collaborative Women. They provide a solution to a need they could no longer watch being unmet – namely, to provide housing and support to young women fleeing abuse.
Key Fund clients see a problem, then climb mountains to fix it.
Jack could have made more money as a personal trainer, but he set up Training Cave to support the kids on his estate, who turned up at his gym with no money but with plenty of hope, like 17-year-old Noah.
Noah’s dad first took him to the gym aged 9 after he got into fights at school. Now Noah is a Yorkshire boxing champion, and is doing a two-year apprenticeship with the gym, where he’s training kids from special needs schools. It has given him a path, with purpose.
Key Fund has been a long-term investor in Martin Hogg’s remarkable counselling enterprise, Citizen Coaching, that removes barriers and makes therapy accessible, literally transforming, and empowering lives. Such as Lizzie’s.
Lizzie’s story of losing her marriage, home, children, job and in her words ‘dignity and self- respect’ through addiction, to becoming a trainee counsellor at Citizen Coaching and studying a Master’s in counselling, determined to support others who have been through similar, is, yes, extraordinary.
Then there’s Ian Cawley from The Big League – a real-life local superhero, who turns his helping hand to anyone in need, and deals with any crisis thrown in his way.
His organisation threw their arms around Geralyn, an asylum seeker, and her son. Geralyn now volunteers for the Big League, determined too to help others who find themselves exiled and alone, without family, friends, or infrastructure.
Homebaked Bakery in Liverpool is another remarkable community-run enterprise. Their chair, Sally Anne-Watkiss, came from a career in finance to help make it a viable bakery. Its manager, Angela, has an unbridled passion for her community providing more than baked goods.
I haven’t covered all the individuals you’ll find in the pages of our social impact report. Or the hundreds of people who sit behind each one of them. Key Fund’s social investment has a ripple effect; as each client supports individuals the impact is felt far and wide, families, friends and the wider community.
But it’s just a fraction when it comes to the scale of need, and task ahead. Many of our clients operate on the frontline of poverty, and deal with its devastating impacts. They pivot to face the needs of their community to the challenges we face as a society.
This is Key Fund: where social investment sparks hope, resilience, and lasting change.