Good Deals pitchers bid for £20m

Four social enterprises will next week be pitching for investment totalling almost £20m.

The pitches will take place at the second annual UK social investment conference Good Deals, run by Social Enterprise magazine.

The four social enterprises will face a 220-strong crowd in the main conference hall at the British Library in London. They all have real investment opportunities and they will receive immediate feedback from the crowd and a panel of expert investors.

Among the audience will be dozens of investors looking for opportunities, including banks, social lenders, venture capitalists, philanthropists and 'business angels'. David Blood, Al Gore's business partner at sustainable investment company Generation, wil be among the keynote speakers.

The biggest pitch - for £10m - will be made by the community renewable energy company CoRE.

CoRE manager Ross Weddle said he was 'slightly nervous' about the live pitch, especially considering the largest amount of money he had previously pitched for was £330,000.

'But,' said Weddle, 'after the first £100,000 it's neither here nor there - it's still a lot of money.'

Weddle said he didn't expect any one investor to put up the entire £10m needed for their four renewable energy projects. Instead he was hoping for a 'basket of investors' and in particular investors who would be interested in an ongoing relationship.

'The £10m is for four projects that we will be working on over the next two years. But, by the end of two years we may have already paid off one of them and be looking at another lot of projects.

'We would then invite people who have discovered that we can spend their money and afford to pay them back to invest in our next lot of projects.'

Weddle said CoRE's financial prospectus had planned for an average interest on investment of six per cent but he would also be interested in soft loans and venture philanthropy.

'Whatever they're prepared to discuss we're prepared to discuss too,' said Weddle.

The second biggest pitch - for £7m - will come from Jamie Hartzell CEO of the Ethical Property Company.

The Ethical Property Company is planning its fifth share issue in the new year and Hartzell will use the forum to reveal details of it for the first time.

This is the Ethical Property Company's third share issue to the public and the amount of investment it is seeking has almost doubled since the last one in 2002 when it raised £4.2m.

Other pitches next Thursday will include the company looking to set up a Social Stock Exchange - it will be pitching for £2m - and new social enterprise Happy Kitchen, which is based in Hackney, London. Happy Kitchen sells its healthy organic cakes and treats to several high street shops, provides healthy cooking classes for schoolchildren and raises money for farming and climate change mitigating projects. It will be pitching for £100,000.

There will also be five, smaller, 60-second pitches which will compete against each other to impress the expert panel. The most impressive pitch will then go through and do a full pitch in front of the crowd.

MOTIV, a Manchester community interest company that helps students break the habit of truanting, was one of the three pitches at Good Deals last year. Following the pitch they raised £220,000 worth of investment to help the organisation grow.

Find out more about Good Deals at www.good-dealsuk.com