Equity for equality in practice: Motiv

This article first appeared in last year's Good Deals 2009: The Social Investment Almanack.

In September 2008, a Manchester CIC called Motiv, which encourages young people to attend school by offering badges and rewards, bucked the trend by securing investments worth £220,000.

Venturesome, the social investment fund of the Charities Aid Foundation, offered an unsecured loan of £190,000, which helped Motiv hire more staff, thus increasing its capacity to secure further contracts from local authorities and schools.

However, to win this investment Motiv first had to secure an award from UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs, which amounted to £30,000 plus business advice and support.

Nine months on, co-founder and director Rose Marley admits that if it had not got the investment when it did, Motiv would not exist in its current format.

‘We had reached a limit of what could be achieved with organic growth. The CIC structure has limitations as the financial rewards for investors are capped,’ she says.

Marley is primarily driven by a passion for building social enterprise and improving social mobility rather than improving school attendance per se. She and co-director Lee Stanley chose it as an area to work in because it has such extensive implications. Better school attendance equals more chance of graduating and less chance of turning to crime.

It is also easily measurable – in the UK there are 200,000 persistent truants every year with an estimated cost to the economy of £800m – and this measurement helps create a sustainable and successful social business.

But she says that it is a real issue getting proper funding for social enterprise, as investors are largely risk averse.

A crucial part of the success of the Motiv investment was the complementary nature of Venturesome and UnLtd. As such co-operation can generate real impact for the social enterprise and for society in general, Marley emphasises that investors who understand and support social investment need to work in partnership and share their learning to strengthen the whole sector.

This article first appeared in last year's Good Deals 2009: The Social Investment Almanack.