Twelve UK universities are to launch Impact 12, a ten-year fund that will support social ventures with a beneficial social or environmental impact.

Impact 12 has been developed by Social Investment Scotland (SIS), an impact investor and responsible finance provider based in Edinburgh, in partnership with the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Northampton, Coventry and eight universities comprising the MICRA Project (Aston, Birmingham, Cranfield, Keele, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham and Warwick). Oxford University Innovation leads the consortium.

The fund says it will support social ventures with innovative finance tailored to their needs, including equity investment and debt. It will be managed by SIS Ventures who will be recruiting a Impact 12 Senior Investment Manager whose initial focus will be fundraising. The fund will launch later this year with an initial fundraising target of £8 million. The capital raised will be deployed to support up to fifteen social ventures from across the partner universities, with both seed and follow-on funding over the next ten years.

Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge said: “Cambridge is proud to join forces with sister universities to launch Impact 12, a powerful partnership for social ventures to expand their networks and scale up their work. The social ventures supported by our 12 universities will be at the forefront of creating change and finding solutions to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”