North West Enterprise Awards 2017

SME NEWS / North-West Enterprise Awards 2017 9 , Northern Social Investment Group Ltd (NSIG) works to help social enterprises to use social investment more effectively. We spoke to Paul Halfpenny to learnmore about the organisation and the range of services it provides. Best Social Enterprise Group - Greater Manchester NSIG is a collection of social entrepreneurs, finance professionals and impact technicians who work to bring about “more and better social investment propositions”. Paul outlines how the organisation works to achieve this mission and support its service users. “Here at NSIG, we work with social enterprises, social businesses and sometimes charities to help them use social investment more effectively. We also work with social investors who’re looking to place finance, and we work with public sector commissioners like local authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups which are contracting with social businesses. Because social investment is a relatively new industry, and it is still very finance orientated, an awful lot of business activity takes place in London. NSIG is one of a number of organisations based in the NW which are trying to prise more of this business away from the South East and into our regions. Additionally, we also work with a number of new funds on Merseyside and in Greater Manchester to prepare clients for the process of securing social investment and to ensuring that they are capable of meeting the standards of due diligence of different investors. “As an organisation NSIG works on an associate basis – we currently have 15 associates including accountants, auditors, business advisors, market analysts, impact measurement technicians, governance experts and professional non-executive directors. We deliver tailor made packages of support for clients which address their performance in terms of governance, markets, financial management, impact created and financial NWE17009 Contact: Paul Halfpenny Contact Email: paul.halfpenny@nsig.org.uk Address: Wigan Investment Centre, Waterside Drive, Wigan, WN3 5BA, UK Phone: 01942386626 Web Address: www.nsig.org.uk performance. We work with them to develop forecasts, strategies and plans which can incorporate the use of social investment – and then we make sure that their organisations function in such a way as to be attractive and suitable for social investors.” Looking ahead, NSIG has a number of exciting opportunities on the horizon, as Paul is eager to highlight in his concluding comments. “Overall, the future looks bright for NSIG as we are launching an extended programme of Non- Executive Director placements in 2018, and we hope to have a new fund launched in the next year too. Thanks to our endeavours and those of others in this dynamic industry, we firmly believe that the social investment market in the region will continue to grow over the months and years to come.”