Celebrating Social Investment Pioneers: NatWest SE100 Social Business Awards 2024
18 Jul 2024
The NatWest SE100 Social Business Awards 2024 took place in London on Tuesday, 16 July, hosted at NatWest’s Bishopsgate conference venue. The event celebrated 32 pioneers alongside a number of multi-million-pound investment deals, across seven categories. These awards, created by Pioneers Post in partnership with NatWest Social & Community Capital, shine a light on the UK’s most innovative and resilient social businesses.
SIS entered into one of the hardest-fought categories this year, the Social Investment Pioneer which celebrates groundbreaking or innovative deals, programmes, or funds in social and impact investment. The joint winners in this category on the night were:
- Impact Hub London with British Land
- We are Juno CIC with Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Wirral Council, and the Postcode Innovation Trust.
And we were thrilled to be ‘highly commended’ for the Community Investment Enterprise Fund (CIEF) with partners Lloyds Bank, Better Society Capital, BCRS Business Loans, Business Enterprise Fund, and Finance for Enterprise alongside the entry from the Big Issue Invest and UnLtd (Growth Impact Fund) with Lightning Reach, alongside Fredericks Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Barrow Cadbury Trust, and Treebeard Trust.
The other winners on the night were:
- Social Business Pioneer: Glyn Wylfa
- Pioneering Newcomer: Pocket Power and Zero Gravity
- Impact Management Pioneer: Leaders Plus
- Diversity Pioneer: WYK Digital
- Climate Pioneer: The Carbon Literacy Project
- Pioneering Leader: Sebastian Rocca (Micro Rainbow) and Lisa Stepanovic (Social Ark).
SIS CEO, Alastair Davis who was also entered in the Pioneering Leader category commented: “The NatWest SE100 Awards are always an impressive celebration of the most enterprising solutions, innovative investment deals, the many incredible social organisations and the people running them. We were delighted to be finalists this year and to make the NatWest SE100 Index of the UK’s top 100 social enterprises for the second year, alongside many of our valued customers and partners.”