Fuelling growth - what social investment is doing for us

Jennifer Bird • May 01, 2025 • 3 min read

As we shared in our highlights of 2024 blog, we are delighted to have received social investment totalling £160,000 from our local social investor, Kindred, and from The Key Fund's Northern Impact fund.

This investment is made up of £100,000 from Key Fund, with £77,000 being a loan and £23,000 being a grant, and £60,000 from Kindred, split similarly, with £40,000 as a loan and £20,000 as a grant.

The grant parts are intended to help us increase Deaf people’s access to health care by investing in our membership engagement and technology.

The loan parts are repayable, over five years, and are around us growing as a business and increasing the impact of our work.

This investment is really important to us as it gives us the foundation and stability to plan our next stages of growth and focus on growing our social impact. This includes national contracts and more regional membership of the co-op. We want to become the provider of choice for more organisations. We want to be part of a truly social economy.

Over the last two years, we’ve proved that our concept and our technology work. We’ve won contracts in Liverpool and across Merseyside, making it easier for organisations providing health and social care to ensure the right communications support is available when Deaf service users access services, 24/7/365, at planned appointments or in emergencies. We’re delivering nationally, including in Northern Ireland, at conferences, large scale events, and in higher education, working with Deaf students. We’re working with organisations large and small, individual users and groups.

Feedback about our service consistently tells us that we are providing what Deaf people, and Communications Professionals, want and need.

We’re full of fire and energy. With the Procurement Act 2023 coming into force recently, and new staff and tech partners freeing up management time, we are poised and ready to grow. Our focus for 2025 is on moving into growing the business, and our impact, and looking outward. The investment from Kindred will help us with this as part of their investment, we become part of a collaborative community of like-minded socially-trading organisations, collaborating to build a better world.

If our model of community ownership and social impact interests you, get in touch and consider getting involved.

We are also still raising funds through our Powering Up Community Share Offer to increase the spend on tech and to gain more co-owners of Signalise. This attracts tax relief and interest. See our share offer for more details!