"If we hadn't got the loan, we'd have developed much more slowly."

Tell us about your organisation?

CAST offers an alternative education for children who are struggling with mainstream school. Those struggles might be anxiety and mental health related, because of neurodiversity, bereavement, challenges at home, the list goes on. The children who come to us are often disruptive in school and are likely to leave school with no qualifications.

We use fishing and other practical hands-on tasks to motivate students to learn new skills, and almost everyone leaves us with a recognised vocational award, certificate or diploma as well as better communication skills and higher self-esteem. Children are referred by their school, or a local council, and usually spend one or two days a week with us.

Creating paths for disabled access

How do you make a difference?

School doesn’t suit everyone. Sometimes you need to be outdoors in a calmer environment with space around you to focus, and you need to be doing practical things that you can see, rather than learning theories and abstract ideas. I can relate to that.

We help our young people gain useful skills for employment, such as how to use tools safely and carry out basic construction and horticulture tasks. But we also help with their confidence and self-esteem, and soft skills, such as how to talk to adults in a positive way (and not swear!) and how to work in a team. These are just as important as technical skills when it comes to finding a job. A number of young people stay with us for quite some time and seven members of our team started with us as students, including two co-directors.

And we look after our local environment too. We’re lucky to have a 230-acre nature reserve on our doorstep. It’s ours on a long-term lease, and we manage and maintain it for wildlife and for the local community. For example, we built and manage 15 litterbins, we create accessible areas for people with disabilities by building footpaths and we’ve built and installed five large bird feeding stations that we top up daily. We get scores of birds from bluetits and chaffinches to rare species such as the mealy redpoll, and people come from all over to see them.

Ash as a young teenager starting with CAST

Ash now as a co-director of CAST

How did social investment help you?

When I first started CAST, it was a fishing club and part of a wider environmental charity. But by 2016, I wanted more autonomy to make decisions about CAST’s focus and future, and so myself and my co-directors broke away from the charity and we set up a community interest company.

At the time, I was seeing a business mentor who was an expert in social entrepreneurship and he suggested I look at the Key Fund for investment.

We got £77,000, which meant we could buy the building we’d previously been leasing and set it up as our base. It also meant that we could take on five new members of staff.

"It was hugely reassuring to have money in the bank for cashflow as we started out on our own."

Key Fund were fantastic. I’ve had quite a bit of contact with them and they’re always really helpful. They came and looked at what we did and gave us some more useful ideas. I always got the sense they wanted us to do well. They were always available on the end of a phone and I always felt there was far more buy-in from them than we’d have got from a bank.

If we hadn’t got the loan, we’d have developed much more slowly. We wouldn’t have been able to take on extra staff and this would have impacted how many young people we could have helped.

I would have tried to raise the money privately. But I think that would have been difficult because we had to buy ourselves out of the charity and were servicing that debt at the time. I think that would have put other lenders off.

CAST impact:

More than 2,000 young people supported in some way.

More than two thirds (68%) of students leave with a BTEC or City and Guilds diploma, or another qualification.

Seven members of their18-strong staff team are former CAST students, including our two co-directors.

125kgs of bird food are distributed weekly, feeding an estimated 9,000+ birds.

More than 800 bags of rubbish are removed from litterbins across the nature research each year.

£27,000 more profit than when we started eight years ago, and we are debt free and growing.

Turnover up 400% since inception.

What does the future look like for CAST?

We’re inundated with referrals so I’d really like to set up some satellite sites elsewhere in the county, then children don’t need to be shuttled the length and breadth of the county on a minibus.

There’s a possible site in Derby that we’re looking at. I’d love to get that up and running soon.

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→ Duration: 5 years → Turnover: £193,322 → Interest Rate: 7% → Amount invested: £40,900 loan and £8,100 grant → Date of investment: January 2018 → Product type: Blended Finance → Programme: Growth Fund

The Growth Fund was a partnership between The National Lottery Community Fund and Better Society Capital, delivered by Access through a range of social investors. It made up to £50m available to support charities and social enterprises to grow and create social impact in their communities. The Growth Fund used a combination of grant funding, made possible thanks to National Lottery players, and loan finance from Better Society Capital and other co-investors, to address specific gaps in the social investment market.

To find out more about social investment and how it could support your organisation, visit Good Finance.

To find out more about Access - The Foundation for Social Investment, visit our website.