Arts and Culture Investment Fund (ACIF)

The Arts and Culture Impact Fund (ACIF) is an £16 million social impact investment fund for socially driven arts, culture and heritage organisations registered and operating in the UK.
The Arts & Culture Impact Fund provides affordable repayable finance that can be used, among other things, to acquire new assets, improve built infrastructure, develop new ventures or scale up existing revenue streams. Currently accepting applications.

The Arts & Culture Impact Fund brings together a mix of public, private and philanthropic investors – Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Better Society Capital, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Freelands Foundation and Nesta.

The fund builds on the success of the Arts Impact Fund, a pilot initiative launched in 2015 to demonstrate how impact investment could transform the arts and cultural sector.

The Arts & Culture Impact Fund sets out to achieve several objectives for the arts, cultural and heritage sectors:

– Provide organisations with appropriate and bespoke repayable finance
– Develop the financial resilience of borrowers
– Support organisations to better monitor, evaluate and communicate their social impact
– Attract additional investment into the sector to help organisations thrive
– Promote the wider positive impact the arts, culture and heritage have on society and support more organisations to benefit individuals and communities through their work.

Funding
The Arts & Culture Impact Fund offers secured and unsecured finance between £150,000 and £1,000,000 with repayment term available until May 2034 and interest rates ranging between 4% and 8.5%.