Today (16 September 2021) Ulster Community Investment Trust Ltd t/a Community Finance Ireland held its all island AGM and officially launched its 2020 Annual Report.
The report published today highlights the following key takeaways:
Northern Ireland
- £3.1 m of loan approvals into 37 local projects;
- £9.1m to 315 social enterprises via much needed grant payments in collaboration with Department of Communities NI and SENI; and
- £ 4.1m to 140 SME clients through the management of NISBLF Fund II.
Republic of Ireland
- £2.6m/ €2.7m of loan approvals into 37 projects in the Leinster Region;
- £1.4m./ €1.67m of loan approvals into 32 projects in the Munster Region;
- £0.6m./ €0.5m of loan approvals into 25 projects in the Connaught Region; and
- £4.4m/€4.6m of loan approvals into 72 projects in Ulster (including NI).
With a client portfolio, whose core assets are predominately its volunteers, the 169 projects saw their own belief mirrored back to them and secured term or bridging loans which supported them in:
- Keeping their doors open;
- Pivoting their business;
- Ensuring their viability when their services were needed more than ever; and
- Ensuring their sustainability as the island transitions to a new normal.
In what was an extraordinary year for the history the organisation and for the communities and citizens on the island of Ireland Donal Traynor Group Chief Executive said the following:
“The combined market conditions of Brexit and Covid left us all a little shaken in 2020. Yet it also stirred in us a reminder of the importance of access to social finance and the resilience of communities across our shared island.
Our partners in NI: Invest NI and Enterprise NI and Department for Communities, and in ROI SFF, Rethink Ireland and DCU also stepped up and showed their support to the ongoing sustainability and viability of the NFP sector.
It was a year like no other and yet we can confidently say that we supported both our clients and key stakeholders achieve great things and ensured that, when we were asked to stay apart we came together in ways that we could have only imagined.
As a result, we have much to admire and be proud of as our ongoing promise to ensure social impact is felt not simply dreamt continues”.
Donal Traynor, Group Chief Executive Community Finance Ireland
View the report in full here.
