Social Finance Hot Desk celebrates 10-year milestone
Social Finance Hot Desk (SFHD) celebrated its 10-year anniversary this week at an in-person event hosted at the offices of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in London.
Our journey
SFHD was piloted in 2016 and launched in 2017 by Prime Advocates, to address a gap in pro bono legal support for social ventures. Its aim remains simple: help social enterprises tackling major social and environmental challenges access the legal and financial expertise they need to grow.
SFHD has grown from three keystone legal partners, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, White & Case and A&O Shearman, to a strong core of ten leading international firms including Morgan Lewis, Travers Smith, Skadden, Clifford Chance, Reed Smith, Morrison Foerster and Freshfields.
With the support of these partners, SFHD provides over $2million USD per year of expert pro bono legal support to the global impact community. Over the past decade the initiative has supported many hundreds of social enterprises, NGOs, governments and philanthropic organisations to strengthen their structures and scale their impact.
The beneficiary organisations supported span thematic areas across the Sustainable Development Goals, including climate action, inequality reduction and sustainable finance. From eco-concrete innovation and teaching apps to water purification systems, emerging markets funds, blue and green bonds, plastics recycling funds, and homelessness initiatives. Organisations supported through SFHD include Social Finance, Bridges Opportunities Partners, Rare, Brightwild, Climate Policy Initiative, Levoca, Figurative, ZooAtronic and more...
Read more about our beneficiaries here
Celebrating 10 years
To mark the anniversary, SFHD held a panel discussion titled Funding the Future: Navigating the Social Investment Landscape. The conversation reflected on how the social finance landscape has evolved over the past decade and explored what the future might look like for social entrepreneurs and their funders. The panel brought together leaders from across the ecosystem:
Moderated by Anthony Murphy of Prime Advocates
Together, we reflected on both the progress made and the challenges that remain in building financial systems that genuinely support impact-driven organisations.
Reflections on a decade of social finance: and what's needed next?
At its core, the panel explored the (un-)suitability of traditional financial and commercial tools to the goals of social entrepreneurs: a key theme of the work at SFHD and Prime Advocates.
Ten years on, the sector has learned that while these tools have played an important role, bespoke and purpose-built solutions are often needed. Impact-driven organisations operate with goals and constraints that traditional market structures were not designed for. As a result, new forms of capital, governance models and funding structures have begun to emerge that better centre impact alongside financial sustainability.
Panellists also drew attention to the structural burden placed on social entrepreneurs. Many founders are expected to navigate complex legal, governance and funding challenges without access to the kinds of professional support that commercial ventures take for granted. At the same time, many accept lower financial rewards in exchange for doing meaningful work. While this motivation is powerful, it has also become normalised in ways that leave social entrepreneurs and the social enterprise ecosystem under-supported and under-resourced.
Importantly, our conversation highlighted growing efforts to centre diversity and lived experience within investment decisions. Increasingly, funders recognise that those closest to the problems being addressed should have a stronger voice in the allocation process.
Finally, the panel emphasised the importance of core funding. While collaboration and ecosystem initiatives often attract attention, social enterprises ultimately need patient, long-term capital. Achieving systemic change typically requires a 10–15 year horizon, and organisations need the stability and trust of funders willing to support that journey over time.
What's next?
As SFHD enters its second decade, the initiative will further strengthen the infrastructure that supports the global impact ecosystem. By connecting social ventures with world-class legal expertise, SFHD will help ensure that organisations tackling social and environmental challenges have the tools they need to grow and scale.
We’ll stay sensitive to the needs of the social innovation space: supporting the development of new financing models and the most innovative solutions to enable social ventures to access the patient, mission-aligned capital required to achieve systemic change.
Get in touch to find out how we can help you!
Thank you
A huge thank you to our biggest supporters: our incredible law firm partners who generously give their time and energy to support, our ecosystem partners who help us tap into the needs of the marketplace, and our beneficiaries who trust us with their critical legal and business developments.
We could not have reached this milestone without you, and we look forward to the next decade of working together!
To support our work and allow us to keep making an impact, kindly consider donating to our charitable foundation. We hugely appreciate it!
Social Finance Hot Desk is funded in part by the Prime Advocates Foundation, a restricted fund operating under the auspices of Prism the Gift Fund, Registered Charity Number: 1099682.