A note from the CEO - June 2019

Welcome to our clients, investors, partners and supporters, to this update on Sefa.

Sefa continues to support a broad range of purpose driven organisations in acquiring the much needed finance to deliver increased social impact.

Much of our recent focus has been on organisations providing crisis accommodation including general homelessness, women and children escaping domestic violence, and people exiting incarceration. We have also been active with organisations developing disability accommodation under the SDA payment regime, the disadvantaged education sector and a range of community based initiatives.

The people and organisations we work with continue to amaze us, not only with their commitment to improving people’s lives but their preparedness to take on social finance to fund growth and the added responsibilities with that.

A feature of our recently completed re-branding (please check out our new website) is: unlocking social impact through finance. Sefa has delivered approximately $35m in loans in 45 transactions to date across a broad range of enterprises. We are proud to have unlocked around $80m of additional impact capital to the sector as philanthropists, financiers and impact investors co-support transactions alongside Sefa. Our impact finance partners are critical for outcomes. Our aim is to create impact investment opportunities which lead to sustainability and growth for both clients and investors.

In addition to executing some solid blended financing outcomes, Sefa is securing mandates for its investment readiness and due diligence services. This includes being awarded a grant in conjunction with Lismore Jarjum Indigenous pre-school under the Impact Investment Ready Growth Grants, to assist our client raise capital. The grants fall under the Commonwealth’s DSS $7m program being administered by Impact Investing Australia (IIA). I want to recognise Sally McCutchan, Sabina Curatolo and the team at IIA working overtime to assess and disburse the $140,000 maximum grants over the next two years.

Other key recent developments for Sefa include:

  • Funding the crisis accommodation provider Providential Homes in NSW to acquire group homes to deliver stronger transitional housing support. Providential continues to expand its much needed services throughout NSW under contract by the state Government. Sefa hosted a panel featuring Providential Homes, Independent Living Villages and IIA at the recent annual NCOSS Investing for Good conference in Sydney providing insights for charities and NFPs to attain impact finance.

  • Completing a blended financing structure for Shopfront Arts Co-Op in NSW to expand its premises. Shopfront provides amazing, inclusive performance training for young people. The capital structure included the support of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, funding from the Federal and NSW Government along with a loan from Sefa.

Several of our impact clients continue to grow their businesses and impact through Sefa finance including:

Sefa’s sister organisation Sefa Partnerships, continues its important work guiding the social entrepreneurs and businesses of tomorrow. Applications are now open for the next round of Kickstarter business mentoring and planning grants, with the support of Macquarie.

In the sector, Community Sector Banking and UTS have undertaken to develop an accessible impact measurement framework for social enterprises. The Summer Foundation and Youngcare are displaying strong leadership and driving appropriate disability accommodation developments under the SDA program.

A big note of thanks to Dari, Aimy and the team at Universal Favourite for delivering such a great job on our re-branding and website design.

The Sefa team continues to work hard to assist organisations grow financially and deliver increased social impact. I urge anyone thinking about impact finance to contact Sefa and start the journey.

Alastair McGibbon

CEO, Sefa

BlogMia Lumb