Arts Council England recently announced that it was jointly launching a new sort of finance for culture: the Arts Impact Fund. It has £7m to lend and the money comes from a mixture of the commercial sector, from charities and the public purse (even despite the reassuringly small reduction to arts and culture in George Osborne's latest round of savings). More about this new form of social investment shortly, but it's the latest example of a sector successfully diversifying its sources of revenue. This is something that cultural entrepreneurs have been driving for some years in order to maintain and expand our world-renowned arts and culture.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/arts-impact-fund-a-radical-new-way-of-getting-extra-funding-for-the-arts-10311570.html