A mission-oriented community wealth fund for Camden: Governing finance with public purpose

This report identifies steps towards a new way of thinking about the future of the community wealth fund for the London Borough of Camden.

Download the report

A mission-oriented community wealth fund for Camden: Governing finance with public purpose, policy report 2022/03

Authors

• Mariana Mazzucato | Director, and Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
• Laurie Macfarlane | Policy Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
• Olga Mikheeva | Marie Curie Research Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
• Ryan Bellinson | Senior Research Fellow in Cities, Climate and Innovation at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

Reference

Mazzucato, M., Macfarlane, L., Mikheeva, O., Bellinson, R. (2022). A mission-oriented community wealth fund for Camden. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, IIPP Policy Report No.2022/03. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/2022-03

Key messages

The report's key insights include:

• Design the mandate and remit of the wealth fund to be mission-oriented, with a focus on providing patient capital, acting as a lead investor and risk-taker to shape new markets, and galvanising cross sectoral investment that is aligned with clear policy goals. 
• Establish a governance model that is mission-oriented and benefits from meaningful stakeholder engagement to improve decision-making, build trust and align investments with relevant community needs and aspirations.
• Invest in capability building, focusing on competencies and skills that reflect the ambition and thematic focus of the wealth fund. 
• Adopt a new approach to monitoring and evaluation that goes beyond narrow market failure frameworks and static metrics like financial returns to capture the dynamic outcomes of public investments over time and across projects, and the additionality they generate by catalysing cross-sectoral and cross-actor investment and collaboration, including economy-wide spillovers and multiplier effects.