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Social and impact ventures

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We are at the forefront of designing, creating and supporting social and impact ventures throughout their lifecycle, as they tackle the world's big social and environmental challenges, both local and global. 

We help with:

Social and impact venture design and legal models, both simple and complex
Group structures with multiple legal vehicles including charitable entities
Best practice governance frameworks and board dynamics
Impact and social investment, including blended finance
Grant funding, agreements and frameworks
Collaboration and partner agreements
Shareholder and member agreements for collaboration and investment
Day-to-day legal and risk advice, including contracts, people, data, intellectual property and real property on an ad hoc basis or through our Mishcon GC offering.

Please see our dedicated page and resources for social ventures.

Chris Willis Pickup Partner, Head of Charities and Social Ventures +44 20 7382 8042 chris.willis.pickup@mishcon.com

Kieran John Managing Associate +44 20 7382 8035 kieran.john@mishcon.com

Elsa Mikaelian Associate +44 20 7382 8096 elsa.mikaelian@mishcon.com

Meet the team

We received an excellent blend of principled advice and commercial sensitivity. The Mischon team was always willing to go the extra mile where time was of the essence.
Chambers and Partners, 2025

The firm was hugely helpful and gave us a lot of comfort. They provided an excellent service and were incredibly responsive.
Chambers and Partners, 2025

Setting up and running a Social Venture

We admire and support businesses that are committed to a social and/or environmental purpose. To help you set up your social venture and structure it to achieve your aims, we’ve created a Social Venture Handbook.

Positive Disruptors series

In each episode of the podcast we speak with impact aligned founders, funders, and enablers who are moving the dial on the world's most pressing challenges.

EMBED purpose

We’ll advise you on the legal and governance aspects required to operate explicitly as a Social Venture, with the choice of two support packages.

Social ventures virtual pop-up

If you’ve got a great new idea for a social venture, or you want to integrate a social purpose into your existing business, get in touch.

Work highlights

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lowRISC CIC

Advising IowRISC C.I.C., a non-profit open source technology company, on its leading open source silicon project, partnerships with global tech companies, internal operations and people, international growth and fundraising, and non-profit regulation.

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Legal and governance structures

Skylark Works is a purpose-led consultancy that helps business do good and charities do business. We advised the founding team on legal and governance structures, and then provided support on the legal side to efficiently spin out the social venture from the University of Oxford – in addition to advice in the post spin-out phase.

Work highlight

University of Bristol

We collaborated with the University’s TTO to co-develop transaction documents for social venture spin outs, and then deliver training sessions on the legal and commercial considerations of the Articles of Association and Shareholders’ Agreement.

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Brink

We supported Brink, a global team of psychologists, strategists, designers, creative thinkers and technology optimists, to launch Brink Foundation - a vehicle for establishing and running grant funding programmes to address unmet global needs.

Work highlight

CHERI Alliance

Advising on the design and creation of the legal and organisational structures of CHERI Alliance C.I.C, a non-profit membership organisation established to advance industry wide adoption of the security technology CHERI.

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