Explore our social ventures
Our social ventures make a difference
Oxford University Innovation has spun out 21 social ventures from all 4 divisions of the University addressing at least 13 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Our ventures are targeting poverty, health inequality, barriers to education, and carbon emissions. Below are some examples of our companies:
sOPHIa Oxford
For over a decade, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) has developed tools to identify and tackle ‘multidimensional’ poverty – that is, deprivations experienced at the individual and household levels, including health, education and living standards.
Poverty can manifest in all sorts of ways – from lack of education and living in poor housing, to lack of caring facilities or unemployment elsewhere in the family. If we think only in financial terms and ignore all the other factors, we risk missing cases or being unable to address them.
OPHI’s multidimensional approach to poverty identification is being used by the United Nations, the World Bank, and more than 30 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Out of that award-winning work came sOPHIa: Oxford University’s first social venture, which takes the approaches developed by OPHI and makes them available to businesses that want to make an impact on their employees’ wellbeing across Latin America.
Jamie Coats, president and CEO of sOPHIa, says ‘The private sector… needs good data, and it needs to know where to target limited resources to have a measurable impact.’ sOPHIa has developed a solution that is practical, scalable and cost-effective.
CEOs of participating companies report that employees who now feel supported by their employers are delivering improved performance and outcomes.
Greater Change
Greater Change is a social enterprise working to help people overcome homelessness, by providing personalised cash grants to help people out of homelessness for good. It’s estimated that around 10,000 people sleep rough in the UK, with up to 300,000 experiencing some form of homelessness – for example, living in squats, hostels, or sofa surfing.
Traditional pathways for support are complex, inaccessible, and unworkable, especially for those in crisis—often requiring endless paperwork and unnecessary hurdles. In the grim backdrop of rising living costs, a financial setback or unexpected expense can easily entrench individuals and families in homelessness. Greater Change offers an approach built on dignity, choice, and empowerment, giving people a real opportunity to escape homelessness for good.
Greater Change has been able to support 1,403 people, 86% of which have been housed, and over 50% have been employed. Of its ex-offender cohort, fewer than 8% have re-offended.
The model is simple: a partner charity refers someone to Greater Change; an online ‘campaign’ is created based on the individual’s specific needs (they may, for example, require a deposit to begin renting a flat); members of the public can donate securely towards this ring-fenced goal. £1,319 spent by Greater Change unlocks £35,177 in cost savings to the government, totalling £49.2m saved by local and central government.
Greater Change was incorporated in March 2019 after raising around £30,000 for a successful pilot phase through Oxford University’s crowdfunding platform, OxReach. The model supports anyone at risk of or experiencing homelessness – recognising that prevention is often more effective than intervention.
Nature-based Insights
Nature-based Insights is a social spin-out from the Nature-based Solutions Initiative at the University of Oxford. It supports businesses and financial institutions to implement nature-based solutions with scientific integrity.
The venture helps organisations set and achieve robust, evidence-based targets for mitigating impacts on climate, biodiversity, and society. This enables companies to enhance the value and resilience of their supply chains, whilst meeting socially just nature-positive and net-zero pledges.
SerenOx
SerenOx delivers precise, rapid, and affordable diagnostics for inherited blood disorders, infectious diseases and early-stage cancer in sub-Saharan Africa, via local DNA sequencing capacity.
For example, an initial focus area is Sickle Cell Disease, which is the most common inherited monogenic disease world-wide, and affects 3% of births in Tanzania. Undiagnosed, 95% of children die before age five. To date, SerenOx has performed diagnostic sequencing for 500 people.
SerenOx is a cross disciplinary team of academics, doctors and biotech entrepreneurs brought together by a passion to resolve some of the worst clinical challenges in Saharan Africa by applying the latest genomics technologies.
Dr Anna Schuh, founder of SerenOx, says ‘In sub-Saharan Africa many diseases that could be easily cured or well controlled with affordable therapies are currently not diagnosed.’
OxProx
OxProx is an easy-to-use public database that tracks the proxy voting records of institutional investors, for both management proposals and shareholder proposals. These include targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; water and wastewater management; ecological impact; human rights and community relations; diversity and inclusion; supply chain management; and business ethics.
OxProx makes this data accessible to shareholders, researchers, journalists, and others to improve transparency, investor accountability, voting outcomes, and business practices.
