Dame Clara Furse, former chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, will join two other City of London heavyweights on the board of a new social finance initiative that aims to raise capital through a form of crowd funding, Financial News has learnt. SharedImpact will allow investors, corporate social responsibility departments and high-net-worth individuals to donate money via the internet to impact investment funds, according to a source close to the initiative who wished to remain anonymous because plans have yet to be made public.

SharedImpact was formally incorporated as a UK company in March this year, according to documents filed with Companies House. It has two registered directors at this stage: Paul Cheng, a 37-year-old former lawyer, who has worked at another social investment venture called Venturesome since 2006, and Robert Hodgkinson, a former banker at Rothschild who joined Venturesome last year.