Social finance is a repayable investment that enables positive social, cultural, and environmental impact. It comes in forms such as loans and equity investments that organizations use to advance their mission and carry out activities that generate savings or income used to repay investors.
Wayne Miranda, Board Member of NYCH refers to social finance as, “a means to an end. We want to see our biggest challenges solved. We want to see climate resiliency, we want to see food security, we want to see social equality…so social finance is a means towards those ends. It’s a repayable investment that specifically tries to solve those problems.”
What is a Social Finance Fund?
A Social Finance Fund is a pool of money collected from community members, impact investors, foundations, charities, credit unions, and government. This fund is used to support projects that benefit the community, such as building affordable housing, investing in local businesses, or services supporting the community.
How Social Finance is used and its impact in the Community
Examples:
YWCA Toronto
An association by, for and about women, girls and gender diverse people raised $1 million in community bonds to build affordable housing for rent. Their tenants included low-income women, women with mental health issues, and female-led Indigenous families.
The government rent supplements made the difference between resident payments and the market rate for rent.
The building income generated was used towards repaying this bond over 10 years.
Rhythm Rhythm
A social enterprise using hand drums to teach K-12 students about music and community building. They raised an investment from the Social Enterprise Fund to finance the purchase of instruments and to begin offering online teacher training.
They used workshops and training revenues towards repaying their investment.
Learn More and Join Us!
With the Toronto Impact Initiative (TII), we can help give traditionally under-served community members an opportunity to establish social impact through the creation of organizations, services and businesses that contribute to the overall economic development of their communities. However, TII is in its developmental stages and with the help of community members like you, we can work together to co-develop a social financing model that will connect funds to the appropriate recipients.
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