The future of the social impact world depends on capital; but, we need it to be anti-racist, intersectional, decolonized, feminist, planet-first, and place-based.

Social finance is gaining traction as a suite of approaches to reimagine capital: Impact investing. Sustainable finance. Place-based finance. Social economy. Community investing. Localizing practices. Regenerative financing. What does all this mean? Who gets to validate these terms? Why are there so many? And how might they avoid unintended harm?

Growing rapidly, Canada’s social finance ecosystem can play a key role in the seismic shift needed to re-imagine capital for a sustainable and equitable future – which is why we’re thrilled to announce a content partnership with the Catalyst: Community Finance Initiative (Catalyst), who is leading just that.

Launched in 2020 with over 50 stakeholders across the community finance ecosystem, Catalyst: Community Finance Initiative* focuses on developing policy infrastructure and facilitating knowledge sharing to ensure that community finance institutions can successfully and sustainably start-up and scale their impact in selected urban, rural and Northern communities, alongside mainstream leaders in philanthropy, public policy, and financial institutions — and, of course, the social purpose organizations who rely on community finance to do their work.

In the lead-up to, and following, the 2023 Social Finance Forum, we’ll be publishing journalistic case studies and in-depth features that enable knowledge sharing for social purpose organizations collaboratively exploring, implementing and scaling place-based community finance opportunities for greater social impact.

Receive exciting updates about the Social Finance Forum here.