‘We are waiting to see tangible results’: Five Black social impact leaders on the sector’s anti-racism progress

A year after the murder of George Floyd, Black social impact leaders say the sector (and government’s) promises to do better are falling short.

Why It Matters

Ending systemic racism will require more than just platitudes. Discrimination in the sector happens through badly designed funding agreements, poor HR practices, and deliberate exclusion — changing that will require leaders to take a hard look at their everyday practices.

Nearly four weeks after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, over a dozen social impact leaders signed a public solidarity statement against racism that admitted Canada’s social innovation and social finance sectors had a lot of work to do. 

“We must examine and concretely change our own leadership, our teams, internal policies and practices, discovering where we reinforce the old systems we’re aiming to uproot,” the statement says. 

Among several promises are the development of anti-racism and anti-oppression training for all Investment Readiness Program (IRP) partners, the creation of a working group on inclusion for the social finance and social enterprise sectors, and work on a “self-determined” fund to get under

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