Survey on Financing Social Enterprises and Nonprofits
How are social enterprises and non-profits financed? How do impact investors perceive the risks and benefits of financing social enterprises and non-profits? Funded by Export Development Canada, the EDC Chair in Environmental Finance at the University of Waterloo is conducting a survey to answer these two important questions.
This survey will compare the risks and the opportunities of financing social enterprises and non-profits compared with for-profit and public sector organisations. It is being conducted by myself and Sean Geobey, a fellow SocialFinance.ca Writer. The ability to raise financing is a critical sustainability component of non-profits, and impact investors are their natural financiers.
Funding for social enterprises and non-profits becomes especially difficult at times when the economy is struggling. On the other side, it is needed to balance public funding for societal and environmental issues. Thus, we want to understand whether, and how, social finance organizations and impact investors provide finance for nonprofits and social enterprises.
We are conducting an electronic survey to analyze the goals, practices, opportunities and challenges of Canadian social finance institutions and impact investors with regards to financing nonprofits and social enterprises. The results will show how different groups of social finance institutions contribute to the financing of nonprofits and what measures could be conducted by both, social finance and nonprofits, to improve the financial sustainability of the latter.
At this time, we already have a high number of responses to the survey, but greater participation will help make the results more reliable. Social finance practitioners and impact investors that have not participated yet, still have the opportunity to do so. This will provide valuable insights into the nascent social finance marketplace in Canada.
The survey can be taken at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9R8KH9B.
Every response is valuable, so we would greatly appreciate your support. Please note that any information you provide will be kept confidential. The results of the survey will be summarized and posted on SocialFinance.ca.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwvc/6306132745/
