The capital for communities and opportunities for people = 25 years, US$1.3 billion, 46 states and 47,000 jobs.
This past week, I had the pleasure of meeting with Frank Altman, president and CEO of the Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF), USA. Since 1988, the CRF has injected $1.3 billion into mostly low-income neighbourhoods across the United States, helping to retain or create 47,000 jobs.
The Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA) held its annual Congress in St. John’s last week, where we met colleagues from a sector with some of the highest potential in terms of uptake and success of social finance in Canada. Pre-Congress sessions included Finding the Money, Renewing the Mission: Social Finance, Social Enterprise & Affordable Housing, kicking off a week of workshops in the lovely, foggy capital of Newfoundland and Labrador.
As participants, we wanted to take the opportunity to provide an overview of the sector and its predisposition to social finance, and share what we learned last week.
There is an increasing interest in the use of community bonds to help nonprofits achieve their financial goals. Community bonds can be used to finance a range of projects, from program development to capital expansion projects where the 'first-in' dollars are hard to find. For people in the nonprofit sector, they are a form of investment that clearly shows what the investor is interested in - you.
Opened in late 2011, the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing (the Centre) is designed to increase the awareness and effectiveness of social finance by catalyzing new capital, talent and collaborative initiatives to deliver innovative solutions to Canada’s social and environmental challenges. Now that the Centre has been in operation for three months, we are keen to share with the community our goals and our progress to date.
SocialFinance.ca produces a weekly round up featuring social finance related news, insights, job openings, and events. We source the content for these round ups from Twitter, an RSS reader, and directly from our community of social finance practitioners. Below is our round up for the week of April 30, 2012.
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Your Guide helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
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Your Guide to Social Finance
SocialFinance.ca hosts an online guide that helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
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