I remember reading the story about the unique partnership that created Grameen Danone in Building Social Business by Muhammad Yunus - and that set off fireworks in my head! Inspired by these joint-venture possibilities, I looked at what we were doing at DreamFund Holdings and explored innovative hybrid business and investment models we could leverage to address our most pressing social issues with market-based solutions. We call them DreamFunds.

While we all eagerly await the materialization of recommendations made by the Canadian Taskforce on Social Finance to unlock more investment into this space, our social issues are mounting and our social entrepreneurs find themselves stuck in the missing middle.

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Paul Slomp, a beef farmer in Ottawa shared his story of local food and finance this Saturday at a Bring Home Food conference in Peterborough, Ontario. His story contains a great many lessons about local food, local finance and the possibility of a different, more intimate way of doing business.

When Paul set out to start his farm he sought seed capital. Finding no purchase through traditional means, he struck on another idea. A casual conversation with a lawyer friend of his led to a social finance innovation.

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At this historic juncture, where the value of capitalism is being called into question, we want to consider how businesses can be in the (better) business of creating shared value.

Hypenotic and Toronto's B Lab hub (at the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing) are co-hosting a dynamic and collaborative brainstorm session where we're inviting leaders and thinkers to help consider how a new kind of business can emerge out of this conversation.

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A few days from now on Halloween – possibly as you are handing out candy to young trick-or-treaters – the number of people on earth will surpass seven billion. And as the world’s population rises, our global village becomes smaller and smaller. Today, more than two billion travelers board commercial flights every year, making the world both highly interconnected and highly interdependent. And this is not just referring to the global interdependence of financial markets, but rather, global interdependence around the threat of dangerous infectious diseases.

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MaRS Awarded $1.3 Million By Rockefeller Foundation and J.W. McConnell Family Foundation to Launch Centre For Impact Investing
Leading national and global foundations announce their support for Canada’s first Centre for Impact Investing

Toronto, September 29, 2011 – MaRS Discovery District announced today that substantial funding support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation will be made available for the Centre for Impact Investing, to be housed at MaRS.

The Centre for Impact Investing will build upon the foundational work of MaRS and Social Innovation Generation (SiG), including the landmark report, Mobilizing Private Capital for Public Good, by the Canadian Task Force on Social Finance. The Centre will be a national hub that will increase awareness for and effectiveness of social finance to catalyze new capital, talent, and initiatives dedicated to tackling social and environmental problems in Canada. The Centre will act as a point of global connection for Canadian efforts into the emerging field of impact investing, delivering programs and initiatives focused on research and policy, market and product development, and education and engagement initiatives to build the collective ability to mobilize private capital towards public good.

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