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On October 17th, Tapestry was joined by more than 80 non-profits, charities, co-operatives and social enterprises in Ottawa, all eager to learn how social finance can help them scale-up their impact. The question among all of them – where do we start? What are the tools that we can put to work in our favour?

Social enterprise is still a very new, and arguable poorly understood, sector of the economy. Even less explored is the realm of social finance.

So what is social finance?

Social finance is an approach to mobilizing private capital that delivers a social dividend and an economic return to achieve social and environmental goals. Mobilizing private capital for social good creates opportunities for investors to finance projects that benefit society and for community organizations to access new sources of funds.

The term can include community investing, microfinance, investing in socially-responsible and sustainable businesses (such as B-Corps), social impact bonds, and social enterprise lending. A social investment is not a grant or donation; it’s repayable, with interest.

Tapestry works specifically in the space of community investment. We make use of a social finance vehicle called a Community Bond. Simply put, a Community Bond, is an interest bearing loan from a community member. It could be for as little as $1000 or more than $1 million, but the bonds must always be repaid, providing a fair interest return and a proven social or environmental benefit.

To shed light on other tools across the social financing continuum, Tapestry brought in partners including:

Vancity Community Investment Bank

Vancity works exclusives with organizations and entrepreneurs that are working to solve environmental, social and economic challenges. Committed 100% to impact, Vancity offers project, portfolio, and business lending; impact capital transaction advisory services; and investment banking for community and environmental enterprises.

Ottawa Community Foundation

The Ottawa Community Foundation (OCF) is a non-profit organization created by and for the people of Ottawa to connect people who care with causes that matter. OCF recently launched a new Impact Investing Strategy that will allow the Foundation to go beyond their traditional grant-making role by helping charitable and non-profit organizations access loans, guarantees and mortgages. Under the terms of the Strategy, OCF will allocate up to 10% of their endowment to impact investing.

The Ottawa Community Foundation is also one of the lead investors in the Community Forward Fund, a fund which lends exclusively to charities, non-profits and social enterprises.

PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise

As a not-for-profit social enterprise, PARO collaborates to empower women, strengthen small business and promote community economic development across Ontario. PARO has become well know for their Peer Circles – small groups of like-minded women who meet regularly to share their experiences, offer advice to each other and expand their individual and shared contact networks.

One of the key elements of a Peer Circle is that members also provide access to micro-credit of between $500.00 and $5,000.00. Members of the Peer Circle are involved in the review and approval of a member’s PARO loan application before it is approved. Today PARO is one of the strongest peer lenders of small business loans in North America, supporting a diverse range of women who may have no or poor credit history, and no sources of equity.

Centre for Social Enterprise Development (CSED)

CSED is a non-profit organization based in Ottawa that offers a wide range of services to social enterprises, including access to technical expertise, coaching, financing, learning communities, training, and cross-sector partnerships. They have worked with hundreds of clients developing their social enterprise plans and provided them with the tools, strategies, and support to perpetuate positive social change and grow profitably.

CSED’s UNCAPPED program enables the start-up, growth and scaling of social enterprises through organizational readiness and capacity building support, including access to funding. The program is open to charities, not-for-profit organizations, co-operatives, and for-profit businesses with a clearly demonstrated social purpose. Under the program, participants will receive curated readiness and capacity building support that may include one-on-one coaching, facilitated cohort-based training, access to community mentors/experts, and funding in the form of grants, loans or grant/loan combinations.

Ottawa Community Loan Foundation

The Ottawa Community Loan Fund (OCLF) is a non-profit organization providing microloans for business and professional development purposes. Since its inception in 2000, it has constantly pursued its overarching goal; to ensure their loan recipients eventually have access to traditional financing, increase their assets and/or achieve the professional development.

More recently, OCLF has expanded their scope of activity to include new micro-financing products, business technical expertise, financial literacy training, professional development, affordable housing and social enterprise development.

Impact Hub Ottawa

Impact Hub is a community and co-working space that Inspires, enables and connects people that are working to solve the world’s challenges. Impact Hub is part of a global network of 15,000 purpose driven individuals and organizations in 102 impact hubs worldwide.

In the context of our social finance discussion, the Impact Hub Ottawa shared their experience as a non-profit raising $400,000 in community bonds. To learn more about their story, click here.

Explore Presentations from this Event

David Cork, Tapestry Community Capital

Alfred Lee, Vancity Community Investment Bank

Brian Coburn, Ottawa Community Foundation

Jane Duchscher, Ottawa Community Loan Foundation 

Michael Murr, Centre for Social Enterprise Development (CSED)

Kiran Pal-Pross, PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise

Across Ontario, communities are coming together to reclaim ownership of community assets

These community assets are becoming spaces for change. We are witnessing amazing transformations – from old furniture stores into social purpose co-workings spaces, historic abbeys into affordable housing hubs, and empty hockey rink roofs into places for clean solar power generation.

Non-profits and charities have bold ideas to address systemic issues. Bringing these iconic project to life requires innovative business models, creative partnerships and financing.

Community bonds have proven to be part of the solution,  but the getting to the point of issuing the bond is a journey. We’re here to help you on the road to raise.

Over the past year, we have been travelling across Ontario meeting with groups who have important projects to implement. We have seen and heard that additional resources and coaching is needed, not only to raise a community bond, but also to help move the project forward. Everyone needs a little bit of help. For some groups it is about business planning and financial modelling, for others they need help with securing a property or architectural renderings.

That’s why we are launching Bond Camp

Bond Camp is a 5-month program to give you the funding and coaching support needed to help bring your vision to life with community bonds.

Successful applicants will receive up to $10,000 in grant funding and coaching to increase your project’s investment readiness and prepare you on the road to raising a community bond.

To find out if you are eligible and submit an application, click here.

More than 40 affordable housing stakeholders gathered at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre in Hamilton today to explore new and innovative financing models for affordable housing. The key message from the panelists was a firm belief that that community investment has a central role to play in creating more affordable housing. Lack of funding is a long-standing problem that has escalated to become a front-page item in every community and an issue which will clearly require a collaborative solution. As with many mid-sized cities across Ontario, lack of affordable housing is a critical area of concern in Hamilton., who hosted the event.

The event attracted a diverse cross-section of stakeholders including non-profit and co-operative housing providers, poverty and housing activists, churches, affordable housing consultants, city councillors, city planners, architects and developers. The panelists, including Tapestry Community Capital, New Market Funds, Tim Welch Consulting, the Mount Community Centre and Options for Homes, presented a range of alternatives to traditional bank financing, which at times can be challenging for non-profit groups and low-income households to secure.

Tapestry believes that a social finance tool called a community bond could play an integral role in mobilizing private capital for affordable housing. “The signal is strong and clear that Canadians want to invest locally and with purpose”, says Tapestry’s Executive Director, David Cork, “what is needed are more investable projects”.

Non-profit and co-operative organizations are unique in that they can take advantage of exemptions of the Ontario Securities Commission that allow them to issue securities to their community of supporters.  “Quite simply, a community bond is a loan from a community member. How it differs from a traditional bond is that it always encompasses a social or environmental return in additional to a financial return” says Cork.

One of the panelists who shared a real-life success story was Andi van Koeverden, the Director of The Mount Community Centre in Peterborough. In 2011, a small group of dedicated citizens that were part of the Peterborough Poverty Reduction Action Network embarked on momentous task of transforming a historic 132,000 sq ft building in the heart of Peterborough to respond to growing needs for affordable housing in the area.

With no upfront capital to close on the purchase of the building, the group turned to their community for private capital. Their ask was simple – “just imagine”. The response was overwhelming, with 60 community members stepping in to collectively invest $2 million to bring the project to life. This community financing was complimented with a $1 million contribution from the City of Peterborough and a low interest $1.7 million loan from the County of Peterborough. To date, 43 affordable rental units have been completed, with another 38 under construction.

The Mount Community Centre is a story of determination, courage and commitment, and demonstrates the power of community finance. Tapestry hopes more groups will lead the way, creating opportunities for supporters to invest in projects that will directly benefit their communities.

“There are many sectors in which community bonds can be applied”, says Cork, “but the case for affordable housing is particularly strong. Lack of funding is a long-standing problem that has escalated to become a front-page item in every community and an issue which will clearly require a collaborative solution.”

If you’re interested in learning from the success of the Mount Community Centre, we’ve developed a case study to detail how community bonds played a part in bringing the project to life!  Click below to sign up and download the case study.

On May 2nd, joined by an excited crowd of social innovators, Tapestry officially launched it’s new suite of services to help non-profits and co-ops across Canada raise capital through community investment.

Tapestry Community Capital is the latest social venture of the TREC Co-operative, a non-profit organization founded in 1998 to advance the community power sector of Ontario. For years, the TREC Co-operative has assisted renewable energy co-ops across Ontario to raise community dollars for community owned sustainable energy projects. With the support of TREC, renewable energy co-ops such as SolarShare, WindShare and ZooShare, have raised close to $40 million in community investment.

With Tapestry, we are expanding on TREC’s experience in renewable energy and opening up our knowledge of social finance tools to non-profits and co-ops across all sectors, including affordable & inclusive housing, arts & culture, health care, local & sustainable food, co-working and community service agencies.

Driven by a steadfast belief in the power of community, Tapestry envisions a world where community investment is the new normal. We see a whole new wave of organizations and social enterprises committed to not only leveraging their community to realize social good, but to keeping returns within the community, creating and redistributing wealth via local investment opportunities.

Community bonds can and will play a vital role in helping social enterprises to scale their operations, take ownership of assets, and meaningfully engage their network of supporters in that growth. We look forward to helping non-profits and co-ops across Canada build upon their greatest asset: their community.