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We are pleased to introduce Satyameet (Sattu) Singh as the newest member of our Tapestry Team. Sattu will be joining our campaign team as a Campaign Manager, where he will be working with our Senior Campaign Manager, Jennifer Bryan. In his new role, Sattu will support our clients in building campaign excitement, media attention and demand for their investment opportunities, and more broadly, increase awareness of community bonds as a viable financing mechanism for non-profits, charities and co-ops all across Canada.

Sattu brings to our team a wealth of experience in both social enterprise, and marketing and sales. He is a graduate of the MBA program at the Schulich School of Business, and a self professed pragmatic altruist and idealist.

It was Sattu’s education at Schulich that first brought him to Toronto from Delhi, India in 2011, and opened his eyes to the world of social enterprise. Post-MBA, he began his career with WE (Free the Children), where he led the India operations for the charity’s ‘Adopt a Village’ development model. He moved back to Toronto in 2014, to join a social enterprise called Eva’s Initiative for Homeless Youth, where he was a Program Lead. In 2015, he was recruited by Schulich School of Business to lead marketing and administration at their India campus.

“This was actually a great first experience in selling investments, because education really is an investment – and not a cheap one,” says Sattu with a smile. “We needed to demonstrate to prospective students that their time on campus would be transformative and open doors in the future.”

“During my time at the Schulich campus in Hyderabad, I was exposed to all sorts of amazing thinkers and leaders,” he explains. “What really resonated with me was that the world is rapidly shifting to a solutions oriented mindset, and I knew I wanted to be part of the solutions based economy. It was during this time that I made the conscious decision to move back into the social enterprise space.”

He returned to Canada to lead to the marketing and sales initiatives at Good Foot Delivery, a social enterprise that provides meaningful employment to the neuro-diverse community through a professional courier service.

“What excites me most about joining the Tapestry team is the chance to help scale a proven solution. Tapestry has seen the success and impact of community bonds. The method is tried and tested. I am excited to help even more organizations all across Canada to take advantage of this model.”

In his free time, Sattu is an avid violinist and loves to listen to stand up comedy.

We hope you will have the pleasure of getting to know Sattu and working with him on a community bond campaign. “I am always free to have a coffee and a chat,” says Sattu. If you’d like to connect with him, you can email him at satyameet@tapestrycapital.ca.

Sometimes organizations want to do a bit of their own homework on Community Bonds before they reach out to us. This is why we have launched our new resources page, to give you and your team the tools you need to explore and evaluate the option of community financing at your own speed.

“We want organizations to be able to self-select whether this is a good fit for them or not,” says Ryan Collins-Swartz, Co-Executive Director of Tapestry. “Through our experience helping to raise and manage over $70 million in community bonds, we have come to realize what works and what doesn’t. We want organizations to use these tools to say either, ‘yes, this is a great fit for my project’ or ‘no, we aren’t quite there yet.’

Community bonds are still a very new concept to most. This means there is often a good deal of educating that needs to take place at the Senior and Board level before organizations feel comfortable exploring this idea in greater detail.

“Once they dig into these resources and see how others have done it and succeeded, they walk away confident that they too can realize their visions with the help of community finance,” says Ryan. 

On our new resources page you will find two case studies that can be downloaded free of charge. These walk you through the amazing stories of how the Argonaut Rowing Club and The Mount Community Centre raised community bonds to transform community real estate. 

There is also an in-depth guide written by the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), who have now raised over $8 million in community bonds, that tells their story and shares their wealth of experience.

“We are very happy to have all these tools easily available online now, and hope that this will improve the accessibility, and general awareness, of community bonds across Canada,” says Ryan. 

For those that have explored these resources and wish to move further in their research, we offer a 3-hour workshop designed to bring your team together to further evaluate how community bonds can work for your project. 

In a time of exciting growth, our parent organization – TREC Renewable Energy Cooperative – is looking to expand its Board of Directors.

TREC has incubated and launched several organizations that solve environmental challenges and advance the power of community economic development in Canada, including WindShare, SolarShare, and Relay Education.

TREC’s most recent venture is Tapestry Community Capital. At Tapestry, we support social purpose organizations across Canada to raise and manage community investment. Our clients are cooperatives, not-for-profits, and charities engaged in developing renewable energy, and social purpose real estate such as: housing, arts venues, recreation facilities, community hubs, co-working spaces, and innovation centres.

We know that more diverse, equitable and inclusive leadership will lead to greater innovation and amplified impact. This is why TREC is actively seeking to improve the diversity of our Board of Directors. We are particularly seeking representation from people of colour, rural communities, Indigenous groups, and those that identify as LGBTQ2S++, and encourage applicants from equity seeking groups.

In our most recent episode of Café Tapestry, we had the opportunity to speak to Rebecca Black, long standing TREC Board Member, Co-Founder of Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE) and Designer & Communicator at Black Current Marketing. Rebecca shared her experience of being a Member of the Board, what she has learned over the years, and how this opportunity has helped her to develop new skills and shape her career.

Watch the full episode below to learn more about what it is like to be a Member of the TREC Board.

For those interested in applying, please read the full description here.

Have an idea for the next episode of Café Tapestry? Get in touch with us.