Reports 2020

An online discussion series, was created in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region of Southern Georgian Bay. Together, with community leaders and partners, the Institute of Southern Georgian Bay saw a need to convene all sectors (nonprofit, business, government and philanthropic) in the community to start thinking about how the region would cope with the sudden changes required to keep people safe and begin to imagine what a recovery would look like.

The conversation about social finance emerged in Canada because of reductions in government funding through the mid 90’s and the decade that followed. There was recognition that the biggest barrier to the Canadian social sector doing its job of tending community wellbeing, was access to capital. As the social sector moved away from its financial relationship with governments, it began to explore the relationships with business, generating synergy and re-combinations of financial mechanisms that yield both financial support for and increased contribution to social good. By 2010 there was enough experimentation that the McConnell Foundation funded the Task Force on Social Finance. The report Mobilizing Private Capital for Public Good: Canadian Task Force on Social Finance called on institutional investors, corporations, philanthropists, foundations and governments to work together to build a robust impact investing marketplace. This Primer explores the current range of social finance instruments that communities like ours could access.

When the world as we knew it shut down in March 2020, it was clear that small communities needed to map their own road to recovery. While the federal and pro- vincial governments focused on keeping the broader economy alive, small towns were going to require a unique approach to “building back better” than their larger subur- ban and urban counterparts.