2020 has been a challenging and complex year punctuated by the pandemic. But it has renewed our collective will to tackle our country’s most pressing and longstanding challenges, from gender and racial equity to housing and income inequality to climate change. The pandemic has also created tremendous strain on many organizations and enterprises navigating significant constraints and changes to how they can and cannot operate. At SVX, we have been fortunate to maintain our operations, grow our portfolio of projects, and co-design recovery programs and initiatives.
Additionally, navigating with resilience has become a critical theme for us, from WOSEN to our community capital partnerships to our work with issuers. We are grateful for our wonderful partners, clients, and collaborators that have joined forces with us across Canada, North America and Latin America. And we are both hopeful and optimistic about the new year, with a number of high potential initiatives that we are seeking to scale and start in 2021.
Check out some of the highlights of our work in 2020:
We launched a variety of programs as a partner in the Women of Ontario Social Enterprise Network (WOSEN)
The Women of Ontario Social Enterprise Network offers a suite of programs for women interested in starting or growing their own venture, that seeks to have a positive social, cultural or environmental impact through its operations, and/or the sale of their products and services. It is an Ontario-wide collaborative led by Pillar Nonprofit Network, alongside the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), SVX and NORDIK Institute’s Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship (SEE). We have been proud to collaborate on this work in Eastern Ontario with Upper Canada Equity Fund, with a few key programs launched in 2020.
WOSEN Resilience is a responsive 16-week online program through which women and non-binary folks who lead existing organizations with a positive social or environmental impact can gain access to structured programming, a community of peers, subject matter experts, coaches and social enterprise support organizations to help navigate response and recovery to the COVID-19 crisis. Program themes include: Leading through Uncertainty, Pivoting on Purpose, Leveraging Technology, and Managing Finances. A few highlights:
- In only eight short weeks, the Collaborative designed and launched new programs specifically for women social enterprise leaders whose organizations have been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
- The words participants used to describe their experience following participation in Resilience were: excited, inspired, hopeful, focused, and connected.
- We supported 53 participants across Ontario thanks to the support of 11 experts and 18 coaches who provided up to sixhours of one-on-one coaching to each entrepreneur. In total, we received 123 five-star ratings from our entrepreneurs for our facilitators.
The WOSEN Extended Coaching Program provides free 1-on-1 social enterprise coaching for 82 women and non-binary entrepreneurs across Ontario. Through this program, we built a network of nine social enterprise coaches across Eastern Ontario, supporting 20 entrepreneurs, and providing 190 hours of coaching since the program launch.
The VERGE Breakthrough Fund and the portfolio is performing well
Pillar Nonprofit Network, in partnership with SVX, created the Verge Breakthrough Fund, a place-based impact investing fund focused on Southwestern Ontario. The Fund was fully subscribed in 2018 and reached full deployment in 2020. By providing critical capital, the Fund has enabled organizations and enterprises in the region to make significant progress towards achieving the SDGs in sustainable cities and communities, good health and well-being, decent work and economic growth, affordable and clean energy, climate action and reduced inequalities. Here are our two biggest portfolio highlights:
- House of Friendship, the largest addiction treatment provider in the Waterloo Region, opened up a new facility in Cambridge. Even though they had a few setbacks including a fire in 2019 and supply chain issues due to COVID, with the support of the community, they were able to celebrate their opening in August 2020.
- A few investees in the portfolio sought interest payment deferrals due to the impact that COVID had on their cash flow, and fortunately, by the end of Q3, all of these companies were able to return to regular interest payments by successfully managing their business and financial operations.
We led investor research through the Investment Readiness Program (IRP)
SVX was mandated to better understand how investors evaluate investment readiness when looking at Social Purpose Organizations (SPOs). For the IRP, the team first looked at existing research and thought leadership around the investment review process. Then, we interviewed nearly 20 impact investors across Canada to see if there were any common threads where they felt SPOs were not ready for investment.
In most cases, the investee was simply not a fit for the investor based on stage (too early or too late), sector, impact focus, or corporate structure (for profit vs non-profit). Five opportunities were identified where the IRP program could provide greater support to improve the social finance ecosystem and support the release of the Social Finance Fund:
- Improve the financial knowledge of SPOs (e.g., financial modeling, forecasting, investment size).
- Share due diligence across investors to reduce the cost to review potential deals.
- Improve the storytelling around business models to make sure the opportunity is clearly presented to investors.
- Foster connections and build relationships between SPOs and investors.
- Reduce regulatory barriers to allow greater access to private market opportunities through wealth advisors and portfolio managers.
We are engaged in a community development process to explore place-based impact investing in Eastern Ontario
In collaboration with our partners at Upper Canada Equity Fund in Prince Edward County, we have begun a community development process to explore place-based impact investing in Eastern Ontario. This included an in-person community design jam in the spring featuring insights on impact investing, Canadian and US place-based impact investing fund case studies, and breakout discussions with local leaders.
We designed and launched a Regenerative Recovery Bootcamp
Delivered in collaboration with the Upper Canada Equity Fund, the Regenerative Recovery Bootcamp was a six-week investment readiness program designed to support enterprises focused on sustainable food or climate solutions with current or potential impact in Eastern Ontario. Delivered in the fall, this bootcamp provided social entrepreneurs with an opportunity to develop their investment pitch, identify appropriate sources of capital, and gain access to potential investment. We were able to work with eleven outstanding ventures and engaged seven bootcamp coaches from organizations like Fair Finance Fund, Investeco, Farm Credit Canada (FCC), and Esplanade. Over the course of the bootcamp, our social entrepreneurs continued to achieve success in their respective sectors. For example, “Ke-to life” secured a $30K grant from the Canadian Dairy Commission, and Wolfe Island Commons closed on their restoration project.
We proudly supported and participated in the SETSI Working Group
SVX signed onto the Stronger Together — Solidarity Statement and joined a collaborative partnership of network leaders in social innovation, social finance, the social economy, and community economic development across Canada. In line with the statement, we are pursuing this agenda to deepen our commitment to rooting out racism, colonization, and exclusion in our work and sector alongside 17 other signatories and many other organizations that have come on board since the summer.
We co-hosted a virtual All-in Impact Gathering for leading impact investors
Alongside partners including Upper Canada Equity Fund (UCEF), MakeWay, VERGE Capital, Vancity Community Investment Bank (VCIB), Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), Toniic, and Genus Capital Management, SVX convened the All-in Impact Gathering in November 2020 with 52 mission-driven investors and philanthropists seeking to advance their journey in impact investing. Sector leaders shared experiences and insights on the topics of sustainable food systems and climate action, gender and racial equity, and place-based impact investing. Most importantly, we helped maintain and create 312 new connections for our attendees through various breakout rooms and interactive facilitation. Furthermore, our attendees represented a total asset value of over $2 billion CAD that is moving towards impact investing, an undeniably powerful community for advancing impact investing. If you are interested to learn more, we identified memorable lessons we retained from our investor storytellers.
We co-organized a stakeholder response to the impact of COVID-19 through our Impact Response campaign and related activities
Beginning in late March, we undertook a wide-ranging research and community engagement initiative with an outstanding group of sector partners (particularly our Scaling Impact Network) to understand trends, gaps in response, and identify key actions to respond to the social and economic impacts of COVID-19. Known as Impact Response, it was an effort that included:
- Launching and operating a campaign website at ImpactResponse.ca;
- Creating Action Working Groups to work on detailed designs of proposed actions with dozens of organizations across Canada from Fogo Island and Vancouver Island to Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg;
- Mobilizing over 100 individuals and organizations from coast-to-coast-to-coast as Action supporters; and
- Providing solutions and a submission to the federal government to accelerate the deployment of the Social Finance Fund and enhance the commitment and scope of the Investment Readiness Program.
Moving forward, we are proud to support the CCEDNet campaign to advance the implementation of the Social Finance and Social Innovation Strategy and we are also working on our Action Three agenda to support the development of community capital institutions.
We co-designed a convening of community capital stakeholders with Ontario Trillium Foundation and Pillar Nonprofit Network
In late October 2020, over 50 representatives from Ontario’s community of place-based funders, investors, and intermediaries came together to discuss community capital approaches for our province’s journey to recovery and resilience. This convening was supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) in collaboration with the Scaling Impact network and organized by the Pillar Nonprofit Network. The week-long convening featured:
- Case studies of ten active and emerging models for place-based investing from community capital networks, institutions and partnerships across Canada;
- Insights from the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) and community capital movement in the US, alongside Canadian leaders including community futures organizations and impact leaders driving racial and gender equity; and
- A conversation about how to design the policy and ecosystem infrastructure to scale community capital in Ontario.
You can learn more about the takeaways from the event in our blog featuring five key ways to catalyze community capital in Ontario.
We hosted our annual (virtual) SOCAP20 Canada Day
Supported by the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the SOCAP20 Virtual Canadian Meet-up and Showcase aimed at having attendees discover high impact ventures and funds that proves Canadian leadership in impact investing and entrepreneurship. This engaging and interactive virtual networking event provided the opportunity for over 100 Canadians (and honourary Canadians) to connect and learn more about three Canadian impact investing funds: Deetken Impact, Raven Capital, and Marigold Capital.
Our Genus-SVX Impact Investment Counsel program continues to grow
We are continuing to grow the number of clients and volume of assets dedicated to impact investing through our Genus-SVX Impact Investment Counsel program. As of this fall, over $13 million was invested through this strategic partnership program.
Many issuers and clients closed campaigns or reached significant capital raise and other milestones
A number of issuers closed campaigns or reached significant capital raise and other milestones in 2020. You can read more about the updates in our year end capital raise round-up blog.
SVX Global
Our ecosystem partners in Colombia launched their National Advisory Board for impact investing and we hosted key stakeholders in Canada and Mexico for a Peru-Colombia Impact Investing Study Tour.
We were delighted to collaborate with our SVX MX colleagues and Global Affairs Canada (GAC) to host 20+ representatives from Colombia and Péru in February 2020 for a week-long study tour of Canada and México. We were also thrilled that the Colombian ecosystem launched its National Advisory Board (NAB) as a member of the Global Steering Group (GSG) for Impact Investment. This was the culmination of years of work by the national ecosystem, and represented one of the top five priorities in the ecosystem action plan we co-developed with local partners, again in collaboration with our SVX MX colleagues and Global Affairs Canada (GAC).
We kickstarted an Impact Investing Ecosystem Project in Péru with key partners
After a similar engagement in Colombia and a support from the Government of Canada, four partner organizations including Deetken Impact, Social Venture Connexion (SVX) Canada, SVX MX, and Impacto have combined forces to work together to map the impact investment ecosystem in Peru and start engaging the ecosystem on actionable items. Our work begun with identifying useful reports and insights from market and thought leaders. This allowed us to then create a usable and updatable map of the ecosystem and host the first convening of ecosystem stakeholders.
What’s Next?
Alongside continuing work on a number of the projects above, there are a number of exciting initiatives on the horizon for 2021, including:
- Launching our Impact United initiative with partners, which is a broad-based community and movement of individual investors, families, and private and community foundations across Canada that seek to mobilize their investment capital towards social, economic and environmental justice;
- Starting or scaling place-based funds with key partners in Ontario, with the fund expected to launch by mid-next year;
- Advancing work on our community capital initiative to support enabling policy and ecosystem infrastructure for community capital institutions; and
- Supporting a number of high potential impact projects and issuers across Canada, US and Latin America.
