Just being announced that the MaRs Discovery Centre will now host The Centre for Impact Investing with an initial funding from Rockefeller Foundation and the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. With help from Paul Martin this can’t be anything but good? RIGHT!
Here’s the definition of “Impact Investing”: Impact investing refers to investments made based on the practice of assessing not only the financial return on investment, but also the social and environmental impacts of the investment that happen in the course of the operations of the business and the consumption of the product or service which the business creates.
The hopes for creating a new Investment bond in this field is no “small potatoes” as the planned investment is forecasted as follows: The total Canadian impact-investing market is currently $2-billion, according to MaRS, but is expected to grow to $30-billion in 10 years. Proponents, such as the Canadian Task Force on Social Finance, say governments must make a number of regulatory changes and buy into the concept before it can take off.
Can people make money off “re-wiring social habits of people”?…………you decide!
MaRS to launch Centre for Impact Investing
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012 Globe and Mail
Proponents of social-impact investing have scored a victory, with Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District set to announce the creation of a centre that will promote the concept in Canada.
The Centre for Impact Investing will be designed as a national hub for social finance initiatives, which are much further developed in the U.K. and the U.S. than they are in this country.
A number of high-profile Canadians, including former prime minister Paul Martin and Macquarie Capital Markets Canada chairman Stanley Hartt, have been working to change that, and to push the concept in this country.
Social finance means using traditional financing tools in a way that generates not only financial gains, but also social ones.
It includes innovative ideas such as social impact bonds, where private investors help fund not-for-profit projects and the investors are paid a return that comes from the money the projects save government.
For example, last year the U.K. Ministry of Justice teamed with Social Finance, a British organization similar to what the Canadian Centre for Impact Investing hopes to become, to launch the world’s first social-impact bond…………………………………………..
Also here is an announcement from RBC that shows some “strange thought processes” about this Social Manipulation of people’s ideas through $$$ investments.
RBC Announces $20 Million in Commitments to New Social and Environmental InitiativeRBC Impact Fund Breaks New Ground in Canadian Banking SectorTORONTO, January 24, 2012 — RBC today announced a $20 million commitment to a new social and environmental initiative aimed at facilitating solutions to social and environmental problems. “Impact finance” describes a range of financial vehicles and services that use private capital to finance solutions to social and environmental challenges while generating financial return, and is expected to help drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. This initiative is comprised of:
“We’ve been waiting for the right moment to launch a program of this nature, and the moment is now,” said Gordon M. Nixon, president and CEO, RBC. “We are confident that our initial investment of $10 million in the RBC Impact Fund will not only spark entrepreneurship and innovation in Canada, but also catalyze similar investments from others in the business community. We are also proud to put our money where our values are by investing an additional $10 million of our own funds through the RBC Foundation in socially and environmentally screened funds.” |
February 25th, 2012 at 5:43 am
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