Social Impact Investments

With the creation of the Vital Social Impact Investment Fund in 2018, the Foundation now offers donors a way to undertake their philanthropic work — as funders of social impact investments. Each investment aligns with the issue areas outlined in the Toronto’s Vital Signs Report. Our mission is to connect philanthropy to community needs and opportunities, and it has been gratifying to leverage one more tool to make systemic change.

We’ve worked with fundholders to grow the program and have together invested $12 million, with $800,000 new social impact investments made in 2021. The growth of our program is in large part due to the nonprofit sector’s innovation and drive for social change. In addition to making our own impact investments, we partnered with Community Foundations of Canada in 2020 and 2021 to promote and administer the Government of Canada’s two rounds of the Investment Readiness Program.

As our loans mature and are paid back, we are able to re-invest, and we will continue to methodically evaluate risks and returns, and do our detailed due diligence on new potential investments that are recommended to the board by the Foundation’s Social Impact Investment Committee.

Read about current and past investments, and reflections on our program to date here.