Social impact investment platforms are cropping up to help connect investors with investment opportunities. The latest, a platform for accredited and unaccredited investors called Social Venture Connection (SVX), recently launched in Toronto.
An earlier version of SVX, introduced four years ago, served accredited investors only. “We really see this as a game changer for impact investing in Canada,” says founder Adam Spence, who estimates there are about 25,000 social enterprises in the country.
The site is akin to investment platforms in the U.S., such as ImpactUs, a broker-dealer site that features a mix of impact investments, including CDFI loan funds and at least one direct investment opportunity in a nonprofit, for mainly accredited investors.
The new site—which Spence dubs “SVX 2.0.”—launched with a dozen investment opportunities, including debt and equity and nonprofits and for-profits. They include First Nations Bank of Canada, which aims to raise up to $7 million from for its portfolio of loans to Aboriginal-owned businesses; the Immigrant Access Fund, which provides micro loans to help immigrants pay for licensing and training so they can work in their field; EarthShield, an agtech startup developing an organic sprayed bio-resin to help farmers boost productivity, reduce costs and promote a healthier ecosystem; and Lucky Iron Fish, a social enterprise that makes a cast-iron cooking tool providing dietary supplementation to people with iron deficiency.
Spence first hatched the idea for a social stock market in 2007. At that point, the concept of impact investing was new—so new that it took him many years to get a plan ready for regulators. In 2013, the first iteration of SVX was launched as a matchmaking database, but not for the general public. It has worked with about 150 ventures and funds, raising over $100 million in financing.[…]
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