Who We Are
The Table of Impact Investment Practitioners is a community of practice for social finance intermediaries. In close collaboration with Quebec’s CAP Finance, the Table encompasses a pan-Canadian, pan-sector network, comprising community loan funds, worker coops, social enterprise funds, values-based financial institutions, Indigenous-led investment firms, and microloan funds spearheaded by and serving racialized, underserved and vulnerable communities. Some offer wrap-around support to a wide gamut of social purpose organizations, others are thematically-focused, connecting impact investors with community-rooted solutions, including employment opportunities and skills training for marginalized groups, settlement and integration services for New Canadians, innovative approaches to fighting poverty, building affordable housing, enhancing food security, advancing sustainable consumption in a low-carbon economy, developing clean technologies, or ensuring supports – and improving outcomes – for people living with disabilities, addictions and other chronic health conditions. The network also encompasses a raft of promising new, emergent and envisaged funds, and networks of community investment organizations developing social finance tools for local, rural and remote communities.
Mission
A vibrantly pan-Canadian community of practice, TIIP brings together the expertise and energy of Canada’s experienced and emergent social finance fund managers to expand the social purpose marketplace, by offering investors opportunities to invest in enterprises and initiatives producing social and economic benefits, as well as a financial return, while providing social entrepreneurs and community organizations with access to the capital and tools they need to scale and thrive. Leveraging the multiplier effects of triple-bottom-line capital, we invest in more generative, sustainable, just, and inclusive communities.
Mandate
A longstanding community of practice, the Table brings together impact investment fund managers and social finance practitioners:
As a source of peer learning, mutual capacity-building and reciprocal mentorship, including the candid exchange of exemplary practices, cautionary tales, and community-grounded experience;
As ecosystem-mobilization partners in building the social economy;
As advocates, identifying shared priorities and speaking with a collective voice to advance an enabling policy environment for social finance;
As allies and catalysts for services and actions needed to support and amplify the social purpose marketplace in Canada.
Vision & Values
The principles guiding our collaborative work and with all our partners, are transparency, reciprocity, integrity and accountability. Our vision is underpinned by commitments to vibrant diversity and authentic inclusion as inherent values in striving for more equitable outcomes in more resilient democracies. We acknowledge that the path to Reconciliation and full decolonization is a journey, as we strive to contribute to more cohesive communities, sustainable environments and a greater collective resilience.
The principles that guide us in our work, and in our collaborations with others are:
Transparency
Reciprocity
Integrity
Accountability
The values that characterize the world we want to see are:
Reconciliation
Equity
Democracy
Inclusion
Sustainability
The Table of Impact Investment Practitioners (TIIP) is the most recent name for a longstanding community of practice, whose more grizzled members have been meeting regularly since 2011, initially as the Social Finance Investment Funds table, or SFIFt ( think the opening of a carbonated drink). By a more wending route, still more veteran members trace their lineage to the precursor Canadian Community Investment Network or CINC (as happily in).
In 2017 Ministers Duclos and Hajdu appointed sixteen….. drawn from……… to a.Social Innovation and Social Finance Co-creation Steering Group tasked with recommending a national SISF strategy ….. 2018 report twelve recommendations, including the SFF.
In 2013-2014 the SFIF Table compiled the Eight Tracks/Huit Pistes compendium, with support from ESDC. That same year, active efforts to ensure that the table was inclusive of all eligible funds brought together fourteen funds together as the National Impact Investment Practitioners table (NIIP, for nipping at the heels of conventional finance.) The Table has continued to gather, in person and remotely, several times a year, engaging partners and policy-makers in raising awareness of the power of social finance in simultaneous pursuit of social, environmental and financial outcomes.
To assist with assumptions and potential approaches to …….. Implementation ………. NIIPt prepared Leveraging Canada’s Social Impact Funds, a compendium of the experience of fourteen social finance intermediaries managing twenty funds…. The SFF was announced in the ……. 2018 Fall Economic Statement.
In 2019 NIIPt received support …….federal Investment Readiness Program (IRP). as an Ecosystem Mobilization partner…….,focused on its active capacity- building for emergent intermediaries and social purpose organizations. ……..The … practical collaborations among readiness partners, researchers, and service providers across the ecosystem, … accessible tools and resources… including a “State of Affairs” assessment of Canada’s social finance infrastructure and marketplace. … Secretariat, dedicated working groups and project partners to put in place core infrastructure and complete key deliverables…
In 2020, the NIIPt formally incorporated as a non-profit organization under its new name, the Table of Impact Investment Practitioners (TIIP).
