Media Releases

OPEN IMPACT launches to help Canadian investors find their social and environmental impact – and bring impact investing to the mainstream

April 25, 2017

Toron­to, ON – OPEN IMPACT, an online resource to help investors find finan­cial invest­ment prod­ucts that make mon­ey – and make the world a bet­ter place – launched today at www.openimpact.ca.

Impact invest­ing is a fast-grow­ing approach to invest­ing that seeks finan­cial returns as well as mea­sur­able social and/or envi­ron­men­tal impact. Accord­ing to a JP Morgan/Global Impact Invest­ment Net­work study, the glob­al mar­ket for impact invest­ments sur­passed US$60 bil­lion in 2015 and may grow to US$2 tril­lion by 2025. In Cana­da there is already C$9 bil­lion in impact invest­ment, with increas­ing demand from mil­len­ni­al investors who are more than twice as like­ly as baby boomers to show inter­est (Respon­si­ble Invest­ment Asso­ci­a­tion 2016), Despite this rapid growth, many investors and their advi­sors have a tough time find­ing prod­ucts.

“We believe the future of invest­ing will be shaped by a gen­er­a­tion that seeks to align their val­ues with every­thing they do. The old mod­el would have said – keep this infor­ma­tion pro­pri­etary  – but now more than ever we must lead by exam­ple if we expect to engage investors and mar­kets in resolv­ing our most press­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges,” says Norm Tasevs­ki, co-founder of Pur­pose Cap­i­tal.

“A com­mon chal­lenge to those inter­est­ed in impact invest­ing is find­ing prod­ucts. To help them, to help the mar­ket grow, and to bet­ter under­stand this mar­ket as it evolves, we worked with Pur­pose Cap­i­tal to cre­ate OPEN IMPACT,” adds Rod Lohin, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Michael Lee-Chin Insti­tute for Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.

OPEN IMPACT is a free pub­lic resource that includes a search­able inven­to­ry of Cana­di­an impact invest­ing prod­ucts or funds. It launch­es with infor­ma­tion on more than 150 prod­ucts across all asset class­es (equi­ty, debt, fixed income and more), includ­ing 50+ crowd-sourced pro­files with addi­tion­al detail. These prod­ucts aim to achieve a finan­cial return as well as cre­ate tan­gi­ble social or envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, such as improv­ing access to edu­ca­tion, afford­able hous­ing, or bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion.

Most of the 50+ funds pro­filed in greater detail were launched in the last 10 years, but a pio­neer­ing fund at Des­jardins launched in 1971. Fif­teen now have more than C$50 mil­lion each in assets under man­age­ment, includ­ing Renew­al Partner’s Renewal3 Lim­it­ed Part­ner­ship. Eight funds report finan­cial return tar­gets in excess of 12%, such as Green­soil Build­ing Inno­va­tion Fund. Five, such as the Access Com­mu­ni­ty Cap­i­tal Fund, can be accessed by indi­vid­ual investors for as lit­tle as $250.  More details about oth­er funds will be added over time.

OPEN IMPACT is a pub­lic good research part­ner­ship between Pur­pose Cap­i­tal Inc. (a Cana­di­an impact invest­ment advi­so­ry firm), and the Michael Lee-Chin Fam­i­ly Insti­tute for Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship at the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to (a research cen­tre focus­ing on the role of busi­ness in soci­ety).

Pur­pose Cap­i­tal is an impact invest­ment advi­so­ry firm that mobi­lizes all forms of cap­i­tal – finan­cial, phys­i­cal, human and social — to accel­er­ate social progress. More about Pur­pose Cap­i­tal can be found at http://purposecap.com/.

The Rot­man School’s Michael Lee-Chin Insti­tute for Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship helps busi­ness lead­ers inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty into strat­e­gy and prac­tices by devel­op­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing research, tools and cur­ric­u­la. To find out more, vis­it http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/ResearchCentres/LeeChinInstitute.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca