Canada’s Social Finance Forum is entering an exciting next phase in line with the exponential growth and evolution of the market. Future of Good and SVX will co-produce the next event in 2023.

Originally incubated and annually hosted by MaRS, the Social Finance Forum is Canada’s premier conference for learning, connecting and transforming social finance and impact investing. Since 2007, thousands of changemakers have gathered at the MaRS Centre in Toronto to accelerate the adoption of social finance. As a truly multi-sector experience, governments, domestic and international NGOs, academia, philanthropy and the corporate sector have been key stakeholders and participants.

The Social Finance Forum helped to catalyze the growth of Canada’s social finance system that has led to over $20 billion in impact assets under management in Canada, a federal Social Finance Fund ready to add over $700 million to the market, and hundreds of purpose-driven professionals working collaboratively to create an industry dedicated to making more capital create positive social and environmental outcomes. Today, changemakers everywhere are reshaping the purpose of and relationship with capital.

“The first Social Finance Forum started 15 years ago with a small group of visionaries committed to identifying effective pathways for financial investment in public benefit. MaRS is grateful to these pioneers for the foundation they created, and the trust they put in us to grow the Forum and the Canadian social finance market,” said Jason Sukhram, Director of Impact Finance & Measurement of MaRS.

“MaRS is excited with the vision that Future of Good and SVX have articulated for a renewed Social Finance Forum. Today, MaRS is focused on how to scale impact investing to address big challenges in climate change,” said Alex Ryan, Senior Vice President of Partner Solutions at MaRS.

This includes growing the Municipal Impact Investment Fund for GHG mitigation projects with Canadian municipalities as well as expanding MaRS’s impact measurement and management services for ventures, corporates, governments and investors who need rigorous independent assessment of their triple bottom line impact.

“Wealth, investing, markets, philanthropy, policy and profit — all of these profoundly affect the ability for people and the planet to thrive coming out of covid. MaRS has done an exceptional job of leading the Social Finance Forum to date, and Future of Good is excited to build upon their work. The conference will be reimagined because finance is getting reimagined. The future of capital is anti-racist, intersectional, decolonized, feminist, planet-first, and place-based. We’re thrilled to bring our journalism, story-based learning, convening expertise and pan-Canadian community of changemakers to the next phase of the Social Finance Forum,” said Vinod Rajasekaran, publisher & CEO of Future of Good.

“Canada’s impact investing market is undergoing tremendous growth and transformation. We need an opportunity to convene active, emerging and interested leaders to share, learn, and collaborate in order to accelerate the successful development of the sector.  We are incredibly excited about the chance to work with Future of Good and other community partners on the next phase of this flagship event,” said Adam Spence, CEO of SVX.

The next Social Finance Forum will be held online in Spring 2023 and aims to convene 1000 changemakers across diverse sectors passionate about capital to imagine and shape a new agenda for transforming finance for a new era of human potential. The conference agenda will incorporate a mix of talks, debates, masterclasses, artistic experiences, and peer-to-peer exchange. Future of Good and SVX aim to engage a range of diverse active and interested social finance stakeholders from coast-to-coast-coast and beyond our borders.

If you are interested in partnership opportunities including participating as a lead or supporting sponsor for the 2023 Social Finance Forum, please get in touch.