Blended Finance Canada is a joint initiative between University of Victoria’s (UVic) Impact Investing Hub, a division of Accelerating Community Energy Transformation (ACET), Scale Institute and Spring to develop a knowledge hub offering practical guidance to help communities across Canada understand and use blended finance to overcome funding barriers.
The initiative was announced on Aug. 25 at the Victoria Forum. Together, the partners aim to create a national research and innovation hub that connects academic researchers, investors, governments, businesses and social-purpose organizations to co-develop financing solutions that move impactful projects from ideas to implementation and scale.
Basma Majerbi, ACET researcher and finance professor within the Gustavson School of Business, says Canada is ripe with ideas for building more resilient and sustainable communities. What is often missing is the financial architecture to move idea to action.
Q. What should Canadians know about blended finance?
A. Blended finance is a way to bring together different types of funding, or capital, to help communities get projects off the ground. A community might combine government grants, philanthropic funding and private investment. Bringing these sources of capital together early on can help reduce investment risk and cover early costs, making the project more attractive for additional investors to step in.
The blended finance approach is especially useful for community led projects that deliver strong social or environmental benefits, such as renewable energy, affordable housing or community infrastructure, but aren’t traditionally the types of projects investors are looking to fund.
Q. What are some current financing challenges that communities face?
A. Imagine your community has a project it’s envisioning but struggling to find the right funding. The project may be too risky, too early-stage, too small or unlikely to generate the returns conventional investors expect. Communities often have to navigate a complicated funding landscape on their own, piecing together government grants, bank loans, private investment and philanthropic funding without knowing how to combine them effectively so one source of capital helps unlock others. That’s where Blended Finance Canada can help. We’ll work closely with researchers and investors to help communities use capital strategically to reduce risk and help unlock additional investment, helping projects that deliver important social, environmental or community benefits—move forward faster.
Q. How will Blended Finance Canada help community groups looking to access funding?
A. Blended Finance Canada will help communities navigate funding options, connect with capital partners and develop practical plans to finance their projects. A knowledge hub of case studies, models and tools will show how other communities have combined different forms of capital to turn projects into reality, offering practical examples communities can learn from as they develop their own financing strategies.
This is particularly important for underserved rural, remote, and Indigenous communities, where projects can be difficult to finance through conventional funding streams. Blended Finance Canada will combine research with real-world experimentation to understand why climate, social-impact and community-led projects struggle to access capital and what financial approaches can help overcome those barriers. We will also examine who participates, who carries the risk and who benefits, ensuring financing solutions reflect community priorities, advance equity and inclusion, and keep economic and social benefits within communities.
This work builds on ACET’s focus on community energy transformation and the Impact Investing Hub’s work connecting research with practice to align funding with climate solutions, community resilience and inclusive economic development. It also builds on expertise from our partners Scale Institute and Spring, as well as from the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience and Royal Roads University.
