Three years ago, the Canadian government set aside $755 million to jumpstart the country’s social finance market (see, “Canada’s Social Finance Fund aims to build an investment ecosystem with ‘wholesale’ impact capital”).
The bet is paying off: Realize Capital (Edge) raised an additional $141.7 million in private capital to more than match the government’s $135 million anchor investment. Over two-thirds of Realize Capital’s more than two-dozen limited partners were first-time investors with the fund of funds.
The firm’s backers include Royal Bank of Canada, Concordia University, Canadian Medical Association, and the Metcalf, Toronto, Waterloo Region Community, McConnell and Trottier Family foundations.
“There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the importance of government initiatives to accelerate investment from Canadian wealth holders into domestic companies and projects that improve the lives of Canadians,” said Realize Capital’s Kelly Gauthier. “With this final close achieved, we believe Realize Fund I can provide a blueprint for achieving exactly that.”
Social finance
Realize Capital says it has deployed $111 million into 23 funds. The portfolio includes Vancouver-based Raven Indigenous Capital Partners (Edge), which invests in early-stage Indigenous-led startups in Canada; Thrive Impact Fund (Edge), a place-based fund that invests in social enterprises in British Columbia; Regenerative Capital Group, another British Columbia-based fund that trains and finances local entrepreneurs looking to acquire small and mid-sized businesses in Canada.
Gauthier said Realize Capital’s $276.7 million final close will expand the fund-of-funds’ portfolio, “enabling an inclusive and resilient economy of sustainable Canadian businesses that’s better able to tackle large, complex problems now and into the future.”
