{"id":8757,"date":"2026-08-05T15:16:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T18:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ponddeshpande.ca\/?page_id=8757"},"modified":"2026-08-07T09:20:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T12:20:06","slug":"unlocking-capital","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ponddeshpande.ca\/fr\/blog\/unlocking-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Unlocking Capital Where It’s Needed Most"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Blog Post<\/span><\/h3><\/span>
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This blog was authored by Dr. Simon Marmura Brown, Strategic Director, UNB\u2019s Pond-Deshpande Centre<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Unlocking Capital Where It’s Needed Most<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Today, Catalyst Community Finance is<\/span> releasing a report<\/u><\/a><\/span> we\u2019ve collectively spent several months working on:<\/span> the economic case for community finance in Canada<\/span>. To give readers more context, I wanted to say a little about what it is and how it came together.<\/span><\/p>\n

This work started with the team at <\/span>Catalyst Community Finance<\/span>. I got to know them through this project, and through them found myself in working groups with people from all over the country: <\/span>people thinking hard about a <\/span><\/span>different kind of financing for<\/span> <\/span>nonprofits, community organizations, charities<\/span>, and for <\/span>all<\/span> <\/span>the sectors et <\/span>people in our economy who <\/span>struggle to access capital from traditional lenders.<\/span> I hadn\u2019t fully appreciated, until I was in those rooms, just how many people across Canada are quietly working on this. There are many, and there is already a real ecosystem<\/span> (<\/span>approximately $7.35 billion in community-directed capital<\/span>)<\/span> built almost entirely without the federal architecture that supports similar systems in other countries.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

The eco-system\u2019s conviction, which quickly became my own, is that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. So much of what works has already been built and tested in other places: tax-credit models that pull in about<\/span> <\/span>$8 of private capital for every $1 of public cost in the U.S., and as much as<\/span> $20 to $1 in Qu\u00e9bec.<\/span> We can look at what they’ve done and implement it. It isn’t a bulletproof solution, but it starts to move the needle.<\/p>\n

The needle is worth moving. It unlocks capital for very productive parts of our economy: our<\/span> nonprofits et<\/span> charities deliver 8.2% of federal GDP<\/span>,<\/span> more than oil and gas,<\/span> yet are largely shut out of conventional lending.<\/span> It opens up capital to people who face barriers to accessing it, for example, Indigenous entrepreneurs who access only about a tenth of the financing available to comparable businesses. Moreover, where these tools have been tried, they work\u2026 One newcomer micro-loan program we examined returned more than <\/span>$3 in economic activity for<\/span> every public dollar it used and had a <\/span>repayment rate of 98%.<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s really what this report tries to do. It shows the<\/span> <\/span>long history of Canadians inventing et<\/span> proposing new ways to organize our economic lives et<\/span> livelihoods. <\/span>We are one of the countries who are richest in experiments, however, over the years, our federal architecture hasn’t kept up.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

The<\/span> <\/span>five policy proposals<\/span> we\u2019ve put forward would<\/span>, very clearly, <\/span><\/span>benefit exactly the people who need those benefits most.<\/span><\/span> Our own modelling suggests that just one of them\u2014a <\/span><\/span>$250 million fund to capitalize community finance institutions<\/span>\u2014would generate around $523 million in economic output, add $301 million to GDP, and support nearly 4,000 jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m looking forward to what comes next: catalyzing growth in our communities and in our country.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Read the Report Here<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Follow Along<\/h3><\/span>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

T<\/span>o<\/span> learn more about these conversations and to receive updates, subscribe to the Pond-Deshpande Centre\u2019s Newsletter, <\/span><\/span><\/b>here<\/span><\/b><\/a>.<\/span><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":2603,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8757","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nUnlocking Capital Where It's Needed Most - The Pond-Deshpande Centre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A tribute to Gerry Pond, Co-founder of the Pond-Deshpande Centre.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ponddeshpande.ca\/fr\/blog\/unlocking-capital\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unlocking Capital Where It's Needed Most - 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