WWF-Canada works hand in hand with communities, governments, labour groups and the private
sector on practical, lasting solutions to some of the greatest environmental challenges facing our
country and the planet.
To date, we have relied predominantly on traditional philanthropic donations to fund our projects.
In recent years, impact investing has emerged as a rapidly growing pool of capital that is wellaligned with our mission on environmental and social change. At its core, impact investing involves
making investments that generate measurable environmental and social impact alongside a
financial return. We believe that impact capital–working alongside philanthropic capital–has the
power to transform our ability to deliver the scale of change we need to achieve our mission.
Today’s traditional economies and capital markets do not address
the serious environmental challenges facing our planet. As we
tackle the environmental challenges of the 21st century, we need
access to new and creative forms of capital that embrace and
promote the interplay between financial and environmental
sustainability.
Impact investing capital is ideally suited to accommodate the
unique risk/reward balance typically presented by lasting and
scalable solutions to environmental and social challenges. Local
community engagement and ownership is critical to the long
term success – this requires flexibility in investment time
horizons and a tolerance for a diverse stakeholder group being
involved in governance and equity ownership. Impact capital
actively embraces the type of holistic solutions that need to cut
across community groups, supply chains and government bodies
to enable lasting impact.
WWF has experience identifying science-based solutions,
bringing together diverse stakeholders and using a global
network of expertise. Accessing impact capital for our work will
enable us to: (a) invest in more projects, (b) achieve scale sooner
across multiple projects and (c) establish a sustainable selffinancing model.
We see philanthropic capital and impact capital as
complimentary parts of the solution for innovative ideas that are
currently unable to attract traditional private, for-profit capital.
As we increasingly look to impact investing to achieve our goals,
philanthropic capital continues to have a catalytic role to play,
particularly in the early stages, in the development and
assessment of conservation investment opportunities.
Our vision is to create an impact
investment fund to channel capital into
projects with the potential for a step
change in environmental impact through
scalability and financial sustainability.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Serge Mayaka
Senior Officer, Conservation Finance
(416) 489-4567 ext. 7341
[email protected]
Dr. Robert Rangeley
VP, Science, Research & Innovation
(902) 482-1105 ext. 23
[email protected]