Ajah, the Investment Readiness Data partner, is ready to publish four reports on the Investment Readiness Program (IRP)! These reports represent initial analyses of the aggregate IRP dataset; in other words, parts of the story of Social Purpose Organizations (SPOs) in Canada. These four reports look at the big picture of IRP funding through a lens of funded and unfunded applications, and the link will be live on the website soon.
On Wednesday March 27th at 3pm Eastern, Ajah (Ben McNamee & Richard Bartle-Tubbs) will be presenting the four reports in an hour-long webinar. You are warmly invited to attend by registering here.
The first report provides insights into geographical distributions of applications, the definition and characteristics of a SPO, and the addressed and unaddressed needs within the Social Finance ecosystem. Additionally, it aims to analyse the extent of how Social Finance touches diverse industries and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The three subsequent reports take a closer look at the IRP’s aims of (i) ensuring equity-deserving SPOs are able to access IRP funds; (ii) understanding the relationship between access to IRP funds and the types of legal and economic frameworks in which SPOs operate; and (iii) capturing the impact that SPOs have on the communities they seek to serve. These papers are meant to fill knowledge gaps identified through the synthesis of ideas from the IRP participants, program facilitators, and external stakeholders.
These reports are based on available data collected through the administration of the IRP. As such, the insights derived within are limited to this scope. Much of the potential value in this paper is not the direct research that it presents, but rather the follow-up questions and more nuanced research paths that it may uncover for you. We encourage you to reflect on the data presented here and the insights and hypotheses that they derived. To what extent do these insights and hypotheses resonate with your experiences and expertise? What hypotheses and insights can you derive from our initial findings? What future research questions does this paper spur for you? With this report we are hoping to start an ongoing conversation. We look forward to seeing your contributions as well.
