Towards Community Finance Development Accelerator 2025 – Canada – YOA

Deadline: April 14, 2025

Applications are open for the Towards Community Finance Development Accelerator 2025. The Towards Accelerator: Community Finance Development Accelerator (TOWARDS) program, designed by SVX in collaboration with the McConnell Foundation and sector companions is a capability-constructing program offering technical data, recommendation, and peer help for group finance intermediaries looking for to drive constructive social and environmental affect by capital.

TOWARDS hopes to help the availability of group finance options and academic applications to underserved communities and intermediaries. From mortgage funds to credit score unions, the Accelerator seeks to empower a spread of group-centric monetary establishments, with a concentrate on enhancing monetary inclusion, fairness, and help for underserved communities.

Program Components

• Weekly Skill-Building Sessions: Tailored periods cowl foundational matters corresponding to monetary administration for communities, social fairness-primarily based lending, principle of change and extra.
• Access to Tailored Support: Personalized recommendation and help from a variety of subject material specialists addressing their distinctive organizational challenges and strategic objectives.
• Mentorship and Coaching: Access to mentorship and training from North America’s main group finance establishments.
• Networking Opportunities with Canadian Investors: Participants could have an OPPORTUNITY to current their funding thesis to buyers and obtain suggestions from each buyers and cohort friends.
• Focus on Community Wealth Building: The program could have a specific emphasis on find out how to function and move cash to finest help fairness-deserving teams or communities. It will discover rising social finance fashions corresponding to group wealth sharing, cooperative possession, group land trusts, and place-primarily based funding mechanisms.

Eligibility

• Organization Type: Existing place-primarily based establishments working at sub-nationwide ranges, together with credit score unions, group mortgage funds, group land trusts, group funding co-operatives, group futures organizations, and related entities positioned inside and serving rural, distant, and/or northern communities.
• Organization Stage: These entities ought to be past ideation and able to scale up operations with at the least one devoted workforce member. This doesn’t imply that the person is full-time, however contributors ought to have at the least one workers member that has the middleman as a part of their job duties.
• Capital Raise: Planning to lift at the least $1 million capital within the subsequent 12 months.
• Impact Intent: Demonstrated dedication to deepen organizational affect or combine affect deeply into enterprise fashions.
• Equity Commitment: Commitment to gender, racial, social, and environmental fairness in present or future operations.
• Community Engagement: Significant group involvement and/or willingness to boost group-targeted initiatives through affect investing.

Note that you don’t want to be an current group finance middleman to apply. If you’re a corporation that has deep relationships in group and are contemplating a monetary providing to raised help your group, they encourage you to apply for consideration.

Required Commitment

• A dedication from 1 or 2 Key workers to attend all digital periods and conferences.
• Full participation and engagement in weekly digital periods (~2 hours per week).
• Completion of related program actions and motion work.
• Engagement with coaches, mentors, and funding pitch periods.

Application

Application timeline:

• Application Deadline: April 14, 2025 (Monday)
• Selection: Week of April 21, 2025
• Program Period: May 5 – July 14, 2025 (Monday to Monday)

Click here to apply

For extra info, go to Towards Accelerator.