Kim Hardy is Pacific Program Lead at MakeWay – she works with funders, changemakers, and innovators to amplify community driven solutions across British Columbia. Currently, Kim is a Fellow at Integrated Capital Institute, hosted by RSF Social Finance, where financial activists are leveraging capital as a tool for positive change.
The curriculum is grounded in the understanding that we live in an outdated economic system that perpetuates inequality and ecological harm. Fellows are seeking to learn from one another and find new ways to align economic interests with social equity and ecological integrity. We’ll touch base with Kim a few times over the course of her 9-month long Fellowship and explore how she’s bringing this learning to MakeWay (and vice versa!)
Growing up in Snaw-Naw-As Territory on Central Vancouver Island, I remember well the War in the Woods, clearcutting protests and blockades – the rate our old growth forests were being destroyed was alarming to me. Compounding this was the inequity of where revenues landed and who was left with the social and ecological harms – and it continues today. In my work supporting Indigenous communities to activate durable ecological and wellbeing solutions, I witness the harms caused by an extractive financial service sector driven by investments made for the sole purpose of increasing revenue. The disconnect between harms perpetuated by investment activity and repairs attempted through philanthropy can no longer be ignored.
With the climate emergency exacerbating social inequities and vulnerabilities – we need to pay attention and we need to figure this out. Now. We need to disrupt the financial sector that perpetuates these inequities. The ICI Fellowship is creating space and collaboration for innovation in the financial service sector to activate capital towards a just, inclusive, and regenerative economy.
As an activator of philanthropy and community-based solutions, MakeWay has a unique line of sight into the needs of community enterprise, as well as the values of our network of funders. Our community partners come to us with innovative solutions for their challenges and we help create pathways of funding to activate those solutions. We need to do more to release and flow stagnant capital while illuminating investment blind spots that perpetuate harms.
Our funder partners are craving innovative ways to shift power and realize their values and visions for the world across their philanthropic and investment capital. Collaboration with visionary donors and activators like our friends at Dragonfly Ventures, have led to the development of new charities and momentum towards the elimination of toxics and protection of freshwater and are changing the game of philanthropy and forging the path for mission aligned investment in Canada.
Our remote community based Indigenous NGO partners such as Qqs Project Society and Nawalakw Healing Society are actively integrating different sources of capital towards revitalization of language, culture and Indigenous economy. MakeWay’s Northern Program is supporting community-based enterprise and Indigenous entrepreneurs through EntrepreNorth. Innovation towards the creation of a regenerative economy is happening across the shared platform – Resource Movement, Share Reuse Repair Initiative and Binners’ Project to name just a few – there are many more initiatives working to move us towards a healthy, equitable and just economy.
Integrating philanthropic and investment capital outcomes will require investments of time and resources into creating the infrastructure and tools needed to activate capital. It is early in the Fellowship, but what is clear to me is that no one organization, institution, or individual is going to be able to fill the gaps and remove the barriers of our current financial system – it’s going to take partnership, collaboration, and effective networks. With four cohorts, the Fellowship has cultivated an active network of financial activists at every point of the spectrum of the financial service sector – from shareholder activists to community entrepreneurs, individual wealth holders to underwriters and intermediaries – and as we each explore “what is mine to do”, there is strength in knowing we are all doing it together.
