Workshop: Investment Readiness for Social Entrepreneurs

Bonus Event, Week 5: Social Entrepreneurship 101

Brought to you by the O.N.E. Social Enterprise Partnership and your host, the Centre for Social Innovation. Delivered by Kevin Taylor, MaRS Centre for Impact Investment.

You’ve built your business, you’ve spent the time to prove that you understand your customers pain points and can deliver a solution they’re willing to pay for. How do you go out and find capital to help you scale things even further?

The investment journey for a social enterprise is very similar to a traditional business with one major difference: impact investors. Depending on the scale and opportunity of your business you may be able to raise capital from traditional investors, impact investors, or both! Regardless, you will need to be able to go through Due Diligence with any potential investor to demonstrate that you’ve put the time and thought into your business to give it the best shot of success.

To help get you get started, we’ve provided a typical Due Diligence Checklist that includes the types of documents investors will be looking for. Now, not every document listed may be relevant to you, but if they are, I’d spend some time putting them together so when an investor is interested in learning more, you can impress them with a well organized, up to date, deal room.

One of the most important tools in your fundraising tool kit is your pitch deck. Pitch presentations come in all shapes and sizes, but unless you are a pitch master, I would stick with the basics and make sure you’re covering the key information investors are looking for. The pitch shouldn’t necessarily answer all questions (that would be a very long, and very boring presentation) but should cover enough to entice an investor to want to learn more.

We will also cover unique sources of social investnment capital and help you to practically assess your viability for this type of funding.

Please register for one of the complimentary ticket types.

Be sure to arrive 15 minutes early to check-in at the registration desk with government-issued photo ID.

Contact kimberly@socialinnovation.ca for more information.

*You are not required to attend Social Entrepreneurship 101 to participate in this workshop