Co-op Conversations: Growing the Social Economy and Co-operative Sector through Accessible Financing featuring Nathalie Villemure

On February 4th, join the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives for their next Co-op Conversations event: Growing the Social Economy and Co-operative Sector through Accessible Financing featuring Nathalie Villemure.

For the past four years, co-operative leaders have stated that the lack of access to financing and capital is one of the most important challenges facing Canadian co-operatives. Meanwhile, Quebec has a very well developed model of financing social enterprises, including co-operatives. Specifically, The Réseau d’investissement social du Québec (RISQ) is a non-profit venture capital fund in Québec dedicated exclusively to developing and growing the social economy through offering accessible and tailored financial tools to support the emergence, development, growth, and consolidation of social economy enterprises. Since 1997, RISQ has invested over $43 million to the Quebec social economy sector.

In this online talk, Nathalie Villemure, Executive Director of RISQ, will describe the work of RISQ, its impact on the Quebec social economy, and offers some thoughts on how this model can be replicated elsewhere.