A visible, investable market for refugee economic inclusion.
The Refugee Impact Fund is a governance-led investment vehicle mobilizing institutional and mission-aligned capital toward refugee-led and refugee-inclusive enterprises across Canada.
Refugees are economic actors. Capital hasn't caught up.
Refugee-led businesses are forming, scaling, and creating value across Canada, yet capital allocation hasn't kept pace. The Refugee Impact Fund treats refugee entrepreneurship as a market opportunity, not a beneficiary category, and gives investors exposure to a segment traditional capital rarely reaches.
Traditional social finance
- Designed from institutions outward
- Short-term pilots
- Output-focused
- Refugees as beneficiaries
The Refugee Impact Fund
- Designed from lived experience upward
- Long-term systems orientation
- Outcomes and pathways focused
- Refugees as economic actors
We validated the thesis through three parallel workstreams:
A system where each part reinforces the others.
The RLI Canada Platform builds the market. The Refugee Impact Fund deploys the capital through two tracks that differ by who they target and the vehicle they use: a microfinance track that builds readiness, and a growth track that invests at scale. Pipeline, capital, and data recycle through the system, reducing risk with every cycle.
Convenes universities, research centres and networks, entrepreneurship hubs, and technical-assistance providers to build shared research, standards, and a common language that make refugee economic inclusion legible to capital. Philanthropic.
R1 · Entrepreneur Activation. Early-stage loans of $10k–25k, readiness support, 90–95% repayment, $500k–1M pool.
Targets individual entrepreneursVehicle: microloansR2 · R3 · E. Structured loans, PRI, and blended capital deployed at scale into refugee-led enterprises and ecosystem infrastructure.
Targets refugee-led SMEs & employersVehicle: blended investmentFour product lanes. Three sector clusters.
Capital is deployed through the Refugee-Lens Investing (RLI) taxonomy, an investment framework created by the Refugee Investment Network to classify and measure capital for refugee economic inclusion. Every deal is tagged by lane and pathway.
Entrepreneur Activation
Business activation, formalization, and early-stage enterprise growth.
SME Growth
Business expansion, contract fulfillment, and capacity growth for refugee-led SMEs.
Workforce Expansion
Workforce growth and hiring expansion that integrate refugees into employment.
Ecosystem Anchor
Market infrastructure, workforce pathways, and investment readiness.
Deployed within three sector clusters:
Full product term sheets, eligibility, and pricing are available to qualified investors in the Data Room.
Impact is a decision variable, not an afterthought.
The Fund applies a structured impact framework aligned to Canada's Common Approach to Impact Measurement, the RLI taxonomy, and select IRIS+ metrics. Impact sits alongside risk and return, shaping underwriting, pricing, and capital allocation, and we measure it from immediate outputs through to long-term, system-level change.
How the framework is applied
Structured for institutional standards.
A blended capital structure absorbs risk across tranches, backed by independent governance, third-party administration, and a phased deployment model.
Concessional and philanthropic capital that absorbs initial losses and de-risks senior positions.
Flexible risk capital bridging catalytic and commercial expectations.
Scaled deployment capital, protected by the layers below.
Complete investment lifecycle:
Collaborate with us
We're exploring opportunities with investors, donors, and ecosystem partners committed to creating social and economic impact for refugees.