Investments
We have spent several years consciously building strategies to align our financial practices with our mission. In 2022, we made our most important decision yet.
Investments at a glance
In 2022, our Board committed to deploy the entirety of our assets to generate measurable and positive impact in our communities and for the environment. We also aim to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in our portfolio by 2050 at the latest.
7.8M
tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions reduced
Our impact investing portfolio has displaced, replaced or reduced nearly 8 tonnes of GHG emissions.
3,592
affordable housing units financed
Our portfolio helped finance nearly 3,600 affordable housing units, more than twice as many units than in the previous year.
Our endowment as of year-end 2022
As of December 31, 2022, our endowment sits at $655 million. Just over 20% ($132 million) of our assets are committed to impact investing. A further 13% ($84 million) can be classified as active responsible investing.
4.8% of our endowment was allocated to charitable activities in 2022. 100% of the portfolio is invested with targeted negative screens.
Impact Investing
We added two investments to our portfolio in 2022, for a total of 31 investments. The first was a
$4-million Program Related Investment to Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, the second was a
$15-million Mission Related Investment to AlphaFixe Capital.
MRI: Mission Related Investments are financial investments made in either for-profit or non-profit funds with the intent of achieving mission-related objectives. They normally earn market-rate financial returns.
PRI: Program Related Investments are investments made in not-for-profit organizations and social funds to further the Foundation’s programmatic objectives and to generate financial returns, with a tolerance for below-market rates of return.
Our investment strategy
The size and scale of the crises we face today require an urgent mobilization of capital and long-term stable investment.
That is why, over the next five years, we aim to commit the entirety of our endowment towards investing for impact. We will deploy all $655 million of our assets in the form of charitable funding and investments that generate measurable, intentional positive impact in our communities and for the environment.
Aligning our endowment with our mission
The Great Canadian ESG Championship
In 2022, the McConnell Foundation partnered with the Trottier Foundation and seven other co-investors to form the Great Canadian ESG Championship: a $104 million competition for investment managers to showcase the range of responsible investment opportunities in Canada. The Championship was developed in response to the growing number of organizations looking for responsible investment opportunities in a market that currently lacks clear ESG standards.
AlphaFixe Capital secured the largest mandate among the seven winning investment firms.