Raven Indigenous Impact Foundation (RIIF)
Growing an Indigenous-centered economy requires the creation of new finance models and systems built on Indigenous values and worldview. In stride with community, we nurture these solutions and enable Indigenous resiliency.
The Raven Indigenous Impact Foundation (RIIF) is a registered charity established to develop, deploy and evaluate outcomes finance tools that empower communities to address complex community-level issues.
With supportive capital, processes and expertise required for success, we help Indigenous communities achieve their goals and have a positive and lasting impact on individuals and lives, the community, and the ecosystem.
Voting member: Jeffrey Cyr
Member since 2022
Meet a member: Raven Indigenous Impact Foundation
What impact has your recent work led to that you are most proud of?
Our mission is to improve the wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples. The Raven Outcomes Finance model offers evidence-based financing that can address complex, Indigenous issues from an Indigenous approach. Raven has developed and executed a proprietary community-driven outcomes contract process in Canada in on-reserve geothermal energy ($7.5M) with another in Type 2 Diabetes forthcoming. These tools have great potential for the beneficiary communities to scale effective health and climate solutions as well as offer investors and outcomes purchasers’ new pathways to deploy capital and achieve robust social outcomes.
What challenges and barriers are you working on addressing?
There are 11.3M Indigenous Peoples across North America; their Human Development Index (HDI) rank is the lowest of any racialized group. Contemporary Indigenous society has been deeply affected by a unique history with colonization, discriminatory government policy, forced assimilative practices, and sustained economic restrictions. Indigenous communities now face long-term intractable socioeconomic issues that cannot be solved by a status quo approach. At the heart of these intersectional challenges it the lack of access to the right type of capital, capital that supports community priorities and agency. This supportive Indigenous financial intermediary space is where Raven is able serve and add-value.
What is your call to action for our membership?
Our experience working in and engaging with Indigenous communities is that current funding models and approaches have failed to produce lasting change or impact. Indigenous communities face the most pressing social and economic problems in Canada and billions of dollars of annualized spending by the state has largely failed to achieve better outcomes. At Raven, we believe that in order to make lasting change we have to rethink how we approach social problems, and we have to center Indigenous communities and Indigenous knowledge in that approach. That is the only way we can drive solutions that work at scale. We invite our friends and allies to take this critical lens to the understanding of the power dynamics at play in their capital allocation strategies. Asking tough questions such as, are our investments perpetuating injustice and colonial systems and/or how best do we support the infusion of Indigenous values into our investment thesis' and activities?
What are you looking forward to in the coming months?
With the Fall season comes a renewed sense of energy and inspiration. The collective Raven team, inclusive of our community partners, are hard at work in the co-design of our Type 2 Diabetes initiative and in the implementation of our Geothermal outcomes contract. We’re eager to continue to see progress on both fronts while also looking forward to the ecosystem engagement and development work we have slated for the coming months.