Vancouver-incorporated Raven Fund Group (RFG) is starting to disburse money from its $20.4 million initial outcomes fund, fund principal Rebecca Waterhouse told BIV this afternoon.
The aim of the fund is to invest in Indigenous communities across Canada, and help them with health and climate-change needs, she said. The fund aims for its investments to make a return of between four and seven per cent annually, Waterhouse added.
"We're not venture capital and this is not an equity piece," she said. "This is not debt either. We invest through service agreements."
She said that the fund continues to accept investor capital and that her goal is for the initial outcomes fund's investable capital to total $50 million by the end of the year.
It made one investment in advance of the fund this month having its first closing of receiving investor capital. That was a $1.8-million investment in the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in Manitoba in January. Waterhouse called that investment a "warehouse deal," and she said that the initial outcomes fund has since bought that investment.
"We are looking at investing in Indigenous service providers that are connected to the community, the beneficiary communities that we're working with," she said.
Eligible communities could be First Nation, Metis or Inuit.
"They don't necessarily pitch us," Waterhouse said. "We work first and foremost with communities, by inbound interest, that are looking to address a complex problem, typically in the space of health or climate."
The fund is led by the legal entity Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds, which is part of the Raven Fund Group.
Raven Indigenous Capital Partners announced in January 2023 that it closed a $100 million venture-capital fund that is set to back early and growth-stage Indigenous enterprises.
