History
Who is Community Finance
Community Finance is a social enterprise wholly owned by Positive Capital Limited.
Community Finance was established in 2019 to help support New Zealand’s charitable Community Housing Providers with access to finance at scale and a lower cost. This can help these charities on the front line of the affordable housing crisis scale up and deliver desperately needed new social housing.
We aim to provide the connection between wholesale investors to positive impact investments. Our primarily focus is on financing leading Community Housing Providers that provide affordable homes around the country with long-term Government funding.
Since 2019 we have raised over $165m to provide finance to charities around the country.
To help support social impact and as part of our commitment as a social enterprise, Community Finance consciously operates on a lower margin than other mainstream lenders and banks. By operating on a lower margin, we are able to help make the cost of finance lower for Community Housing Providers. This is part of our commitment to support New Zealand.
In 2024, Community Finance launched the Community Housing Funding Agency (CHFA). The CHFA is the beginning of a new chapter in supporting vulnerable households, unlocking scale and delivering better value for taxpayers.
The CHFA will bring together philanthropists, fund managers, Government funding and leading charities, and is based on proven models used successfully overseas to efficiently provide lower cost finance to Community Housing Providers (CHPs) and unlock social investment at scale.
To provide our service and resource our social mission as a social enterprise, we have the support of many shareholders, committed to demonstrating through action that businesses can prioritise and deliver positive social impact. We have 11 shareholders supporting our purpose, including the Tindall Foundation, Impact Investments Limited, Lindsay Investment Trust, K1W1, Edgar Private Capital Limited and Hoku Foundation.
What is a social enterprise?
A social enterprise is a purpose focused organisation which has a social and/or environmental mission, rather than a more traditional business purpose purely focused on profit.
For Community Finance and Positive Capital, we have a social mission particularly focused on supporting the delivery of affordable housing at scale. To help achieve this social purpose we:
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- Focus our activities on supporting registered charities that are Community Housing Providers in New Zealand. These charities are on the front line of supporting vulnerable households through social housing. By lowering the cost of finance for these charities, we are improving their capacity to help more people and reinvest surpluses to this important purpose;
- Operate on lower margins. This is a key feature of our purpose. By operating on margins much lower than banks, we can optimise the returns available for investors (to encourage more impact investment to support Community Housing Providers) and lower the cost of finance for the charities on the front line; and
- Advocate and educate. We invest both time and resources to support charities, raise awareness around impact investing in New Zealand and advocate for greater support and funding for the Community Housing sector with philanthropists, impact investors and the Government. We believe this can and will increase awareness and levels of support available to charities in this space over time.
For Community Finance and Positive Capital, one of the key benefits of operating as a social enterprise is that it has enabled us to raise capital to support community housing from a wider range of philanthropists, socially minded investors and charities. It was only through this capital that we were able to launch and provide our services. Our shareholder mix includes both registered charities (including the Tindall Foundation and Hoku Foundation) and social minded investors too. We are excited to show how businesses can be a force for good, have a social purpose and unlock impact investments at scale for our country.
You can read more about social enterprises here: https://www.parryfield.com/social-enterprise-matter/