Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
When I first joined Catalyst, I knew I was stepping into the world of community finance, but I didn’t expect to leave with a transformed understanding of what it truly means to invest in community power. Traditionally, finance and investing are seen as purely profit-driven pursuits. Yet, through my time at Catalyst, I learned that capital can be mobilized not just for returns, but for impact — to serve people, places, and purpose.
This was a new world to me, and I’m deeply grateful to Catalyst co-managers Geraldine Cahill and Jo Reynolds for guiding me through the learning curve. It was an incredible privilege to work alongside, and learn from, two trailblazers whose dedication to positive community impact is both inspiring and unwavering.
Delivering Impact, One Project at a Time
As a small team, we took a highly collaborative approach to further our mission of convening, supporting, and advocating for community finance. My key projects and responsibilities fell under three broad umbrellas: public-facing communication, policy campaign data management and championship, and event-planning support.
As a youth journalist, writing stories of impact is my passion. This summer, Geraldine and I initiated a profile series on a number of organizations across Canada. These profiles are meant to help audiences understand what community finance looks like in practice. Our long-form profiles are based on interviews with senior leadership in select Community Finance Intermediaries (CFIs) such as Indwell and Fair Finance Fund.
Our shorter profiles are more of a snapshot view of a CFI’s mission, impact, and financial products. Going into deep-dive research in these organizations gave me a holistic understanding of funding gaps in underserved communities. For example, I learnt how funding for Indigenous communities is usually slow, top-down, and not focused on what works, and how Raven Outcomes is changing that by putting communities in the lead and tying funding to real results through their Community-Driven Outcomes Contracts (CDOCs).
Further, this June we launched the “Raising Our Voices for Community Finance – Engage Your Local Leaders” campaign to advocate for more government support for a strong network of community-responsive financial institutions. As someone aspiring to work in policy advocacy in the future, it was amazing to get an insight into how policy platforms are designed and publicized. My work mainly involved ecosystem mapping work by identifying CFIs across Canada and updating our organizational database with partnership progress to support our campaign outreach.
Moreover, Catalyst is planning its flagship conference, Catalyst: Community Finance Summit, to advance the community finance sector. I’ve always found event-management to be fulfilling work as it involves turning ideas into real-world experiences. My support for this project entailed drafting a partnership and sponsorship proposal, logistical work like hotel and reception venue research and coordination, as well as exploration of possible tours of Winnipeg social enterprises for guests to experience the wealth of local community finance.
Lastly, I also had the exciting opportunity to help SVX organize their Towards: Community Finance Development Accelerator, which is a capacity-building program for community finance intermediaries seeking to drive positive social and environmental impact in their communities through lending and investing. I led the peer support aspect of the program, connecting peers with each other for 1:1 chats based on their needs assessment and organizational objectives.
I am thankful to the program leads, Helen Zhou and Paula Sahyoun, for welcoming me into the team and opening the doors of impact investing for me. The SVX team is not only warm and highly collaborative, but also experts in the Canadian social innovation ecosystem.
Growing Through the Work
This role helped me sharpen both technical and interpersonal skills, especially in the areas of network mapping, impact storytelling, report writing, workshop facilitation, and policy analysis. Through drafting partner profiles and supporting a national campaign, I developed a stronger command of clear, purposeful communication tailored to diverse audiences.
Supporting the SVX Towards Accelerator also improved my stakeholder engagement and program coordination skills, while the Catalyst Summit planning further strengthened my logistics capabilities, and reinforced the importance of cross-sector relationship-building in advancing systems-level change.
More broadly, I gained exposure to collaborative, equity-centered approaches to social finance — learning how power can be redistributed when communities are trusted as co-designers, not just beneficiaries, of financial tools and solutions.
Most meaningfully, this role welcomed me into a generous and visionary community within the social finance and innovation space. From the Catalyst Stewardship Group and national network members, to the SVX team and the Towards cohort, I had the opportunity to learn from leaders advancing impact through affordable housing, Indigenous-led finance, regenerative agriculture, and more. Their work has expanded both my sense of what’s possible and my commitment to supporting it.
Photo by Janne Simoes on Unsplash
The Path Forward
Having seen the impact of community finance and how it supports people and organizations from various walks of life, be it people with mental health challenges who want to start a new business, or small scale farmers in the field of regenerative farming, I can confidently say that I will always be a strong supporter of this sector and Catalyst’s work.
In my own career, this experience has sparked a deeper interest in impact investing, systems thinking, and policy advocacy. I’m especially drawn to roles that sit at the intersection of research, strategy, and social innovation — work that enables us to reimagine how capital flows and whom it serves. The exposure I’ve had to the broader social finance ecosystem through Catalyst and SVX has given me both the inspiration and tools to continue down this path with greater clarity and conviction.
Please feel free to connect with me through Linkedin or my email below:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lubaba-m/
Email: lubaba.mahmud02@gmail.com