Ombrello Solutions
Montreal Canada
2024
About Ombrello Solutions
Ombrello Solutions is a not-for-profit organization that works hand-in-hand with DanSa Capital Innovation and a portfolio of external stakeholders to collectively co-create transformative capital instruments. These instruments enable private and institutional investors to allocate funds towards solutions for Healthier Cities. DanSa Capital Innovation focuses on key systemic gaps in the existing capital, governance and ownership mechanisms. We leverage our knowledge of the banking sector, deep real estate experience, impact investing, and conservation finance to bring to market the investment instruments that fund, at scale, solutions for Healthier Cities. What does success look to us: 1. We bring together stakeholders that all benefit from proposed investment solutions but who rarely sit together at the same table and hold a constructive conversation: not-for-profit sector, communities, real estate developers, foundations, private and institutional investors, asset managers, insurance, and municipalities; 2. We rely on our expertise, knowledge, creativity and systemic design skills to collaboratively structure the investment mechanisms to address each group’ risks and pathways for value creation. We secure firm commitments from each stakeholder towards implementation and scalability; 3. We embed transformative legal structures at the core of all investment mechanisms that ensure community ownership and collective governance of the funded assets on the ground; 4. We work with local solution providers to build out a robust pipeline of projects that are ready to be funded from the proceeds of the investment mechanisms. We are currently in the process of researching, designing and structuring two market making investment mechanisms: 1) $250,000,000 Civic Infrastructure Bond, which will pool private and institutional capital at scale and finance a portfolio of urban natural assets that increase cities' climate resilience and benefit communities in every neighbourhood; 2) $100,000,000 Homeless Bond, which is catered to impact investors and whose proceeds will provide 500 individuals and families currently living in shelters due to evictions with permanent homes. Healthier Cities: We could all imagine a thriving city. One agreed set of examples is a livable cities index published by the Economist. What enables cities to be Healthy? We believe that a City brimming with Civic Assets, where investment and maintenance of Civic Infrastructure is a priority - that city could be described as Healthy. We can all attest to a neighbourhood where civic infrastructure flourishes: a neighbourhood where private real estate developments and personal residential properties are complimented by flourishing nature and biodiversity, excellent public school, gov’t funded daycare, library, community health services and public art & music displays. In Montréal, these neighbourhoods: Plateau Mont-Royal, Rosemont, Mile-End, Outremont, are the most desirable and thus the most unaffordable. Vulnerable populations are kept out or treated without dignity and understanding. By creating systemic investment mechanisms we are aiming to demonstrate how private and institutional capital could flow at scale to these civic assets while the value produced by them is redistributed democratically between private stakeholders and community, thus addressing key societal and climate needs. What prevents cities from being Healthy? We could pinpoint three problems: 1. Lack of nature & destruction of biodiversity; 2. Homelessness; 3. Lack of attainable housing. Addressing these problems at scale is a complex systemic challenge and requires stakeholders from multiple sectors to be willing to contribute to orchestrating a solution. It could arguably be looked at as a three bucket problem: Bucket # 1: need for long-term private and institutional capital to complement philanthropic and gov’t fundings; Bucket # 2: need for the collective ownership and governance of the physical assets and the services that benefit both private and public stakeholders; Bucket # 3: need for the actual projects on the ground. At Ombrello Solutions, we focus our work directly on Bucket # 1 and Bucket # 2, while collaborating with organizations in Bucket # 3 in order to build out a robust pipeline of projects that are ready to be funded. Core Team: Ombrello Solutions’ core team includes Anastasia Mourogova Millin and Marie-Sophie Banville. Anastasia brings 21 years of finance and real-estate experience, including being part of launching Canada first impact bank, Vancity Community Investment Bank, and running its commercial group with $1.3-billion in real estate assets and $250-million in loans to not-for-profits, social enterprises and BCorps, in her role as director of lending and impact market development. Anastasia equally possesses in-depth impact investing experience, attained in her role at McConnell Foundation and as global capital co-lead at Dark Matter Labs. Marie-Sophie Banville holds Masters of Urban Studies from the University of Montreal and she is currently completing her PhD in Indigenous law from University of Victoria. Marie-Sophie acquired deep community organizing roots and she dedicated a lengthy portion of her career towards creating and running Vivacité Société Immobilière solidaire: a perpetual affordability fund.
