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About

Black Opportunity Fund (BOF) is a community-led registered Canadian Charitable organization, that supports a  prosperous, healthy and thriving Black Canada by challenging anti-Black racism in two ways. First, we respond to long standing underinvestment in Black communities.  We do this by delivering sustainable and needs-informed capital streams, managed by Black people for the benefit of  Black communities, which disrupt  ineffective and disempowering contemporary funding practices. Second, we work nationally to strengthen collective actions by Black organizations and leaders, helping them to create new and more impactful ways to support and advocate for our community.

BOF prioritizes initiatives around education and youth, health, women and gender, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, arts, culture and recreation, and food insecurity, that impact the quality of life in Black communities across Canada.

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Black Opportunity Fund fulfills its mandate by:

  • Facilitating access to capital for Black-led businesses to drive economic empowerment through the disbursement of loans, equity investments and other funding support.
  • Providing grants to Black-led not for profits and charities, who are leading initiatives that impact the quality of life in Canada’s Black communities.

Black Opportunity Fund recognizes and is committed to reduce the power imbalances inherent to funder/fundee relationships and to use an anti-oppression and intersectional lens. We use trust based participatory decision-making processes so the communities who are most impacted by our work have a say in how we carry out our mandate.

Black Opportunity Fund’s Registered charity
#727678070 RR 0001

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“It is not your duty to be average. It is your duty to set a higher example for others to follow.”

– Lincoln Alexander

Strategic Pillars
and Core Values

Mission

BOF supports a prosperous, healthy and thriving Black Canada by challenging anti-Black racism in two ways. First, we respond to long standing underinvestment in Black communities. We do this by delivering sustainable and needs-informed capital streams, managed by Black people for the benefit of Black communities, which disrupt ineffective and disempowering contemporary funding practices. Second, we work nationally to strengthen collective actions by Black organizations and leaders, helping them to create new and more impactful ways to support and advocate for our community. BOF prioritizes initiatives around education and youth, health, women and gender, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, arts, culture and recreation, and food insecurity, that impact the quality of life in Black communities across Canada.

Strategic Pillars

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“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

– Harriet Tubman

Supporting Black businesses across Canada.

  • Providing grants for Canadian Black businesses.
  • Creating an inclusive lending program for Black led businesses who have been declined lending by traditional financial institutions.
  • Providing capacity building programs for Black entrepreneurs.
  • Providing non repayable funds to support Black entrepreneurs while they are enrolled in BOF funded capacity building programs.
  • Subsidizing the costs of mandatory licenses, permits and certifications to help Black businesses scale.
  • Developing a Venture Capital Fund focused on equity investments in Black led businesses and a fund of funds to help build the capacity of other Black VCs.

Supporting Black not-for-profits and charitable organizations across Canada.

  • Delivering targeted granting programs to build the capacity and scale of impact of B3 charities and not-for-profits including, but not limited to: education, health, arts and culture and Criminal Justice.
  • Capacity building for Black leaders (Executive Directors, Senior Leadership, etc.) in the charitable sector.

Enabling impact to Black communities through partnerships with other values-aligned organizations

Strengthening collective action (convening, knowledge creation, advocacy) to support Black communities.

  • Convening and hosting events for Black organizations (charities, not-for-profits, businesses).
  • Supporting research that fills gaps in knowledge about the needs of the Black community in Canada.
  • Creating coalitions and working groups around specific areas of need/advocacy for the Black community.
  • Supporting and facilitating awareness and advocacy campaigns.

Building a thriving and sustainable national organization

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“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

–Alice Walker

Core Values

BOF recognizes the diversity of Canada’s Black communities and we strive to integrate an intentional, measurable approach to address the long standing intersecting vulnerabilities resulting from systemic injustices and racism. Our work is guided by these core values:

INTEGRITY – We uphold and embed ethical principles in all of our work and decision making, being accountable and transparent to the valued communities that we serve, in order to build trust.

EXCELLENCE – We deliver consistent quality in all we do, and challenge ourselves to continually set new benchmarks and exceed expectations.

INCLUSIVITY – We are committed to supporting & celebrating the intersectionality of all Black communities across Canada to deliver equitable access and outcomes.

SUSTAINABILITY – We create financially resilient and innovative revenue models working with partners that help drive self-sufficiency and have measurable long term impact.

ENGAGED – We intentionally commit to reciprocal dialogue with community & stakeholders to amplify community voices, and we do so with passion and empathy.

BOF Additional Information

Our
Founders
2024
Financial Report
2024 / 2025
Annual Report