FinDev Canada is Canada’s development finance institution with a strong mandate to advance women’s economic empowerment through gender-smart investing. As a committed gender-lens investor, it systematically integrates gender considerations across its entire investment process—using its 2019 Gender Equality Strategy to guide due diligence, portfolio management, and engagement with investees.
From November of 2024 to 2025, Kore Global conducted a theory-based evaluation to assess the effectiveness of FinDev Canada’s current strategies in promoting gender equality within its portfolio of 2X Challenge investments. The evaluation generated robust evidence on what FinDev Canada’s investments and related financial and technical outputs have achieved, while providing actionable recommendations to optimize their approach to gender-smart investing.
Over a period of 12 months, we:
- Developed and refined a theory of change for how FinDev Canada’s 2X-qualified investments are expected to contribute to development outcomes for women as employees, leaders, suppliers, consumers, and entrepreneurs.
- Applied a mixed-method approach, including desk-based review and key informant interviews with clients to assess the portfolio’s gender-related outcomes and impact.
- Examined the role of gender-focused technical assistance and advisory support in driving impact through up to five in-depth case studies.
- Produced comprehensive evaluation and summary reports with actionable recommendations for FinDev Canada, with relevance to the broader development finance ecosystem.
- Shared findings through workshops with FinDev Canada staff and other planned dissemination activities.
This evaluation built on lessons from the first phase of the 2X Challenge (2018-2021) and complements recent evaluations by other development finance institutions (e.g., BII and Proparco), helping to address the growing demand for transparency and accountability in gender-lens investing.
The findings were also integrated within a synthesis report of DFI portfolio evaluations developed by Kore Global.
