I found the video above of a recent lecture given by Antony Bugg-Levine of the Rockefeller Foundation, when he came to visit MaRS in Toronto back in early April, to be one of the most insightful and compelling talks on impact investing and social finance that I have come across.

If you are currently working in the private capital investment sector or perhaps with a non-profit or charity organization, interested in social enterprise and sustainable revenue generating models, I would highly encourage you to take some time out of your day to watch this video. It may change your perspective on the traditional view of only using the for-profit model to make money, while only using the charity and non-profit model to address social problems.

In this day and age, where the problems we are facing are accelerating at a pace and complexity never before seen in history, it is evident that we require new approaches and tools that will enable us to tackle these problems at their scale and level of complexity. In the coming decades, experts have noted that we will begin to see rapid systemic changes on many levels, from the weakening of national public institutions, widening gaps between rich and poor, increasing scarcity of energy, and worsening damage of our environment as a result of climate change.

With this in mind, how are we to tackle many of these emerging globally complex problems, given the traditional models of charitable giving and our reliance on government to solve these issues for us?

The simple answer is that we cannot, given the current tools that we have at our disposal.

Antony, who leads the Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, argues that through impact investing–generating a viable social and environmental return while requiring a market-rate risk-adjusted financial return–we are no longer limited to giving money away to charity or waiting for government to take care of the problem, impact investing has given us a third and complimentary tool for solving social problems. He showcased the promise of impact investing by sharing the compelling stories of people from the slums of Hyderabad to farmers in the Congo, and even close to home in Toronto, who now have opportunities at a better quality of life made possible through the use of for-profit investment.

However, Antony also identified a number of challenges that need to be overcome, including advocacy and awareness building of impact investing, if we are to get to a point where it is considered both economically feasible and morally acceptable to tackle a social problem with a for-profit investment.

Until such a time when there is a major shift in cultural beliefs around using for-profit investment for social impact, as well as the emergence of the basic infrastructure (including intermediaries) that will allow actors from all levels (e.g. private investors to pension funds) to engage in impact investing, online platforms such as SocialFinance.ca and organizations such as Causeway and SiG, can continue to inform, convene and organize debates and discussions around this emerging sector and the possibilities that impact investing holds.

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Ashoka Canada Induction 2010

Join us to celebrate the 11 new Canadian Ashoka Fellows

RSVP: http://ashokainduction.eventbrite.com/

Thursday, January 14th, 2010
5:30 pm
MaRS Centre Auditorium
101 College Street, Toronto, ON M5G 1L7

Light refreshments will be served

Featuring

* The eleven new Canadian Ashoka Fellows
* David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World
* Célia Cruz, Ashoka Canada Director
* Fellows Mary Gordon & Al Etmanski, Masters of Ceremonies
* Guests will have the opportunity to engage with leading social entrepreneurs

For more information, contact:

Elisha Muskat
emuskat@ashoka.org
(416) 646-2333

Leading Transformative Change

Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Since 1981, we have elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows in 63 countries. In Canada, 27 Fellows are leading transformative change, inspiring others nationally and globally to be changemakers.

Our Vision

Ashoka envisions a world where Everyone is a Changemaker: a world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change.

Posted via web from renjie’s posterous

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That said, I will be speaking at the upcoming EpCon 2010 student technology conference to be held in Waterloo, Ontario next week on January 15-16, hosted by the up and coming student organization, EPIC Technology Organization founded at the University of Waterloo.

EPIC (which stands for Educate, Promote, Inspire & Connect) promises to bring together North America’s leading tech gurus and 300 student tech enthusiasts from schools all over Canada to imagine where the future of technology is headed. With tech heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, EA, Rogers, CISCO, RIM and IBM present at the conference, I am sincerely humbled to have been asked to deliver one of only three so-called ‘Power Talks‘ on a topic that I am extremely passionate about: social entrepreneurship, more specifically technology in social enterprise.

Given the context of the conference, I will be speaking on how an emerging generation of leaders and changemakers from all over the world, are harnessing the power of online and mobile technology to bring about significant positive social change, most especially to the world’s poor with limited or no access to such technology. Examples abound such as Kiva, where in just over four years, have managed to raise $100 million in the form of microloans for entrepreneurs in developing countries (and most recently, to entrepreneurs based in the US); to organizations such as Cell-Life and SIMpill in South Africa leveraging mobile SMS technology to revolutionize healthcare delivery for patients with HIV/AIDS and TB respectively.

These are only a few of the examples that I hope to showcase at EpCon 2010 next week. As I have said before and will say again, young people have the power and opportunities like never before to affect positive social change in this world, and this will become even more apparent in the decade to come.

If you are interested in attending EpCon 2010, there are still spaces available but you will have to register very soon in order to guarantee your spot. See you next week!

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See and download the full gallery on posterous

DigitalMediaCamp Toronto (#dmcamp) took place this past Saturday, where participants gathered in an attempt to address the question,

“How can we work together to propel Toronto’s technology, content and design communities into the future and make Toronto a globally competitive hub of digital media entrepreneurship and innovation?”

Facilitated by Mark Kuznicki, and supported by the Canadian Digital Media Network, some excellent conversation took place throughout the day around this question, with some concrete action items attached to specific timelines emerging at the end of the day. A number of blog posts have popped up following #dmcamp, providing an overview of the day’s proceedings, including a blog post over at TechVibes by Karim Kanji. For a much more comprehensive listing of blog posts to do with #dmcamp, please visit dmcampto.slinkset.com

The day’s events were captured in real-time, on the #dmcamp Toronto wiki, as well as on ScribbleLive, where any tweets or blog posts with the hashtag #dmcamp, were automatically fed into the ScribbleLive feed. It was almost disarming to find a picture of yourself projected on the wall in real time whilst engaged in a group discussion (look closely at picture 6 and 7 in the photo gallery above). It is interesting to see how social media is changing the way conferences and events are being communicated in real-time for those unable to attend, as well as documented for future reference.

#t4change at #dmcamp

Nick (@petten), Ruby (@rubyku) and myself (@renjie), took part in a conversation facilitated by Gabe Sawhney later in the day, where the topic revolved around connecting the technology industry with community organizations in order to create real change on the ground. Notes from this session can be found here.We brought up Time for Change, known as #t4change in #dmcamp-speak, and how this model is based on the original Timeraiser concept where we value time over monetary donations. We highlighted our pilot event on December 3rd as an existing ‘action’ item that we were already pursuing, and we acknowledged that we did not have all the answers as of yet, but were keenly interested in learning and adapting as the project unfolds.

A lot of people seemed to take interest in this, judging from the quality of the conversation at #dmcamp, as well as the number of times the hashtag #t4change appeared alongside the hashtag #dmcamp on Twitter. We outlined that we were looking to redefine the terms ‘volunteer’ and ’service’, and that we were focused in our efforts to engage young professionals working in the corporate sector, utilizing their professional skills and matching them with opportunities in the community best suited to their skills, interests and passions.

Next steps for #t4change

One of the concrete action-items that emerged from #dmcamp was a commitment to host a roundtable discussion on #t4change at the Centre for Social Innovation sometime in early January 2010, with the help of Mark Kuznicki and Gabe Sawhney. Notes from this session can be found here.

We invite all those interested, including those who attended Time for Change on December 3rd, as well as #dmcamp this past Saturday, December 12, to join us to discuss possible next steps forward with #t4change. We will be posting more information on our blog as well as on Twitter once we have finalized a date and time for the roundtable discussion at CSI.

For now, we are extremely excited for what lies ahead with this project, and will continue to learn and adapt as the project emerges. We want to make it clear that we would like to continue to be the holders of the process for #t4change, but we do not want to control the process. We want this emergence to be a product of co-creation, and we certainly welcome any input or critical feedback provided. As of now, we do not know if #t4change could spin-off into its own independent organizational structure, or become a project embedded into an already existing system infrastructure.

It is exciting for us to have people excited about #t4change. This project has certainly resonated with each one of us (myself, Nick, Ruby and Kristina) and perhaps this has to do with the much broader trend of young people in today’s world, wanting to pursue their passions and create meaning in their lives.

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Founded in March 2007 by Nick Petten while an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo, Out in the Cold is a grassroots, student-run event held every November, where students and community members are invited to spend the night outside on campus, to raise money and awareness of homelessness issues in their local community.

We are continuing the Out in the Cold initiative by sharing a model by which other schools and universities can adapt to their respective campus and local community. www.outinthecold.ca was launched in October 2009 as an online portal to document the growth of this grassroots initiative. It is our goal to provide the tools necessary for people in other schools and universities to organize similar events in order to provide a better understanding of issues surrounding homelessness, poverty and housing stability.

Causes of homelessness include poverty and a lack of affordable housing. Root causes of poverty include low income, unemployment or underemployment, social isolation, racism, low literacy, poor education, and many more. Addressing homelessness is effective social, health, and economic policy.

• Learn more about the issues

After three years at the University of Waterloo, the Out in the Cold model was successfully adapted at the University of Toronto campus. In November 2009, Out in the Cold was run simultaneously at both campuses, and was organized by teams of students led by Kaija Saarinen (Waterloo) and Jenna van Draanen (Toronto).

• Learn more about Out in the Cold 2009
• Out in the Cold in the news

Out in the Cold Timeline

Out in the Cold has raised over $10,000 for organizations tackling the issues of poverty and homelessness in the local community.

March 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2007: University of Waterloo

November 2008: University of Waterloo

November 2009:

University of Waterloo & University of Toronto

www.outinthecold.ca launched

November 2010:

Our goal is to apply this model to schools and universities across Canada. Please contact us if you would like to host Out in the Cold in your local community.

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Out in the Cold 2009

A big THANK YOU to InsideToronto.com for putting together this video of Out in the Cold, held at the University of Toronto on November 20-21, 2009.

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Posted via email from Time For Change

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I am currently making my way to the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto bright and early this morning, for the second day of the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise. It seems that this is the second day in the row that I get to see the sun rise, although today looks like it will be mainly overcast with light rain. At least it is not snowing… yet.

In any case, to recap from yesterday, the “Business Skills for Social Enterprise ” workshop I attended was interesting and well structured, with a good mix of workshop presentations on marketing strategies, environmental scanning and analysis, financial forecasts and budgets, grass-roots marketing, as well as measuring performance indicators for social enterprise ventures. What was great about these presentations was the fact that they were mostly delivered by students enrolled in the business program at George Brown College. Of course, these young presenters got some help from Mark Simpson, the lead presenter of the workshop and director of the newly launched Centre for Entrepreneurship and Community Innovation at GBC.

Though I was already familiar with most of the information at hand, it was good to get a refresher on marketing research techniques as well as engage in a discussion around what constitutes measurement performance indicators for non-profits, for-profits and the blended value social enterprise; even the very definition of social enterprise was discussed, as is reflective of the broader dialogue taking place in the social entrepreneurship sphere right now.

The Use of Social Media in the Workplace

There was also some discussion around the (organizational) use of social media tools such as twitter, facebook, blogging, etc. and the value they bring to fostering a sense of community with customers and stakeholders alike. Some people in the workshop asked if there were any social media policies that their organization could adopt, and yes, there are certainly some guidelines, or at the very least recommendations, that exist out there. I would recommend reading this: Creating a Social Media Policy for your Nonprofit, Social Media Usage Guidelines as well as Your social media strategy won’t save you for some important insight into the use of social media in the workplace.

A section of the workshop yesterday also focused on hands-on skills and organizational assessment to determine how ready one is to adopt a social enterprise model, and there was certainly lots of time for unmoderated open discussions. The open discussions, were in my opinion, the most valuable aspect of the day as this allowed people in the room to create personal connections while discussing their respective organizations/projects, as well as ideas for potential social enterprise ventures.

Children’s Mental Health

On a more personal level, I may have had a shift in mindset after meeting a rather remarkable person working in the field of children’s mental health. Catherine Dyer works with an organization called The New Mentality based in Toronto, and after speaking with her for an extensive period of time, I now realize that I may have been limited in scope when it comes to my understanding of young people having the power and opportunities like never before to affect positive change in the world. I now realize that I have only ever considered “young people” to be those who are able-bodied physically and mentally, AND fully capable, without ever giving a thought about young people who are facing mental or physical challenges, and yet, are still fully capable in affecting positive change in the world. Not because I do not care, far from it. Rather, it is perhaps as a result of the context through which I live my life and not being exposed to this reality. We’ll see where this chance encounter takes me.

End of Day One

Following the full-day workshop session at GBC, we headed to the Centre for Social Innovation for the evening ‘networking’ event, where we heard from a number of speakers, including Julie McDowell of ClearlySo, who will be participating as an ‘Angel’ later today in the Social Enterprise Angels – Social Investing in Action session. Four social enterprises will have the opportunity to pitch and compete for $40,000 of seed funding from angel investors in a format similar to the popular tv show Dragon’s Den, but with a social enterprise twist to it. Tonya Surman and Sonya Pouyat, members of the Social Enterprise Council of Canada, also discussed how far the social enterprise sector has come along in Canada these past few years. However, what is clear is that much work still needs to be done in order to create the enabling governance policy framework that would allow a culture of social enterprise and social innovation to thrive in Canada, a topic that Paul Martin touched on as well.

To round off last night, I headed over to Sprout Up Toronto to meet up with some friends, as well as meet with other like-minded entrepreneur-type individuals. Matthew Corrin, founder of Freshii, was the keynote speaker at the event, and the quote of the night that really stuck with me is: “You have to create a killer culture, not a culture that kills your business“. Wise words.

Overall, Day 1 of the 3rd Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise went well, and I am looking forward to the Policy Forum for Day 2 & 3 of the conference, where we are looking to set a national agenda and policy framework for social enterprise and social finance in the country.

Posted via email from Renjie Butalid

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Former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin speaking at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto as part of the 3rd Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise.

Paul Martin touched on the topic of creating an enabling environment for social entrepreneurs, and coming from a government/policy background, he urges the Canadian government to provide the same incentives to social entrepreneurs it provides to business entrepreneurs as a way to level the playing field. This will only happen if we choose to act on pushing for governance policy changes to create the proper legal and taxation structures in order for social enterprises to thrive in Canada. This can be achieved through public policy advocacy at the federal and provincial levels.

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Posted via email from Renjie Butalid

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