Something’s not right. Injustice burns bright. An idea catches your eye. Your imagination takes hold. You push through prevailing wisdom and “the way it’s supposed to be.” With few resources, and no one listening you persist. You answer “yes!” to the disinterested, the doubters, and disbelievers. You innovate.

You create a solution to a challenge faced by a friend, family member, or neighbour. You invent a successful response to a community problem. You improve how we work together. You see a way for your province, your country and your world to be a better place.

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Ted Jackson, community organizer, fellow Frontier College alumnus and Professor at Carleton University presented the following speech at the 52nd annual general meeting of the Quinte West Association for Community Living. A comprehensive analysis and call to action relevant for all non profits

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The fur trade in Canada provides a distant mirror for Social Finance advocates and practitioners on the complex effects of any new technology. It makes us mindful that every intervention has side effects, both positive and negative.

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How do you spot the difference between a fad and a trend? When you've hung around the social sector for decades you learn to be discerning. At the outset they appear the same, capturing interest, attracting pilot funding, developing constituencies, attracting academic research, even influencing policy. Inevitably there is a fork in the road. Despite the rhetoric, fads disappear.

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I'm not sure why some non profit leaders, advocates and academics dismiss the growing social finance developments so readily and without serious consideration. This lack of curiosity is irresponsible. We can learn a lot from successful social, economic and environmental justice movements. They give us clues, tips and inspiration about tactics and strategies we can adopt.

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A small group of us had dinner earlier this week with one of the world's greatest economists, Professor Stefano Zamagni.  I first met him several years ago when he proved, using economic graphs, that the smile of a person with severe disability is an important source of social capital which encourages a stronger climate of trust which is in turn essential for the operation of a healthy economy.  I've been hooked on his writing ever since!

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It doesn't take too long in London before noticing the emergence of a new math.  Social innovators in England are busy creating new equations to address tough, hard to solve social and environmental challenges.  To start they exposed the fallacies of the 'old' math.

Here is one equation that is no longer useful and which prevents the civil sector from fulfilling one of its key functions: preventing social problems. Costly crisis intervention reduces the resources available to address the root causes resulting in more crises which equals another round of costly crisis interventions.

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Wednesday's Federal Government Throne Speech contained a few paragraphs of 'social innovation' language for the first time.  This is a welcome political blessing to the social entrepreneurs inside and outside government.

As I read the text I note an acknowledgment of: Canadian communities as incubators of creativity; the importance of working across sectors and boundaries; reducing red tape so that government can support local creativity; and providing expertise to scale up good ideas. Finally, the Throne Speech ends with a commitment to partner with innovative charities and forward thinking businesses to tackle social problems.

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I am interested in social finance because it levers existing and new funds to improve society's ability to tackle social, economic and environmental challenges. Social finance is a creative response to the dominant challenge of the social sector - access to capital - a challenge that will only get worse.

Social finance is the financial architecture emerging in Canada and elsewhere to service the financial requirements of social enterprises, social purpose businesses, entrepreneurial non profits; and their granters, investors and lenders. This involves providers of capital as well as intermediary organizations who broker funds; manage risk; measure impact and results; create financial products, services and new pools of capital designed with our financial and mission interests.

PLAN the organization I co-founded 20 years ago does not accept government funding for our operation. That has led me on an exciting journey to discover new approaches to thrive financially. As a social worker it took me a long time to appreciate and learn how money works. I'm glad I did. Social finance uses existing revenue far more efficiently than I ever imagined. It also taps into new sources of capital using methods adapted from the private sector.

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