This is the third blog post in a series on the development of an open business plan for SocialFinance.ca. For the previous post, see Road to Social Impact Lined with Enabling Support.

This morning, I had the privilege of attending an informal discussion featuring Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, fellow colleagues at SiG @ MaRS, and a collection of leaders within Canada’s philanthropic and social innovation community.

Sean had more than a few insights to share with the group, notably that:

• Every business creates social value although its often overlooked, and every non-profit creates economic value that’s also often overlooked;
• Investments in a non-profit’s overhead (talented staff, ongoing evaluation, and program innovation) are key to creating long-term social and economic value; and
• Effective use of blogging and social media combined with a willingness to share ideas exponentially increases an organization’s capacity to create enduring social impact.

The three points reaffirmed for me the approach that SocialFinance.ca has taken in developing its open business plan, as well as the ideas outlined in the business plan itself.

When we launched the open business planning initiative in November, we recognized that SocialFinance.ca has the potential to create immense social and economic value if properly resourced and nudged in an entrepreneurial direction.

With the first draft of the business plan nearly complete, I’m becoming increasingly confident that SocialFinance.ca is in fact inching toward a high-impact business plan that will produce long-term social and economic value in Canada and internationally.

Below are excerpts from two sections that have been drafted since my last update.

Phase 1 Strategy Goals

1. Establish 10-15 paid partnerships of 1 year with groups active in the field of social finance. The first year of the partnerships should bring in no less than $100k for SocialFinance.ca and contribute directly to SocialFinance.ca's organizational mission of transforming the culture of Finance. SocialFinance.ca will offer a standard partnership package that includes the following benefits:

• Visibility - Improve the partner's visibility across the social web;
• Data - Increase the partner's access to valuable and up-to-date knowledge on social finance in Canada and internationally; and
• Long-term value - Enlarge the market for the partner's social finance related products and services.

Continue reading Phase 1 Strategy Goals >>

Technology

We intend to connect our Google Apps infrastructure with a deployment of SalesForce.com as well as several key open source products. This will permit us to begin sharing access to social finance data with paid partners. Partners will receive an unlimited use license to SocialFinance.ca’s knowledge-sharing database, consisting of aggregated and annotated information for the following categories:

• Blogs
• News Stories
• Reports and Publications
• Events
• Organizations (Investors, Enterprises, Enablers)
• Job Postings
• People
• Deal Flow

Partners will be able to access the contents of the knowledge-sharing database directly through a web-interface and will also be granted permission to embed subsets of the database in their web sites and online resources.

Continue reading the Technology section>>

In addition to these two sections, I’m pleased with the direction the Financial Sustainability and Performance and Social Impact sections are headed.

Please let us know what you think of the plan to date. We’re open to your suggestions on where it should go from here.

And thanks Sean Stannard-Stockton for triggering this post, and showing us each day what an outstanding blog looks like.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2335716785/

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