Several weeks ago, Dionne Chingkoe posted an excellent blog entry, Transforming Social Finance from a Curiosity to a Movement. Dionne's advice on how to catalyze a movement amounted to a clear call to action for the SocialFinance.ca community.

Dionne urged our community to look carefully at our work and ask ourselves, Are we creating simple and accessible points of engagement for people and organizations discovering social finance for the first time? Are we using common language and compelling visuals to ensure that the core concepts of social finance are widely understood and consistently invoked? Are we highlighting diverse points of view to ensure a substantive debate?

I like to think that the answer to these questions is: "Yes, but we can be doing more." In reality, the answer is probably, "Not really, and thanks for the kick in the butt."

With Dionne's questions in mind, we have decided to build on a project from earlier this year that set out to establish a common language around social finance and spark substantive debate.

Drawing on the content that surfaced during the Causeway/Ashoka Social Finance Blog Series, we will develop an online guide to social finance. Supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Guide to Social Finance will serve as an accessible entry point for enterprising nonprofits and social purpose businesses considering the relevance of social finance to their work.

We will start pulling together the draft content with help from writers, developers, and illustrators. The content will include case studies, visual components, and testimonies that add a human face to social finance. Over the next few months we encourage you join this process by following this story on SocialFinance.ca and providing your input.

Our goal is not just to create a guide to social finance, but to create the world's best guide to social finance. Initially, the guide will showcase Ontario examples. Overtime, we expect that it will evolve into an interactive and continuously updated resource that has something for everyone, and goes a long way to responding to Dionne's call to action.

Note: If you're interested in contributing in some way to this project, please leave a comment below, or send an email to guide@socialfinance.ca. We welcome inquiries from everyone, especially storytellers, visual thinkers, editors, programmers, and writers.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegansoldier/2868357800/

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