Last week, R. Andrew Sweeny, President of The Philadelphia Foundation, published an editorial in the The Philadelphia Inquirer that includes some tough-love but sound advice for nonprofit managers. The editorial, although targeted at nonprofits operating in the Philadelphia area, rings true north of the Canada-U.S. border.
I'm pleased to announce that SocialFinance.ca will be helping to coordinate the social media coverage of the Social Capital Markets 2010 conference in San Francisco on October 4th, 5th, and 6th. For those of us north of the U.S. / Canada border, SoCap represents an annual opportunity to check in with our dynamic neighbours to the south as well as many of the movers and shakers in social finance internationally.
Community Foundations of Canada, together with Philanthropic Foundations Canada, has just released a report, The State of Community/Mission Investment of Canadian Foundations by Coro Strandberg, one of Canada’s true experts in this space.
It’s a good read, telling the stories of and drawing lessons from nine foundations across the country that are using their assets – not just their grants – to directly support economic development domestically and internationally – jobs for the hard-to-employ, affordable housing, conservation, sustainable venture capital, and non-profit capacity building.
In her recently released book, Disrupting Philanthropy - co-authored with Edward Skloot and Barry Varela, Dr. Lucy Bernholz explores the immediate and longer-term implications of networked digital technologies for philanthropy. 10 years ago the landscape of philanthropy was relatively simple. "There were foundations - private, community, and corporate - that awarded grants to non-profits. Givers gathered information about non-profits mainly through word-of-mouth. Commercial investment firms were relatively small players on the philanthropic landscape." In 2010 the landscape is very different.
“The question isn’t how do we give better? It’s how do we solve social problems better?” (Antony Bugg-Levine)
Over the course of two days at MaRS (April 6-7) Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and leading visionary behind the impact investing movement, imparted his vast knowledge on many impact investing related subjects to over 200 people interested in the field. Though he is a native South African, Antony has close family ties to Canada and showed he is a kindred spirit, demonstrating a keen understanding of our Canadian context.
Impact investing addresses deficiencies in our current system that attempts to solve the world’s most pressing issues – accessible education, clean water for all mankind, disease prevention, food security, etc. People are starting to realize where the traditional system (foreign aid, charity and government intervention) fails and where new labour and market-based approaches can help. Impact investments can seed innovation to solve these challenges while generating a financial return at the same time. For the new generation of wealth and socially responsible consumers, this makes for a very exciting proposition.
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Your Guide helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
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Your Guide to Social Finance
SocialFinance.ca hosts an online guide that helps social entrepreneurs learn how to attract financing for their social ventures.
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