News Digest
Tides Top 10 of 2008: If you haven't seen this already, check out Tides Canada's annual list of outstanding social change organizations.
On Social Enterprise in the UK (hat-tip: Volans): An interview with Kevin Brennan, the Minister for the Third Sector, where he talks about the importance of social enterprise, its potential impact on public service delivery, the need for "lift-off" finance and more emphasis on measurement.
Social Entrepreneurship on Campus: Nathaniel from Change.org has a great post on trends and opportunities for social entrepreneurship at universities. We're seeing some of that in Canada as well - the Laurel Centre is only one outstanding example, but there are others including Carleton, York, Toronto, and Queens.
Charities Borrow For-Profit Strategies To Do Good: Well-written article from the Christian Science Monitor that describes recent interesting developments in the "hybrid" space in between the non-profit and for-profit worlds. References to social entrepreneurship, philanthrocapitalism, microfinance, L3Cs, and more.
Mission, Inc.: The Practitioner's Guide to Social Enterprise: New book by Kevin Lynch (Rebuild Resources) and Julius Walls (Greystone Bakery) that draws on their own organizations and learning from 20 other social enterprise leaders around what it takes to succeed in starting and running a social enterprise.
Mandatory CSR Reporting in Denmark: Denmark's 1,100 largest enterprises will now be compelled by law to describe their corporate CSR or socially responsible investment policies, the ways in which they've been implemented and the results they've produced. Auditors must verify the CSR/SRI information, and there are also incentives to align with the U.N. Global Compact or U.N. Principles for Responsible Investment. It may be time for North Americans to learn from the Europeans: France and the UK have already enacted similar legislation, and societal attitudes hold companies to account more than they do this side of the Atlantic.
