Since launching less than a year ago, we've noticed an explosion of interest in the area of social finance. The blog format of the original site worked well initially, but we found much more demand for additional content and features. Several months ago, we were generously awarded a grant from SiG@MaRS towards building an entirely new site - the result of lots of hard work from a group of dedicated partners and contributors across the country.

We (hope that we) have built a platform that can stimulate conversations around the critical issues in social finance in Canada and overseas, where diverse individuals and groups can demonstrate how they are addressing social issues in their communities through the creative use of finance.  The SoicalFinance.ca is about a connected community throughout Canada.  We invite your involvement and response to the sites growth.  Please contact us with you suggestions.

The new site has a number of exciting features that will benefit from an introduction. Let's get started...

Blog

• The blog continues to be focal point of the site, and we've added new contributors and content to reflect the range of social finance activity across Canada.
• A new feature include Series, which are essentially a series of related posts around a "big question" or theme.

Knowledge Centre

• The knowledge centre is meant to be a hub for resources and reference materials. You'll find important publications and articles included, with appropriate references and an abstract for each entry.
• Glossary - an initial attempt at defining some of the key terms used around social finance is presented in the Glossary section.
• Blogroll - this is a list of the most prominent Canadian and international blogs that we follow.

Primers/Social Finance 101

• As an introduction to social finance, we have built 3 primers that introduce the concepts of social finance, highlight the key issues and trends, and reference recommended reading.
• These three primers are targeted to specific audiences:
  • Investors: the people who are looking to invest in social enterprises, nonprofits, or other hybrid organizations that generate a social return
  • Enterprises: these include social enterprises (for-profits and non-profits), nonprofit organizations and charities, and other hybrid organizations
  • Enablers: the groups that connect the investors and enterprises, and influence the broader social finance marketplace. These include service providers, academic institutions, and policy makers.

Events

• Events are displayed through a shared Google calendar, making it easy for other sites to add their own events, or simply "pull" the calendar RSS feed to their own sites.

Community

• The community pages begin to "map" the landscape of social finance across Canada.
• We have distinguished community pages for Investors, Enterprises, and Enablers (intermediaries). While we have started with a relatively simple listing of the main actors, we are already developing more comprehensive datasets in conjunction with other partners, and to the extent possible, open source frameworks.

A Note on Content

All content on this site tagged in three ways:

1. Audience
   • Investor - the "supply side", essentially those looking to invest capital (including grants) in social enterprises, social businesses, charities or nonprofits.
   • Enterprise - the "demand side", which includes social enterprises (both for-profit and non-profit), social businesses, charities, and nonprofits.
   • Enabler - the intermediaries that connect investors and enterprises. These include academic institutions, government, etc.
2. Themes
   • Finance Models
   • CSR
   • Community Investment
   • Impact Metrics
   • Green Investment
   • Microfinance
   • Public Policy
   • Social Enterprise
   • Social Entrepreneurship
   • Social Innovation
   • Philanthropy
   • Responsible Investment
3. Region: by Canadian province, national, or international.

This typology was intentionally developed for a number of reasons. Firstly, it allows content to be identified through searches more easily, since these terms tend to mirror what people tend to search for. Secondly, the use of these terms are meant to provide a common understanding around the issues in social finance, and to help develop a basis of common language for this emerging sector. Finally, this taxonomy will eventually allow the site to be structured creatively around "hubs" - for instance, a sub-site dedicated to investors, or to those interested in issues around metrics. It is also important to note that these terms are designed to evolve over time, based on usage on the site, and the extent to which people value these labels. Individual posts are also supplemented with additional tags to help further develop the proposed taxonomy.

We look forward to your feedback around the new site, and your support as we continue to evolve and build the platform to encourage conversation around, and the development of, the social finance marketplace in Canada. We'd like to acknowledge the support of our partners and contributors, and encourage you to reach out to us if you are interested in getting involved.

Share:  

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•