Canadian foundations know that responsible investing can reap both positive impacts and benchmark-beating financial returns, but it isn’t easy – knowing where to invest, measuring social outcomes, even agreeing what to call it. It’s “tough, ongoing work,” says one foundation leader.
The Right Relations Collaborative brings together community-rooted Indigenous change-makers and aligned philanthropic partners to break down the institutional barriers that define conventional philanthropy and, at the same time, find new ways of being in relationship with one another.
With no shortage of gendered inequities to tackle in Canada and abundant research that demonstrates how equality benefits everyone, the CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation calls for increased investment in gender equality on Give to Women and Girls Day.
Youth have long fought at the front lines of social innovation and change, argues the ED of The Youth Harbour and the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, but when they do receive funding for their grassroots movements, their work is often underestimated and undervalued. She offers some recommendations for how funders can better support youth.
Canada’s charitable sector has a unique opportunity to help shape the leadership practices and related discourse about sustainable and responsible investment, argue contributors Chad Park and Greg Elliott. In doing so, it can leverage the sector’s significant invested assets to help meaningfully address some of today’s most pressing challenges, they write.
Should an organization be able to have social impact and generate profit? Sarah G. Fitzpatrick looks at the development of hybrid organizations in Canada – and how any further development would benefit from a comprehensive analysis of whether there is a need or space for hybrid organizations.
The concept of generating positive benefits beyond just financial returns is particularly attractive to grantmaking foundations that steward endowments. But the president of Max Bell Foundation argues that a number of concerns about “responsible investing” make it premature to advocate that government should push charitable endowments in that direction.
Only 15% of taxable households in France declare an annual donation, but a new venture aims to raise this figure to 30% by 2030. Located in Paris, Philanthro-Lab seeks to “democratize the giving reflex” by bringing together researchers, social entrepreneurs, patrons, and project initiators to grow the philanthropic community in France.
