This article is the seventh in a series on social innovation. In 2013, the team at Ryerson University’s Faculty of Community Service invited me to join them as the inaugural John C. Eaton Chair of Social Innovation. The faculty has deep social justice roots and it created the position just as Ryerson became Canada’s first Ashoka Changemaker…
Author: Marilyn Struthers
As we mark the 150th anniversary of confederation, The Philanthropist is profiling Canadians from across the non-profit sector and putting a face to 150 individuals who work or volunteer in Canada’s social sector. Name: Marilyn Struthers Current role in the sector: Coach, writer, organizational consultant in my freelance company M. Struthers & Co. Years working and/or volunteering…
This article is the eighth in a series on Indigenous Communities and Philanthropy. SUMMARY: The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada strives to promote dialogue amongst First Nations, Métis, Inuit communities; private, public and community foundations; corporate philanthropy programs, charitable organizations, and United Ways. This article describes the origins of The Circle and the…
This is the first in a series of articles on Indigenous Communities and Philanthropy. In his 5th Century, BCE, play “Prometheus Bound,” the Greek playwright Aeschylus tells the tale of Prometheus, son of Zeus, taking pity when he encounters a group of sickly creatures. Prometheus provides them with two special gifts: fire and blind…
The world in which you must act does not sit passively out there waiting to yield up its secrets. Instead, your world is under active construction, you are part of the construction crew—and there isn’t any blueprint. (Lane & Maxfield, 1995, p. 3) Public investment in the not-for-profit charitable sector is a tricky business. In…
The voluntary nonprofit sector is a collection of highly varied organizations that create a landscape of care across Canada. Most often the sector is understood through the nature of its components or through its relations to government rather than through the complexity of the whole. In this article, I speculate about how we can re-conceptualize…
The quest for sustainability in voluntary sector organizations is a quest for sense in a rapidly changing funding world and a turbulent economic environment. Interest in the concept of sustainability by both funders and leaders of nonprofit organizations is mounting as the sector moves more deeply into what may be termed a funding crisis (Scott,…