Letters To (not Always Of ) Joy By Bob Wyatt Published by the Muttart Foundation, Edmonton, ab. Available for download from www.muttart.org http://www.muttart.org/sites/default/files/MTF%20Wyatt%20WEB%202010.pdf A lot has changed since Bob Wyatt left for a Muttart fellowship sabbatical in 2005 to address some nagging questions he had about the power of the voluntary sector to influence policy: governments have been…
Causeway re-imagines money causeway is a collaborative project on social finance anchored with Social Innovation Generation (SiG) National. Causeway invites people to re-imagine money with a goal to fast-track Canada’s adoption of social finance and focus on sustainable social and economic change. SiG is a national collaboration between MaRS, the University of Waterloo, J.W. McConnell…
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times (1980) Introduction Social innovation opens up new approaches to addressing complex problems. For most of the 20th century, work in the community sector consisted of “charitable activities,” that is, the alleviation of…
Clay Shirky on Ushahidi from tracking wildlife in kenya to the moderation of elections in Mexico, from snow cleanup in Washington state to risk prevention around forest fires in Italy, Ushahidi is a website that offers a social networking platform for “democratizing information, increasing transparency, and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories.”…
Introduction The last thing civil society leaders and their allies probably want right now, given everything else they are dealing with, is yet another analysis of the complex challenges they face in raising money for their sector. However, now is exactly the right time to generate, debate, and act on such analysis. In fact, the…
Introduction Recently, over dinner, a friend asked what i had been working on lately. In reply, I mentioned that I had collaborated with others at Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN)—sadly, now defunct—on a paper about trends and developments in social innovation in Canada and internationally (Goldenberg, Kamoji, Orton, & Williamson, 2009). This was an update,…
Practices of innovation are not uncommon in communities, particularly in the social sector where there is a need to innovate to provide new solutions to address pressing local problems. Microfinance, the use of alternate governance models, and the development of social enterprises are some examples of social innovation. According to the Kellogg Foundation, such innovation…
Fair trade, as most northern consumers think of it, began after WWII when Christian missionary and nonprofit charities imported craft products made by their southern partners, including Greek and Italian communities, to sell in northern Europe and the USA. It has since evolved into a much more complex “sector,” involving thousands of products and tens or…
These days if you attend any nonprofit gathering, it doesn’t take long before the phrases “social innovation” and “social finance” pop up. However, as you listen to the conversations, you begin to wonder whether everyone is talking about the same thing. Are social innovation and social finance something new or just the latest fads? In this…
Primer On Social Innovation: A Compendium Of Definitions Developed By Organizations Around The World
What is social innovation? most simply, social innovation is about new ideas that work to address pressing unmet needs. Poverty, homelessness, and violence are examples of social problems that still need dedicated solution-seeking space. Social innovation addresses these challenges by applying new learning and strategies to solve these problems. For social innovations to be successful…