This is the second of two articles about artificial intelligence. “An AI utopia is a place where people have income guaranteed because their machines are working for them. Instead, they focus on activities that they want to do, that are personally meaningful like art or, where human creativity still shines, in science.” – Oren…
This is the first of two articles about artificial intelligence. Although we recognize it is a loaded question, we asked Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, “how can we solve homelessness?” The boilerplate answer, not surprisingly: “Sorry, I don’t know that one.” It is easy to conclude that machine intelligence is a long way from helping…
The Intrepid Nonprofit: Strategies for Success in Turbulent Times, by Tim Plumptre. Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., 2019; 330 pp; ISBN 9781525505423 It’s become a truism that we are living and working in a time of extraordinary turbulence. The corollary is that leaders of organizations in such times face stiffer challenges. It’s never been easy…
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, by Anand Giridharadas. Knopf. New York, 2018; 304 pp: ISBN 9780451493248 Juniper Glass: I didn’t think I would like this book. I had a knee jerk reaction to the slickness of both the title and the author’s hairdo.[1] And, I must admit, by how much…
Photo credit: Senate of Canada Just months after Ottawa set up an advisory body to look at the future of Canadian charities, a Senate committee this week released a 190-page report with a sweeping range of legal and policy reforms that, its members say, are necessary to ensure the health of a sector that generates…
Charities in Canada face a long-term crisis of financial sustainability. Their missions will become more challenging with continuing demographic and cultural change. There will be a growing gap between the needs Canadians expect charities to meet and the resources available to carry out their missions.[1] These fundamental social, cultural, and economic trends are leading to…
Les organismes caritatifs canadiens font face à un défi persistant de viabilité financière. La réalisation de leur mission se complexifie au fur et à mesure que des changements démographiques et culturels continuent à s’opérer dans la société. De plus, l’écart entre les besoins auxquels ils doivent répondre pour satisfaire les attentes des Canadiens et les…
When the federal government released its Fall Economic Statement in November, it signaled what many in Canadian philanthropic circles would regard as a sea-change in Ottawa’s thinking about a sector that employs more than two million Canadians and accounts for 8% of the country’s GDP. After years of dealing with everything from outmoded legislation to…
This article is the final piece in a series about intergenerational leadership. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and Connect the Sector (CTS). The non-profit sector is in the midst of a leadership transition. We know that its future will rely on thoughtful strategy, succession planning, and change management. Strong data…
Looking for Bootstraps: Economic Development in the Maritimes, by Donald J Savoie, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Nimbus Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978-177108-481-9 Asked what he would do to run Canada more like a business, Pierre Trudeau famously quipped he would start by selling off the Maritimes. Trudeau was referring to the longstanding ̶ and still continuing ̶…