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…
Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit, and Capital Markets, by Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean. Oxford University Press. New York, U.S.A., 2018, ISBN: 9780190249786 How do you persuade social entrepreneurs and impact investors to trust one another’s commitment to impact? That’s the question Social Enterprise Law attempts to answer. Social enterprises (here defined…
Canada’s charitable and non-profit sector is the second largest in the world. More than 24 million Canadians — about two-thirds of the population — donated to a charity or non-profit organization in 2013. But, as generous as Canadians are, there are still underlying challenges in the charitable and non-profit sector, which is in danger of…
Le secteur de la bienfaisance et sans but lucratif du Canada est le deuxième en importance dans le monde. Plus de 24 millions de Canadiens, soit environ les deux tiers de la population, ont effectué un don à un organisme de bienfaisance ou sans but lucratif en 2013. Mais, aussi généreux que soient les Canadiens, il y…
This is the sixth article in a series about European philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Lawson Foundation. For some time now, a new player has been getting ready to “hit the stage” of the social economy in Italy. The Italian government, with legislative decree no. 112 of July 3, 2017,…
This article is the third in a series about European philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Lawson Foundation. The European Foundation Centre (EFC) was formally established on the same day the Berlin Wall fell: November 9, 1989. As such, it has always been axiomatic in telling our history…
Les Canadiens se sont habitués, en particulier depuis que le président Donald Trump préside à la disgrâce de son pays sur la scène internationale, à entendre des éloges presque embarrassants au sujet de notre pays en tant que bastion mondial de la démocratie, de la tolérance et de la saine gouvernance. Le fait de lire,…
Canadians have become accustomed – especially with President Donald Trump presiding over his country’s fall from grace on the world stage – to hearing almost embarrassingly glowing reviews of our nation as a global bastion of democracy, tolerance, and good governance. So it is somewhat sobering to read, in none other than The Washington Post,…
Regulating Charities: The Inside Story, Myles McGregor-Lowndes and Bob Wyatt, eds, New York, Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978-1-315563-92-3 Regulating Charities: The Inside Story is a text that is not about the regulation of charities; it is about the inside story(ies) that illustrates why there is no regulation of charities. This comment is not a criticism…
This article has been adapted from a keynote address to the Canadian Bar Association symposium on charity law, held in Toronto on May 12, 2017. Many people have heard of the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is so named because it was uncovered in the Egyptian town of Rosetta in 1799 by French soldiers of…