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…
This is the final installment in our series about social innovation. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and McConnell Foundation. Like any ecosystem worthy of the name, social innovation in Quebec is rich and diverse. This article offers a glimpse into six organizations that have developed new models that bring hope…
This is the ninth article in our series about social innovation. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and McConnell Foundation. I started thinking more critically about philanthropy’s potential as I prepared my keynote address for this year’s Canadian Environmental Grantmaker’s Network (CEGN) annual conference. The theme of my talk was…
In November 2018, Mowat NFP and the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance hosted Innovation in Evidence, a conference on evidence-informed policymaking. Internationally, evidence institutions like What Works Centres have been transforming how evidence is used in the policymaking process to address “wicked” social problems, ranging from social isolation among seniors to policing interventions for crime reduction….
This is the eighth article in our series about social innovation. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and McConnell Foundation. Three events over the course of one week in November 2017 shone a light on the past, present, and future of social innovation in Canada. At the Social Innovation Generation (SiG)…
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…
The non-profit sector plays a substantial role in providing programs and services that contribute to Canada’s social, economic, and civic health. The role of non-profit organizations in collecting and mobilizing evidence deserves more attention because the sector is a key pillar in building the evidence base for policy. What is evidence-informed policymaking? This approach to…
This is the seventh article in a series about European philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Lawson Foundation. To bring about change and entrench it in our societies, there is a need for more social innovation at scale. It is possible: history is rich in examples of social innovations that have…
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,…