Gena Rotstein's blog

I am a pharmacist's daughter. Some of my fondest childhood memories consist of weekends and school breaks spent working in my father's downtown pharmacy. That may seem strange, seeing as chemistry, biology and mathematics were not my strongest subjects. It was at this "job" that I was first exposed to business and commerce.  At an early age (elementary school) I learned how to work a cash register and count change - on a machine that didn't tell you how much change was owed; when I got my driver's license I was delivering prescriptions to seniors and those who were shut-in; and March break consisted of a weekend doing inventory for year-end.  Some really basic business and life skills were gleaned from watching how my father operated this small business.

Why we need strategic philanthropy, not just good financial records…

There has been a lot in the news over the past few months about transparency in the charitable sector.  Most of these articles end up honing in on the cost of raising a dollar, overhead expenditures and tax compliance.  While these financial issues are definitely part of the equation, they should not be the basis upon which strategic philanthropy is based. 

Addressing complex social issues is not just about the financials, it is about the effectiveness of solving the social problem.

Thank you to Nadine Riopel, Bob McInnis, Derek Brechtholdt and the others who tweeted out the draft of this brief, and most especially provided valuable feedback.

This brief was developed in response to a call from the House of Commons Finance Committee as they undergo a review process of Canada's charitable sector and the tax laws that govern the sector.  Recommendations range from the creation of a government appointed Ambassador of Philanthropy, creating clearer legislation around "reasonable profit" and social enterprise, and addressing the inconsistencies in the T3010 tax filing that do not address the critical information that donors need in order to make informed charitable decisions.

In the fall, I posted a brief for the House of Commons Finance Committee on social enterprise and social finance policy development.  The final version, along with others that were submitted can be found here.

The Finance Committee is expanding their work and is now looking at charitable tax incentives.  The crowdsourcing of the last brief proved to be quite successful so I would like to try it again.

Attached is a draft of the submission for the Finance Committee. I will be sending in the final version on January 14th. Please share your thoughts and comments on this blog post. If you would like your name added to the reference list of this paper please let me know so that I can ensure that appropirate credit is made.

In a recent presentation to the Banff Community Foundation we discussed how information flows to donors thereby influencing charitable giving and social investing decisions.

Several weeks ago I presented to Calgary's JCI chapter.  My presentation was about failure.  I started with a TEDx Video where Tom Wujec presents on how building a marshmellow tower leads to team building and creative problem solving.

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Here is a sample of the organizations we reviewed for clients this year.

Charity Listing 2011

For more information on how we "evaluate" charities please visit the resources section of our website.

Happy Holidays!

At the Community and Corporate Social Responsibility Conference held in Ottawa earlier this month, I along with Pamela Divinsky from the Divinsky Group, and Stephanie Michele from Social Bling, led a session on how multi-levelled collaboration can drive social change.  We picked a very complex social issue – Poverty – and charged participants to think of solutions to the various causes and effects of poverty.  The idea was to generate a shared value experience by looking at poverty through a cause and effect lens.  By having multiple stakeholders look at the issue – government, private sector and individuals – we could, in essence, develop marketable strategies that could be implemented.

Yesterday I was at a meeting with a major bank and there was a discussion around the staff Secret Santa program.  This individual wanted to move away from the $10 - dollar store purchase to make the Secret Santa program more meaningful. I suggested that she purchase a $10 charity gift card that her recipient could designate to a charity of choice.  She had never heard of such a program.  Which leads me to think that there are lots of people who don't know about giving charity as a gift of choice.

My career has been shaped in the charitable sector. It spans two countries, several sub-sectors and a lot of fundraising time. When I decided to launch my own company it was at the begining of the formal social enterprise discussion in the States. I realized early on that what the charities value as their business and revenue models is not what the traditional markets value.  This seems obvious, when charities talk about their business, they talk about the lives that they have saved and how they do it on so few dollars.  When companies talk about their business, they talk about profit and commodities and consumers.  So it was with great interest that I read this past week's issue of the Globe & Mail on renaming the sector from non-profit to Social Profit.