giving

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.

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.

Guest Blogger: Holli Dawson is a freelance writer in the fields of personal finance and real estate, and writes on behalf of a number of different publications and sites (most recently on behalf of a major moving services provider). She lives in Ontario with her two sons and four dogs, which is about as chaotic as you can imagine.

The coming of a new school year tends to bring the "cleaning out of the closets." This blog post talks about those treasures that you find in the attic while looking for the box of winter clothing...

Dexterity Consulting is just going through its annual strategic planning review and stakeholder engagement.  As a reader of this blog your ideas, suggestions, input is welcome so that we can provide even better service to our clients.

Earlier this month the charitable sector has once again been under scrutiny... First with the CBC Marketplace Report - Canadian Cancer Society Spends more on Fundraising than on Research then the CTV report on charity CEO compensation.  What these two stories have in common is perceived lack of trasparency around how money is being raised, spent, and social issues addressed.

I sat down with Mr. Hotchkiss 3 years ago and interviewed him about his philanthropy.  I am re-posting the blog post here today in memory of an extraordinary man who was a committed member of Calgary's community as well as an integral part of Canada's fabric. Read more »

I recently tweeted some research that we had done by UnCommon Innovation on the state the financial services sector.  The focus on the study was on how advisors are talking with their clients about charitable giving.  What came out loud and clear is that advisors are looking for tools and resources to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with their clients about philanthropy.  These tools and resources can come from a number of places, the most knowledgeable place would be the charitable sector itself.

I had a conversation the other day with Michele F Gartner from the Trico Foundation about the charitable sector marketplace.  She informed me that the Latin root for PROFIT means PROGRESS and that by putting the word "non" in front of Profit we are, by default, setting up organizations for failure as it implies non-progress.  Interesting tidbit I thought, so of course I had to explore this further.  Google is amazing!