charity

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.

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.

There have been a few blog posts about Steve Jobs' and his limited role in charity work. I would like to challenge these claims, not because I knew him personally, or because we were involved in the same projects. Rather, I suggest, the very culture of Apple was one that was striving towards stronger communities, by virtue of how he approached innovation and social interaction with technology. Read more »

Today I have been focusing on the language issues between the social entrepreneur, charity, social investor and fund advisor market... And man is there a disconnect!

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...

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.

Yup, you read that correctly, I am exploring an ideation space. I'm calling this space My Tickle Trunk.  Thank you Canadian children's show icon - Mr. Dressup! Read more »

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.