Dexterity Consulting

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.

Last month I started a blog post about creating a social enterprise dictionary. A discussion was started with comments coming from a variety of individuals.  Last night, over a glass of wine and some "old-fashioned" social networking with David Ian Gray, more was added to the #socent lexicon. Read more »

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.

For the past few days I have been in the Ottawa area attending the Imagine Canada/Volunteer Canada forum on Business & Community.  During this time I have had the opportunity to meet with social change agents in the non-profit sector and their funders (corporate and government).  While the conversations were interesting the needs of these organizations are great, there was a distinct gap in the dialogue.  I feel that missing from the table were Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (who make up approximately 80% of Canada's business market-place) and For-Profit Social Enterprises (there was representation from non-profit social enterprieses).

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.

It has been a busy few weeks - tax season means people are starting to look at their overall wealth plans and laying out their charitable giving plan.  On the upside of this busy-ness is the fact that it looks like philanthropic activities are going up.

This morning on the CBC Eyeopener, Andrea McManus the chair of the Association of Fundraising Professionals was interviewed on effective philanthropy.  Some key points that she raised include: Read more »

Guest Blogger: Amy Lewis is currently completing her Bachelor of Communications-Public Relations Degree at Mount Royal University with an anticipated graduation Summer 2010.  Amy has diverse range communication experience.  Including marketing, media relations and, event planning. For her first internship Amy held the position of marketing coordinator for WorldSkills Calgary 2009.  Amy enjoys exploring the variety of options that Marketing and Public Relations presents. 

Things as of late are looking pretty good, the housing market is in recovery, the economy is beginning to rebound but it wasn't that long ago that we were all crying the sky is falling. Everything appeared to be doom and gloom. Read more »

Thank you to Jordan Cartwright and Dromedary Photography for documenting the Canadian Premier of the Milestones Project.  Kicking off the event with remarks from the City of Calgary was Deputy Mayor Joe Ceci and representing the Provincial Government - Minister Lindsay Blackett. Read more »

Please take three minutes to complete the following survey conducted in partnership between e11even.org and Dexterity Consulting.  Responses will be used to help us create better tools and services for our clients and the charitable community at-large.

Participants will be entered into a draw for a $500 donation to a charity of their choice.  Survey closes on July 31, 2009.  Draw will take place on August 7, 2009.  Winners will be notified by e-mail.

All responses will be kept anonymous unless permission otherwise granted.

On behalf of the Dexterity Consulting and e11even.org teams thank you for your time!