Red Maple Leaves in the Sun by joesflickr

I just finished reading the latest report on Canada’s competitiveness (PDF) released by the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity. The report describes our current state in 2008 and the outlook to 2020, and it’s troubling to see that even though our economic performance is among the strongest nations, we are trailing the US by a whopping $8,800 in GDP per capita.

So what does this mean?
It means that we have opportunities to improve the value we add to our human, physical and natural resources, that will in turn contribute to our national prosperity and standard of living.

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Get involved: volunteer week

With the current awareness around community involvement and volunteering, especially since this week is Volunteer Week, many businesses are interested in contributing to their local community through a group volunteer experience. They look to volunteerism as an alternative to the traditional team-building exercise or charitable gift donation, where a meaningful volunteer experience helps improve motivation and teamwork skills among employees. But an employee-supported volunteer program can also help increase corporate visibility and highlight a corporate commitment to social responsibility in the community.

Volunteer Toronto has established the Employee Supported Volunteer Program (ESVP) to help bridge these business interests with the needs of non-profit agencies.

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New Radicals Button

On Tuesday, April 15th, a multitude of people came together at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics in celebration of the touted tome entitled “We are The New Radicals: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World.” The author, Julia Moulden, a five-foot-something dynamo exhibited an energy for this idea as vibrant as the red lipstick she sports.

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MaRS Tenant launches anti-malarial community

Philanthropy just got easier and a lot more accessible to the public thanks to the social networking power of the Internet and a ground-breaking initiative led by our team at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (MRC). And just in time for World Malaria Day this Friday, April 25th.

At MalariaEngage.org, people can enlist directly in the anti-malaria battle by contributing $10 or more to an initial choice of seven highly varied projects involving selected scientists in developing countries. Over time, new projects will replace those that reach their funding goal. The site features a discussion area where supporters can interact with researchers and each other, obtain news and photos of both funded and proposed projects, a running tally of money raised, and stories from the front lines in the war against the scourge of malaria.

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A truly green measure of success

Let’s start with a truism: financial results are the success metrics of corporations. People who make daily decisions on creating and executing corporate policies are trained (and paid) to think in ways that improve the performance of the corporation.

As such, it is not surprising that the success of our technocratic society so far has not been based on an ecosystem justice but rather on developing efficient ways of converting “natural capital” into “man-made capital.” Martin Herbert Kijazi in the recent issue of Idea&s magazine proposes that an ecologically compatible economy would embrace a wide range of objectives beyond economic profitability.

However, the old saying, “what gets measured gets managed,” always applies. So, how to measure the integrity of an ecosystem? Or the vitality of an urban centre?

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Social Innovation in Hamilton

MaRS CEO, Ilse Treurnicht, and our director of social entrepreneurship, Allyson Hewitt, are headed to McMaster University today to speak at their Innovation Cafe in partnership with the Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network. It’s a conversational-style forum exploring how social innovation — often in combination with technological innovation — is working in their community and beyond.

The Hamilton groups are among a growing number of organizations worldwide working to increase public awareness of social innovation at the grassroots level — and putting into action the unique strengths of post-secondary institutions to help their host communities think, plan and act differently in the face of significant social change.

Check out this informative feature story in yesterday’s Hamilton Spectator:
“Innovation also helps meet social needs”

ENP comes to Toronto!

As more and more people get into the business of doing good, resources and opportunities are arising, slowly but surely, to meet the demand. For those established do-gooders (the great folks working in non-profits and charities) there’s some refreshing news on the financial front: There’s a new kid in town!

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One of the biggest challenges faced by non-profit and charitable organizations is finding volunteers to help them to do the work to achieve their goals. Recognizing this, many non-profit organizations have shifted a significant portion of their time and effort to develop strategies to recruit, retain and motivate volunteers versus the traditional focus of trying to figure out ways to get more funding. The quest is challenging and few organizations can legitimately claim they have a proven mechanism to engage and retain volunteers. Well, except for one: the Framework Foundation, an organization that spurs volunteerism — not for itself, but for the benefit of other organizations — might just have the perfect solution.

Anil Patel, the Executive Director of the Framework Foundation, has created an innovative program called the Timeraiser. This annual event has proven wildly successful in encouraging people to donate their time to worthy volunteer opportunities. If you are skeptical, read on, but also check it out for yourself as the event will be held in Toronto’s famed Distillery District Fermenting Cellar on Saturday, April 5th, 2008. Doors open at 7pm.

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George Bernard Shaw:
“…All progress depends on the
unreasonable man”

If you are anything like me, you loathe household duties. But they have to get done, so I try to use the time as constructively as possible by listening to podcasts (you don’t need a fancy player, just a computer with an internet connection and some speakers).

Recently, Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast interviewed John Elkington, Founder and Chief Entrepreneur of SustainAbility and author of The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World, along with Social Entrepreneurship Summit speaker and Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Pamela Hartigan. The two distill their observations about what makes a highly effective social entrepreneur tick, and how other business leaders can learn a few things along the way.

During this interview, they tether out three traits of social entrepreneurs.

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9th Annual Social Enterprise Summit

I had the pleasure of attending the Social Enterprise Summit in Boston last week at the regal Park Plaza Hotel.

The two days were packed with activities that were divided into two tracks: educational sessions led by leaders and practitioners in the field, or structured networking activities that were dialogue-based.

The agenda took a soup-to-nuts approach, covering everything from start-up to scale-up, from strategic partnerships to influencing public policy.

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