CI Connect IMPACT Forum: A social enterprise participant’s perspective

Imagine a world in which people are empowered to make the most out of their lives; in which they have all the resources they need to reach their potential; in which they are coached to behave in ways that allow them to attain and maintain peak performance and optimize their productive value to society; and in which the rewards are simply the happiness they attain by being valued members of their community. That ideal inspired me to start my social enterprise and jump at the opportunity attend this unique event. Canadian Institute assembled several dozen leaders of Ontario’s most progressive foundations and social services for a full day of intimate roundtable discussions. It represented a rare opportunity for me to learn about their challenges and aspirations and helped me validate the viability of introducing digital technologies to create new ways of building social capacity. The open and lively roundtable discussions produced a torrent of insights about the how participants would like to improve the effectiveness of the social services they fund and deliver. I was thrilled and inspired by the innovativeness of initiatives being piloted to address systemic inhibitors to progress.

Increasing demographic and economic pressures are threatening the sustainability of programs and quickening discussions about enhancing accountability, and improving measurement and attribution of the impact of social programs. Strategic partnerships and digital platforms are considered critical enablers for efficiently integrating specialized, diverse resources into synergistic, community-oriented ecosystems. New, performance-based risk financing mechanisms are being contemplated for social enterprises that provide services geared toward proactive prevention, thereby reducing demand for social services. It quickly became evident that social benefit organizations are primed for experimenting with highly innovative approaches to improving the wellbeing of Ontarians.

Nevertheless, the challenges of growing demand, coupled with mounting funding constraints often impose an all-consuming burden for many who are stuck on a treadmill of increasingly competitive annual fundraising campaigns. Restricted endowment funds and conservative boards impose additional systemic constraints to investing in capacity, such as digital technologies that could improve efficiencies. Similarly, purpose-constrained gift giving policies and restricted endowments are often not aligned with their return-oriented investment policies, and largely insensitive to the cause for which they were endowed. Investing in only profitable businesses systemically undermines the effectiveness of service delivery resources by discriminating against investments that directly contribute to the fund’s social mandate and the demand for the social services being funded.

Change is hard. It requires strong leadership and leverage. Community Foundations are at the forefront of championing systemic transformations that enable and incentivize experimentation with new, impact-maximizing ventures. Similarly, large, well-funded national foundations are also demonstrating leadership by adopting innovative-new funding and delivery programs, and investing in digital technologies for insights, communication and coordination. Partnerships with the private sector are also being piloted to invest in sustainable capacity-building systems, like technology, infrastructure, and skills enablement for community self-sufficiency. For-profit social enterprises are emerging that employ social beneficiaries to deliver and install lower cost products to resource constrained individuals and organizations, thereby delivering community services and concurrently hiring and developing members of the same community to deliver the services.

However, many innovative initiatives, even those proven to be effective, are exposed to systemic risks that make them difficult to sustain. Strategic approaches are therefore required that create collaboration platforms designed to support new ways of engaging by sharing risks and rewards. Community foundations, supported by government programs, appear to hold the keys to enabling collaborative experimentation.

As a social entrepreneur, I look forward to contributing to this transformation. I believe new digital technologies are making it possible to begin experimenting with programs that simultaneously engage community members in fundraising activities and in taking proactive actions that lessen demand for social services. Similarly, such technologies can enable accurate measurement of changes in behaviour, and even the effectiveness of its impact on individuals and society. Let’s start experimenting, failing quickly, learning, and collaboratively refining our experiments in an environment that is receptive, and forgiving of new approaches. The process has started with dialogue inspired by progressive community and foundation leaders, like the ones I met at the Canadian Institute Contact IMPACT Forum.

Alex Todd is founder of Trust 2 Pay (https://Trust2Pay.ca), a Toronto-based social enterprise and developer of a mobile platform that helps businesses accept invitations from their neighbours to collaboratively support community initiatives.