The State of Social Enterprise Public Policy in Ontario - The Great Convergence?

I am asked repeatedly to give an overview of the state of the social enterprise sector in Ontario by people.... and as things are heating up in this area, as the economy reveals its inherent weaknesses, social enterprise and social entrepreneurship is looking like a more interesting and appealing option for the world and certainly for our province... well, it is about time! What a concept... values-based business.... yeah... planting the seeds for social innovation, market transformation and creating a world using the power of business to make the social and environmental change that we need to see in the world... Yeah!

But getting a group of entrepreneurs and institutional partners to agree on anything like a public policy framework to enable social enterprise is akin to getting my children to get to school on time without a fight every morning. But we are getting there.... the following blog posting is as much me trying to organize my thoughts as anything else.... everything that I will say is strictly from my perspective, but hopefully it will start to get some of the players on the same page.... 2009 will be a tremendous year for social enterprise in Ontario.....

The bits and pieces in movement....

In 2007 and 2008, CSI partnered with MaRS, Boston consulting Group (BSG), Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) and in 2008, Social Innovation Generation (SiG – Causeway) to convene the Social Entrepreneurship Summit. Both of these events have been pivotal for bringing attention to the growing SE field.

Several groups had been working on these issues over the years – including OnCoop, CEDNet, Social Economy Hub @ OISE and many others. But the Summits marked a bit of a moment to bring in new audiences to the field.

Meanwhile, the Social Enterprise Council of Canada – www.secouncil.ca – (of which CSI is a member) is a nationally focused think and do tank that has been hosting the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise in 2005 in Toronto and 2007 in Vancouver. These events have each drawn 500 practitioners together to build their capacity, network and raise the profile of SE in Canada.

In 2007 and 2008, Causeway also hosted the Social Finance Forum – www.socialfinance.ca an effort to raise awareness of the possibility of engaging mainstream investors in social investments. ww.socialfinance.ca

Meanwhile, several regions in Canada have been working away to develop an enabling environment to support the emergence of social enterprise in their jurisdictions. We seen great work coming out of the BC Social Enterprise Summit, policy work emerging in Manitoba and Newfoundland and lest us not forget the 25 years of work that has evolved out of Quebec – so often leading the world in creating a social economy.

How things converge......

This November, we are working to create a convergence of the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship Summit and the Social Finance Forum. Each of these events has been moving in the direction of pursuing a public policy framework....

So what about Ontario... where is the convergence happening here?

Here we have a few things in play...

The Ontario Social Economy Roundtable (OSER) is a group of folks – with a broad and inclusive membership - that has been working to create an enabling environment for community economic development, social enterprise and social finance for years. They have come together again as a roundtable, bringing in new partners, with the intention to undertake the hard work of actually developing a strategy for creating an enabling policy framework. Trouble with this group is that the breadth of its membership also makes it a more challenging process to engage in... I am hopeful.

MaRS commissioned, on behalf of OSER, a strategic inquiry about the state of SE in Ontario. This report, prepared by Liz Mulholland, providing some excellent context for figuring out how to move the sector and the issues forward. I think that this, in tandem with Andrea Baldwin's recent paper, form a good foundation for action in Ontario.

We also have the Ontario Nonprofit Network – www.ontariononprofitnetwork.ca – of which I am the Co-Chair. ONN has spun off two constellations of interest – Social Enterprise Ontario – www.socialenterpriseontario.ca and Social Finance Ontario – both of which are pushing for a better policy framework. ONN has been instrumental in influencing perhaps the biggest threat to SE in Ontario – in 2007 the Ontario Government has proposed a change to the legal framework for NPO's that would have forced any nonprofit that generated over 35% of its revenue, to become a for-profit. Well, ONN, we think, dealt with that one... we will see when the legislation becomes public this spring.

Then we have Causeway@SiG, which is a national initiative that is focused on enabling social finance... I am still trying to figure out the difference between social finance and public policy... I think that there is some serious overlaps.... are they one and the same? - The devil is in the details. I just want to get on with the specific asks....(my next blog posting)

Then you have MaRS – who has convened in this space, has great relationships with government and is a partner in SIG...MaRS is also members of OSER, a founding partner in Causeway and is chairing Social Finance Ontario. Allyson Hewitt was a member of the ONN Reference Group and MaRS is a funder of ENP... So the MaRS gang is definitely in this space.

Lest, we forget the Centre for Social Innovation.... god knows what we are doing in this space? Perhaps offering the practitioners perspective, we are implicated all over the place... we sit on the SECC, ONN, SFO and OSER. We are home to ONN, Enterprising Nonprofits and Social Enterprise Ontario. And I am writing this blog.... so, I guess that tells you were we sit. Oh yeah... and we are convening Enterprising Nonprofits Toronto – a micro-granting program to seed social enterprise in Toronto... and hopefully, Trillium funding dependent, Ontario-wide.

I think that I have it all right... I am sure that someone will respond if I have got it wrong....

So, what does it all mean????

On November 18-21, 2009 the social enterprise practitioners and policy makers will be converging in Toronto. It is the hope of the Social Enterprise Council of Canada that we will walk out of that event with a national policy platform to support social enterprise in Canada.

This national platform needs to be informed by the provincial work and endorsed by practitioners and institutions alike.

This means that Ontario has a unique opportunity to build on the work of other regions (see my blog posting about BC's platform and Manitoba's platform) and to begin a series of pre-conferences, ideally through the Ontario Social Economy Roundtable and / or Social Finance Ontario to be able to develop a policy platform for Ontario that can feed into the work of the national platform. But we have to get moving.... we don't have any time to waste. It is going to be a busy year...

So.... there you have it... the SE world according to Tonya on Family Day 2009.

Love to have people clarify their organizations and their interest.... my next posting will be about what I want to see in an Ontario policy for SE....

Cheers,

Tonya