Tonya Surman's blog

At CSI, we believe that new innovations are the key to turning the environmental, social, cultural and economic challenges we face into opportunities to improve our communities and our planet. We know that early stage social ventures often struggle to raise capital to test and scale their ideas. Well, we’re all about solutions, and we don’t like excuses! That’s why I am so pleased that we were able to announce the launch of the $600K Ontario Catapult Microloan Fund.

Culture is the glue that holds our shared workspace together and the air that breathes vitality into the lives of everyone who moves through it. The Centre for Social Innovation is an amazing shared workspace with a palpable vibrancy that everyone who enters feels. We have built a culture of collaboration, entrepreneurship and solutions for a better world. We are proud of how far we have come, but we know that we can do better.

Happy New Year!

So here is the thing! After nearly 9 years of pushing the social innovation agenda, toiling to define social enterprise, pushing policy, and challenging the sector to think outside the box, they are finally catching up with us!

This week, the Centre for Social Innovation opened its third location in the new Regent Park Arts & Cultural Centre at 585 Dundas St. East. This is an exciting step for CSI as we dig deeply into our exploration of how shared spaces for social innovation can contribute to the revitalization of a neighbourhood.

It’s true. CSI is, indeed, opening our 4^th location in NYC this winter. We are excited, humbled and focused. I believe this is a tremendous opportunity for CSI and our community, but I’m sure many of you would like to know why New York and why now?

While Wall St. and Bay St. have revealed themselves to be deeply disconnected from the process of true value creation and unable to respond to Main Street opportunities, there is a new set of tools – crowd funding – that is giving rise to the citizen investor. There is a unique role for social enterprise to play as a part of this new movement.

Article reposted from Dowser via Tim Draimin...

Eight trends in social entrepreneurship to watch for in 2011

January 27th, 2011 2:37 PM By Tamara Schweitzer

Perhaps an old concept for many of us, this article in the Harvard Business Review, "Shared Values" by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer may be a defining moment in the transformation of thinking about capitalism.

It was a delight to see mention of Community Bonds in the Globe and Mail this week in their article about social finance. It is pretty darned exciting to see people talking about the different ways that we might use social finance to change the world.Very exciting indeed.... hey Ontario! Are you listening? Just think of what we could do together?