Centre for Social Innovation - Where Change Happens!

Today I learned that wikimedia has been denied charitable status in the UK. Andrew Turvey explains here. I have also recently learned that the CRA Charities Dept has anulled the charitable status of Phoenix Community Foundation. They 'anulled' it claiming that the objects granted to Phoenix should never have been granted after being in operation for 30 years.

The following is a response / commentary to Corvin Russel's posting on  Judy Rebicks new blog - Transforming Power.

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I am asked repeatedly to give an overview of the state of the social enterprise sector in Ontario by people....

Creativity, Social Benefit and Job Creation: The Potential for Social Entrepreneurship in Ontario is a Working Paper Series: Ontario in the Creative Age written by Andrea Baldwin. It is good! and it is about time!

We have felt this coming for years - this economic crisis - but I don't think that any of us really knew what it would look like or just what to do when it came.  As I sit on the sidelines, having conversation after conversation with people about what this all means, I am struck by several things....

1. fear is infecting everything - what does this mean for our future?

2. this is an opportunity...

3. have we done all that we could do be move forward toward a market transformation

Our very own board chair, Eric Meerkamper, talks about the future of young people and the careers that they are chosing in the financial post yesterday. Read more.

 

Kudos to Kosmos for publishing this great article on the global Hub Network. The article describes the great work of The Hub in setting up an international network of shared work spaces that support social entrepreneurs - "an ecology of social innovation". We love what The Hub is doing and we're a proud member of their network...

Echoing Green has just announced the 2008 Finalists for the Echoing Green Fellowships. A description of the finalists can be found here.

I must admit that I had never heard of Echoing Green before last year and was surprised to learn that they have been offering seed funding and support to social entrepreneurs since 1987 (!). Kudos to them...and man, do I love their website.

This is a fascinating article about the emergence of partnerships between big corporations and social entrepreneurs. It provides a great overview of the types of partnerships that we are seeing evolve and some of the associated risks...

It starts..... "Big firms are joining the queue to follow in Muhammad Yunus’s footsteps by developing businesses designed to fix social ills..." http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=5823