Centre for Social Innovation - Where Change Happens!

Bill 65, An Act to revise the law in respect of Not-for-Profit Corporations, will apply to all charities and nonprofits that are incorporated under the Province of Ontario and most Ontario organizations are provincially incorporated. This is important legislation that impacts you!

Does your nonprofit organization care about:

•    Calling your organization a public benefit corporation so the public can easily know your intent is to provide for the public good?
•    Limiting the liability of your volunteer Directors?

This is exciting news for the nonprofits in Ontario as Bill 65 recognizes commercial activities and uses the much desired phase 'public benefit' sector to describe the work that we do. But there are a couple of changes that still need to be made.... read below to get the ability to issue 'Community Bonds' made into law....

At long last, the Not-for Profit Corporations Act has been introduced. The 'magnetic attractor' that galvanized the Ontario Nonprofit Network will, among other important governance issues, "allow not-for-profit corporations to engage in commercial activities where the revenues are reinvested in the corporation’s not-for-profit purposes."

Last year, the Ontario Nonprofit Network  became aware of two acts that were restricting the activities of nonprofits in Ontario. We took up the cause and called for changes to the Charitable Gifts Act and the Charities Accounting Act. Delightedly, the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration and the Public Trustee heard us and took action. Bill 212, The Good Government Act, a government omnibus bill, has now received second reading.

CSI is proud to be home to the Ontario Nonprofit Network, that has once again, played a leadership roll in moving the cross-sectoral issues affecting the nonprofit sector, forward in government. This time, their focus is on the Harmonized Sales Tax and what is means to your organization. Check it out below and at wwww.ontariononprofitnetwork.ca.

A fantastic social entrepreneur and insightful thinker, David Lepage, shares his thoughts on how to create demand for social enterprise services. His work in the creation of the original Social Purchasing Portal is just a start to what David has done to build markets for social enterprise. As we prepare for the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise, creating markets is one of the pillars on the wiki. We would love your thoughts.

Scaling Social Enterprise sector will require an increase in demand for their goods and services.

We are delighted to have Tim Draimin as a guest blogger as a part of our conversation about social enterprise leading up to the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise. We would love your thoughts both in response to this posting and through the Social Enterprise Wiki.... But now, check out Tim's compelling case for Comunity Interest Companies in Canada.

By Tim Draimin

We are delighted to have Karim Harji of Social Capital Partners and co-creator of SocialFinance.ca as our guest blogger as a part of our Social Enterprise Series. Karim provides a primer on social finance in Canada. What kind of money do you want? Is financing your major barrier or are there are capacity issues facing your social enterprise? Read Karim's case for social financing tools.

Increase Access to Capital for Social Enterprises

I recently had the pleasure of co-facilitating a consultation with the nonprofit sector in Thunder Bay on behalf of the Ontario Nonprofit Network  (ONN).  The consultations are in part to inform the ongoing work of ONN and to inform the upcoming Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise (this consultation is happening through the Ontario Social Economy Roundtable).  The results were fascinating and the following provides a high level overview of what I heard and learned.  I have prioritized the fe