social innovation « Social innovation meets business revolution

By Rebecca Byers, Community Manager of SocialBusiness.org

In November I attended the 2012 Social Finance Forum at the MaRS Centre, which focused on impact investing and social return on investment. The conference was very well attended, with over 400 guests and only standing room in many of the sessions. It offered a variety of engaging and informative speakers and workshops, conveniently organized with a legend that signifies who a workshop is targeted toward, like not-for-profits and charities, investors and asset managers, market builders and financial service professionals, and social ventures and coops, as well as several targeted toward everyone.

The conference began with opening remarks from Royal Bank of Canada president and CEO Gordon Nixon, who spoke adamantly of the opportunity of social finance and announced RBC’s investment of $1 million over five years in support of the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing.

The conference’s opening panel featured Andy Broderick, Arlene Dickinson, and Antony Bugg-Levine, and focused on an investor insight into defining impact. The prominent investors discussed what they look for when they invest in social ventures, with the panel agreeing that the business does need to have a promise of investment before they can think of investing.

I attended SiMPACT Strategy Group’s workshop session ‘Social return on investment 101,’ an Albertan firm whose community investment measurement and evaluation methodology has been used by ventures in the public, private, and third sector in the province since 1993. SiMPACT employs outcome-based evaluation measures, includes stakeholder perspectives, links program reach and implementation, and reflects intention within the program’s logic model, and maintains that SROI is “a story, not a number.”

Overall I felt the workshops were well organized, specific, and highly informative. There was a consistent energy in the room, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the pitches from the students of the Ontario School for Social Entrepreneurship.

The conference’s first day featured another announcement in addition to Gordon Nixon’s, as Federal Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development the Honourable Diane Finley spoke during lunch and announced the Canadian government first social finance initiative, a two-month (recently extended to January 31, 2013) call for plans on social finance, for which a website was created.

I was uncertain at first as to whether or not Minister Finley’s announcement would be well-received – while some have in fact lobbied to Ottawa for recognition and support, like the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing itself, through its Canadian Task Force on Social Finance – however, as pointed out by Toronto Star columnist Carol Goar, they were seeking changes to tax code in order to allow “self-financing social organizations to qualify for tax credits,” and rewarding those who invest in social enterprise. It would seem then, that the general opinion is that the government is trying to alleviate some of the weight of providing basic help to those in need of it most, or, even more general, to private public services. It’s also obvious that some, as Carol Goar alludes, believe the call for concepts is asking those in the social finance realm to steer their time and efforts away from their own efforts, which could use support from the government instead of the other way around.

I can’t say I entirely disagree with this view, but I also think it’s long overdue that the national government recognized the social finance at all, as this was the first official time. I think that it would be easy for this to be frustrating for social entrepreneurs who have been pushing social finance for years, and then to all of a sudden have it kind of thrown in with the government’s austerity measures.

By Tiana Reid, Editor and Community Manager at SocialBusiness.org

As a community manager for SocialBusiness.org, I was eager and ready to tune in to Stanford Social Innovation Review‘s webinar today, “Leading in a Hyperconnected World: Driving Innovation & Impact with Digital Media.” The line-up was pretty impressive: Ben Hecht, President & CEO, Living Cities; Claire Diaz Ortiz, Head of Social Innovation, Twitter; Steve Downs, Chief Technology & Information Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and Regina Starr Ridley, Publishing Director, Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Essentially, it all came down to this: how can we use digital and social media effectively? By “we,” I’m specifically referring to the collective “us,” those of us who are in the realm of creating social change whether it’s through business, charity, government or civil society. The go-to example for Twitter-meets-transformation is the Arab Spring. Ortiz explained how the events that went on there “took on a new face” because of those who could access the viral information. For instance, the #jan25 hashtag was started by a 21-year-old female student in Egypt.

Hecht also explored the change-making aspects of digital media and pointed to paradigm shifts. He said there is an “increased understanding that in fact to solve the world’s problems you need to work together because it’s so complex.” Because of the extent of the complications that the world is (and has been) knee-deep in, we can’t rely on one actor; collaboration is key.

It’s no surprise that people (especially “web-y” people) tend to romanticize the impacts of digital media. In explaining another paradigm shift, Hecht mentioned the ubiquitous argument of how the “means of consuming and sharing news and information is widely democratized and inexpensive.” True. But what about the digital divide? Even if we look within and not across countries, it’s clear that access isn’t at all equal.

“A report last year by the World Bank estimated that every 10-percentage-point increase in the availability of broadband boosted economic growth by 1.2 percentage points in developed countries,” Iain Marlow and Jacquie McNish wrote in the Globe and Mail in 2010. The global digital divide has similar implications.

However, even if not everyone has access to the same information—and access to how that information is disseminated—”ideas can go viral,” as Hecht confirmed. I mean, just look at the #Kony2012 campaign. And so, during the webinar, there was talk about real-life engagement, so to speak. That is, what happens to all of this online action, networking and communication? Where does it go?

Hecht asked, “How do you go beyond short-term media and move it into the long-term commitments that are needed for change?” Aptly, Ortiz responded: “Socia media is the tool. There has always been a tool.”