The Sector

Employment & Social Development Canada’s Investment Readiness Program

The Investment Readiness Program (IRP) is a 2-year $50 million pilot program designed to help advance Social Innovation and Social Finance (SI/SF) in Canada by building on existing supports to help catalyze community-led solutions to persistent social and environmental challenges. The pilot will provide a learning opportunity to inform future direction on how best to support and mobilize the social finance sector.

How it works

IRP is a foundational element of Canada’s SI/SF Strategy. The program will provide time-limited investments to support a broad range of social purpose organizations (SPOs) (for example, non-profits, charities, co-operatives, hybrid social enterprises, and mission focused for-profits) in improving their capacity and ability to participate in the social finance market, access new investment and contract opportunities, and support them throughout the innovation cycle.

Readiness support partners will help administer a large part of the IRP on behalf of the Government. These organizations will establish open and transparent processes to fund and support a broad range of SPOs across Canada so they can access tailored expertise to become better positioned to take advantage of financing opportunities that will become available through the Social Finance Fund, as well as other investment opportunities.

  • Community Foundations of Canada
  • Chantier de l’économie sociale
  • Canadian Women’s Foundation
  • National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association
  • National Association of Friendship Centres

Expert service providers: Some funding will be used to strengthen programs offered by existing expert service providers with the specialized knowledge and services required to help SPOs build their investment readiness.

  • LIFT Philanthropy Partners
  • McConnell Foundation (Innoweave)
  • Social Enterprise Ecosystem Project (S4ES)
  • Social Venture Connexion (SVX)
  • Raven Indigenous Capital Partners

Ecosystem mobilization initiatives: Funding will also be provided to support organizations who can help address system-level gaps on key areas such as social research and development, knowledge mobilization, impact measurement, building the readiness of social finance intermediaries, and for-profit engagement.

  • Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet)
  • McConnell FoundationCarleton Centre for Community Innovation (3ci)
  • New Market Funds
  • Centre for Social Innovation (CSI)
  • The Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR)
  • Imagine Canada
  • Startup Canada
  • Sauder Social Innovation Academy (UBC)
  • Congress of Aboriginal Peoples

The list of partners will be periodically updated as new organizations are announced.

Figure: Investment Readiness Program model

How can The Sector Inc, help?: We can help with your application:

IRP will begin its launch activities in late summer 2019, with funding becoming available in fall 2019. Eligible SPOs will be able to apply for grant funding from readiness support partners and given the autonomy to purchase time-limited supports from any number of expert service providers to build their capacities in targeted areas to help improve their overall investment readiness.

The IRP will provide the flexibility needed to allow organizations to access a broad range of expert services to meet the unique needs of their organization and their current level of investment readiness.

This could include expert services in the following key areas:

  1. Early stage innovation (for example, social research and development)
  2. Strategic impact focus (for example, growth ready; impact measurement)
  3. Impact sustainability (for example, financial sustainability; accessing outcome-based funding)
  4. Financial resilience (for example, revenue generating; capitalization structure)
  5. Investor ready (for example, investee technical skills)

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/social-innovation-social-finance/investment-readiness.html

The Sector
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Warwick MBA Entrance Essay #1: Main Interests and Experiences that Influenced your Development.

Four years ago, I wrote:

“Conducting business toward a more sustainable, inclusive society is my main interest and the result of two life experiences: early exposure to entrepreneurial business and being a marginalized youth in Canada.”

“My father, an MBA educated entrepreneur, peeked my curiosity of the entrepreneurial spirit when I started working with him at the age of fifteen. I helped operate and supervise a production bay for a start-up cosmetics manufacturing company and was privy to his design and development of a large, small business incubator. However, my family was dissolving.”

“By age sixteen I was a homeless, displaced youth, outside of the educational system, and became a marginalized person myself. Planning and executing the steps back into a life position to compete for a voice in the institutionalized conversations that shape society required unconventional tactics that challenged the barriers of marginalized people, and a decade of my life. No experience bears greater influence on my career focus of improving the livelihoods of underprivileged children, as well as my volunteer involvement with The United Way of Greater Toronto.”

“The business of a more sustainable, inclusive society is part of my DNA and will always influence my professional development.”

#wbs #truth #socialimpact #toronto #mba #london #love #beautiful #ESG #CSR #finance #bradfordturner

The Sector
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My Warwick MBA Entrance Essay #4: Describe One Major Accomplishment & One Major Setback…

One of my major accomplishments is raising the philanthropic capital to fund Multi-Activity-Centers, to implement psycho-social support programming designed to provide non-formal education for three-thousand displaced youth, in the Za’atai refugee camp, at the height of the Syrian Humanitarian crisis, 2013. The partnership consisted of a private family foundation, two government umbrella organizations, a provincial teacher’s federation, and a private philanthropist. This was truly an exercise in stakeholder management. Success required control and synergies of environments both external and internal to Save the Children; creating positive relationships with stakeholders through the appropriate management of their expectations and agreed objectives. I learned that stakeholder management is a process that must be planned and guided by underlying principles, requires extensive resource capacity,and extensive relational skills, none more important than sincerity.

One setback I faced, when I moved to Toronto post undergraduate degree, I worked for a company and was laid off. It was the height of the global economic recession. I lived with my sister with no money. I job searched. A mature man but newly educated, I searched for a management role,despite the mass consensus of typical cohort graduates that I was under qualified. I looked for six months. Circumstances became bleak, in the fifth month; I had to sneak on the subway daily, with soaking wet shoes, holes in the bottoms, and walk into job interviews with accomplished people and explain that I was their next rising star. I did this near fifty times. It was most difficult the fiftieth time having forty nine attempts behind me. I prevailed. I learned to believe in myself…

#wbs #mba #love #persistence #socialimpact #ESG #digital #artificialintelligence #toronto #internationaldevelopment #bradfordturner

The Sector

Sneaking on to the Subway with Holes in my Shoes

It’s peculiar to look back. I started Warwick Business School working for Save The Children Canada, hungry to change the world, yet lacking the skills to mobilize the scale to do so. Not only has my experience through the Warwick MBA brought me the confidence to add value to every situation I find myself in, in the global business and social innovation landscapes, it has brought me the greatest gift of all, knowledge to pass up, down, and all around, to like-minded change-makers.

Every time I browse past the page below and see myself as an example that my business school has chosen to stand behind, I am filled with a sense of honor and humility with can only lead to a greater hunger for learning: the learning of how to use a business education, toward playing a role in helping humanity, to realize the best version of itself.

To this effect, I would like to share a snip-it of one of an entrance essay i wrote, in making my case for acceptance, to this top ranked, international business school:

“One setback I faced, when I moved to Toronto post undergraduate degree, I worked for a company and was laid off. It was the height of the global economic recession. I lived with my sister with no money. Job searched. A mature man but newly educated, I searched for a management role, despite the mass consensus of typical cohort graduates that I was under qualified. I looked for six months. Circumstances became bleak, in the fifth month, I had to sneak on the subway daily, with soaking wet shoes, holes in the bottoms, and walk into job interviews with accomplished people and explain that I was their next rising star. I did this near fifty times. It was most difficult the fiftieth time, having forty nine attempts behind me. I prevailed. I learned to believe in myself.”

#wbs #toronto #truth #socialjustice #sustainability #bradfordturner #thesectorinc #ESG #socialinnovation

The Sector

Warwick Business School Named the Global Leader for Sustainability

For the second year in a row Warwick Business School’s MBA programme has been declared the best in the world for sustainability and advancing environmental and social goals in business.

Corporate Knights’ 2019 Better World MBA ranking focuses on the programmes that educate students on sustainability and responsible business, with WBS coming top out of nearly 150 of the best business schools in the world as the school improved on its overall score from last year to reach 94 per cent.

Sustainability is a key element of the WBS MBA programme with the subject embedded throughout its modules alongside a dedicated Business & Sustainability module.

The LeadershipPlus module also allows students to examine ethics and sustainability in great detail, while Managing in a New World – which offers students the chance to travel to Vancouver, a city renowned for its pioneering sustainability initiatives – investigates moral dilemmas, reputational damage, cultural approaches to bribery, CSR and the informal economy.

Andy Lockett, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Dean of WBS, said: “Sustainability is an issue that all organisations need to address as the world tackles the increasing threat of climate change and it is something we feel is imperative for MBA students to learn about and discuss.

“We are very proud to be ranked number one by Corporate Knights and we will endeavour to build on this to produce MBA graduates who are socially responsible and have the drive and knowledge to help business create a sustainable future for us all.

“As well as our MBA programme our world-class academics are involved in many research projects around sustainability, whether it is using AI and blockchain to improve energy efficiency or taking insights from behavioural science to persuade people to live greener lifestyles.”

Why is Warwick leading the way on sustainability?

WBS academics are involved in research looking at sustainable cities and renewable energy with Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science, part of the UK Government’s Committee on Climate Change, while the University of Warwick has set the goal of reaching net zero carbon from its direct emissions and energy use by 2030.

To determine the ranking, Corporate Knights evaluated 146 business schools, including all of the 2018 Financial Times top 100 MBA programmes and select business programmes accredited by AMBA, AACSB or EQUIS, along with several Principles for Responsible Management Education signatories.

Orgininal WBS Article: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/wbs-named-the-global-leader-for-sustainability/

#wbs #sustainability #csr #socialimpact #toronto #impactinvesting #ESG