McConnell Family Foundation, the Metcalf Foundation, the Maytree Foundation, the Laidlaw Foundation, the Vancouver Foundation, the Muttart Foundation, the Toronto Community Foundation, the Ivey Foundation, the Inspirit Foundation, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Edmonton Community Foundation, the Lawson Foundation, the Walter and Duncan Gordon Charitable Foundation, the Donner Canadian Founda. [...] An advantage of the Canadian approach to social innovation is the emphasis that ecosystems resilience thinking places on collaboration – in contrast to social innovation or social entrepreneurship language that has created a narrative of the heroic individual. [...] This points to the need to rethink social innovation: how can we make social innovation a concept that is useful for foundations and other actors? The starting point is to ensure that we do not overstate the nature or value of social innovation. [...] The logic of this intervention is that foundations can use their financial resources to provide the enabling conditions for creative individuals to do social innovation: …it’s giving thoughtful people or organizations the time and the space and the resources to come at things in a new way and then creating the circumstances to support them in achieving what the new strategy or approach or thinking. [...] In this approach, foundations act as “transmitters” in the “vulgarization” or “democratization” of social innovation by “help[ing] the nonprofit sector to be able to access and use innovation tools.” The goal is “creating a social innovation culture”, one foundation staff member said.
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- 52
- Published in
- Canada
