Another reminder that this webinar is being recorded, and this recording will be sent to anyone who's registered for the webinar about a week from today, so look forward to that in your inbox. And with that, I would like to introduce you to Shelly. Shelly McNellis is the Director of Social Innovation at the BC Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation. Her team leads government's work to promote and support new solutions to the province's most complex, pervasive social problems, and in particular, cross sector partnership in the development of those solutions. For much of her career in government, Shelly has led and participated in the development of innovative policies and programs, most recently with respect to open government business transformation and the provision of services and supports to people with disabilities. She's passionate about public service, and in particular, about building government's capacity to work with the private and non-profit sectors to achieve better results and deliver more effective solutions. Shelly lives in beautiful Victoria with her husband and two children who never grow up and leave home. That's a dog and a cat. In her spare time, she plays pool and sings, although usually not at the same time. Shelly, I'm going to pass it over to you, and we should see your screen shortly. Take it away, Shelly. Okay, so because Kim is really the expert on social enterprise, I'm just going to take a few minutes to sort of go through what government's involvement in all of this stuff is and why. So there's the why question. Maybe it's just because I think there's a growing recognition across organizations from all sectors that no organization by itself is going to be able to tackle these complex social problems, things like homelessness and addiction.  But when you bring all of the resources and all of the expertise and all of the experience from the sectors together, that's when you're able to come up with some really innovative solutions. So in January 2011, the premier appointed the BC Social Innovation Council and gave it the task of making recommendations to build capacity for social innovation in BC. And so I'm not going to go through all of these. It's just kind of a snapshot of the 11 recommendations that the council delivered. One thing that I wanted to note specifically is that the recommendations aren't aimed at government, although some of them are very clearly government tasks, like tax credit and community contribution companies. The recommendations are really aimed at organizations and individuals across everyone really actually. And then the other thing I wanted to highlight is recommendation number 11, something called the BC Partners for Social Impact, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. That's kind of a network of individuals and organizations that we help to support from communities across BC to bring people together to talk about, to make connections, to develop new partnerships, all with the goal of supporting new ways of tackling social problems. And you'll see on the left hand side that there's a pillar, if you want to call it that, that's about supporting social enterprise. And that's really where I'm going to focus most of what I'm talking about today. So for government, these are kind of the three areas that we're focusing on. And I won't say too much about that because that's really just an intro to the next slide. Our first goal is partner engagement specifically, and we have two focuses for that piece of work. One of them is our external partners, and there's the BC Partners for Social Impact that I mentioned a minute ago. We're working hard to develop better connections with First Nations communities and First Nations innovators. There is a goal in our recommendation in the Action Plan related to that, but there's also a really long history of innovation within First Nations communities. And particularly with respect to social enterprise, a lot of entrepreneurship in First Nations communities has really been geared towards having a social impact and creating a benefit for the people that live in that community. The last two, number three and four, are very much related. One of the things we're doing a lot of work towards is to really showcase what is happening in BC. There are really amazing innovations in communities across the province, and those stories are not just inspirational. They can actually be really helpful when a group or an individual in another community is trying to think of a way to tackle the same problem. So we're trying to create space for those people to connect as well as just a place to go and read about all the cool things that are happening in BC. At Hubcap, number four, is actually a really big part of that. That's a website that we launched in September. It's an aggregation of content from all kinds of places about social innovation and about social enterprise, and it lets you create a profile on the site. You can connect with other people who are there through the site. There's information about events, and really just to put all of that information in one place, because one of the things that we've heard a lot, we know things are happening. We know these events are taking place. There's no one place to go to find out about them, so that was our response to that concern. And this is Hubcap. You can see, oh look who's down in the bottom left corner. This is every, probably two or three months, we feature a different collection, different types of information. May was social enterprise month, so we just had a social enterprise collection to go along with that. And if you're interested in, if there's anyone on the webinar that's interested in being part of this, you can connect with me afterwards and I can help you get set up and all that stuff. But really if you have a social innovation or a social enterprise and you want us to know about it, you want people to know about it, you're really fantastic to get more information up there. These are just an example of some of our external partners, and you can see there's a pretty broad cross-section of organizations.  And of course there's another piece of partner engagement that's internal for us, and really this is about working with our colleagues across government to make sure that they're aware of what social innovation is. There's a lot of things that are already happening in government that aren't necessarily called social innovation, but to really sort of be aware of all of those things, what social innovation means, and how they can actually apply certain aspects of social innovation to the work that they do within government. Our second goal is related to social finance. To start with a definition, it's really how you manage money, and doing that in such a way that you actually create a social impact as well as an economic one. This is something that we're just sort of entering into now, and the first piece of that is to figure out this thing called impact investment, which is investors actually looking for opportunities to put their money in places where it does have a positive social impact, in addition to a financial return. And we're just starting to pull together some people to sort of figure out what that looks like in VC, where it's happening, where it's not, what the infrastructure looks like that supports impact investment, where there might be gaps, and just trying to figure out what steps, you know, businesses, governments need to take to kind of promote that, so that VC is able to tap into that impact investment market, which is pretty significant. And beyond that, to sort of tap more into the traditional investment market, because of course that's where the bulk of the funds are. And the second thing is to do some work to explore something called a social impact bond, and if you haven't heard of it before, it's actually not a bond, and it's sort of unfortunate that it was given that name, but really what it is is a type of performance-based or outcome-based contract, where government contracts, either directly or indirectly with a service provider that has an innovative solution to a social problem. That solution, or program, or intervention, or whatever you want to call it, is actually funded by a private investor, and the goal is to provide funding for interventions that government doesn't necessarily have the funding for, and primarily in this case that's prevention type services. Let's just say, for example, it's something designed to keep children from going into care. So the private investor funds this innovative program. If the innovative program achieves a certain performance standard, achieves related to that outcome of keeping kids out of care, obviously that creates a savings for government, and out of those savings, government pays a return to the investor. There are a growing number of these, but they're all very new, and by their nature, they're sort of long-term investments. So there's not a lot of data yet to say whether or not they're successful, so we're really watching what's happening in those other jurisdictions. The UK has a lot. Australia, there are some in New York and other places in the States, and there's even one in Saskatchewan that just started last year. And so Focus Area 3 for us is social enterprise, and that's really what we want to talk about today. So just for the sake of clarity to start with a definition, there are a lot of definitions of social enterprise out there. And we tend to stay pretty at high level and just say for us, businesses that direct their profits or revenue toward a social, cultural, or environmental purpose are for us social enterprises. And so trying to support that sector to grow and to thrive and to just be an even bigger contributor to communities and to the economy in BC. So our three sort of activity areas are first to make sure that the supports and services that are available to small and medium-sized businesses are accessible to social enterprises. So that's a bit of an ongoing task. In a lot of cases, the inaccessibility is just related to awareness. So it might be the social enterprise not knowing that the services exist, or it might be the people who deliver those services not understanding what social enterprise is and that it might in fact be eligible for their program. So we've been doing a lot of work to communicate what is available. And then where we actually do run into those policy barriers or practice barriers that are preventing social enterprises from accessing programs to work with those organizations to see if there's any room to move on that kind of thing. Number two is to support the growth of community contribution companies. And I'll talk a bit more about that in a sec. And also to create social impact purchasing guidelines, which is something I'm happy to say we're able to check off our list mostly. So with respect to C3s, and I'm just going to check my notes because this is where we get into sort of legal stuff here that I don't necessarily want to get wrong. So community contribution companies, actually I think I have a slide on this, or this is a little bit different. Community contribution companies are a little bit different than traditional corporations. They have to have one more director than a traditional corporation. But the big differences are that they're asset locked. They have a dividend cap. They can pay dividends to shareholders, but they're capped at 40% to ensure that the majority of their profits go towards their social purposes, which is something they have to state upfront. When, if the company is dissolved, then they have to transfer the majority of their assets, again 60%, to another asset locked company, like sorry, organization, like a registered charity. And then the other major difference is that they have to publish every year a community contribution report, sort of detailing where their profits have gone and how that's had an impact on the community. Now I'm going to go back. Sorry, this is an earlier version of my presentation, I think.  Now it's going to open up the Holly Hawk website. Oh, no, it's not good. Oh, there it's going. Sorry about this, everybody. Go to the keyboard. Okay, so why community contribution companies? Really it's to fill a gap. I mean, the easy response is that it was something that our partners and our stakeholders asked for, but really it was to fill a gap that existed between the private corporation and the non-profit. So a private company can attract investment, but it really doesn't have a way, if they're concerned about a social purpose or a community benefit, they really don't have a way to reassure their customers and their investors that the money they spend there is going to go towards a social purpose and not just now but into the future. And then on the non-profit side, they obviously have the social purpose part nailed down, but they don't have an ability to attract investment. So when it comes to growth and achieving sustainability, obviously, that's a big impact for them. Colleges, you're going to fiddle here again. So this is my attempt to illustrate the continuum between those two sort of opposite ends, the private corporation and the non-profit. So a private corporation, they're sometimes called social ventures if they operate primarily for a social benefit. A really good example of that is Foodie in Vancouver. Foodie delivers really good food to your office for meetings from restaurants that don't ordinarily deliver, but they do it in an environmentally sustainable way. They use delivery partners like Shift Delivery that uses electric trikes. All of their stuff is compostable. So that's one example of a company working on that end of the spectrum. A little further along to the community contribution company, that's where you have an organization like World Housing, which is also in Vancouver. They have a buy one, give one model, but they apply it to housing. So if you buy a condo in one of their developments, they build a home for someone living in a developing country in basically a garbage dump.  Cooperatives are a little further along and I think we all probably understand what those are. What's really interesting about cooperatives is that while we're all familiar with the grocery co-ops and the gas co-ops, that model is starting to be applied in some really interesting ways, like car sharing organization that's working on an elder care co-op on Vancouver Island. And then we have, of course, the nonprofit society or sometimes the enterprising nonprofits, which Kim is going to talk to us about. So what a really good example of that and one of my favorites is the Pet Treat Bakery in Courtney. They're operated by the Beaufort Association and they employ people with developmental disabilities to make treats for dogs and cats. And I can tell you from experience that they are fantastic. I haven't tried them myself, but my dog definitely has. So these are just some of the examples of those companies. A bit of duplication here, but Mealshare is another really neat one. They partner with restaurants and the restaurants offer a Mealshare meal on their menu. And if you buy that meal, Mealshare provides a meal to someone who needs one. And the cleaning solution is an organization that employs people who are dealing with mental illness to provide cleaning and janitorial services. I'm going to stop hitting my mouse because it's going to take me to those lengths. Social impact purchasing. So this is something that we're really excited about because it's something that we've actually been able to do internally to make ourselves a little bit more innovative. The principles underlying social impact purchasing are much the same as they are for any other type of procurement. The difference is that when you do social impact purchasing, you're thinking about the social and environmental impact of your purchasing choice, as well as what most people would traditionally think of as value for money, which is purely the financial transaction. So within government, obviously, and most places, openness and transparency in a competitive process to the extent that it's reasonable is really, really important. Value for money. In a way, we're sort of broadening that definition to include those social and environmental components. And I think that most of us in our personal lives already do a lot of this when we buy stuff. We buy things from the local farmer or from a small business or a local business because that generates some different types of value in the community. And then, of course, there's a flip side of that, which is avoiding the negative consequences of purchasing, buying from a company that has issues with, you know, polluting the environment and that sort of thing. So really what we're doing is we're taking those decisions that we all sort of make in our day-to-day lives and we're applying them at the organizational level and using that same type of thinking to apply to everything from our small purchases like catering for a meeting to our big RFPs. And for us, what it's really about is making sure that our procurement supports the things that the organization is trying to do. So our ministry has some goals that are related to employment for people who are unemployed, employment and inclusion for people with disabilities. And so our purchasing, just like everything else we do, should support those objectives. And I think often we think of procurement as being just one of those administrative things that doesn't necessarily line up to the rest of the goals of the organization. So we launched our guidelines for that in March. We're in the process right now of making sure that all of our staff, you know, are aware that they exist and also understand how to apply them appropriately and effectively. And it's been a really fun process to go through. That's pretty much all that I had to say. One of the things that they wanted us to talk about was sort of how the people who are listening in can support social enterprise or can get involved in this sort of stuff. And I think that social impact purchasing is really the thing that I'd most like folks to think about because within, you know, your own personal lives and of course the organizations that you work for with respect to the goals and objectives that your organization has, what would it be like if all of your purchasing lined up to support those goals as well? And if the purchasing power of big organizations could actually be leveraged to create some really significant social impact. So there's my contact information. I know there's going to be questions later, but if anyone has any questions for me feel free to contact me. And I think I'm ready to turn it over to Kim. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shelley. That was great. Just before I introduce Kim and pass the presentation over to her I'm just going to ask a poll question to the audience which will help give us a better sense of the reach we have for today's webinar. So you should see it up on the screen in front of you now just a quick poll and just let me know how many people are watching the webinar with you. If it's just you, that's just fine, but sometimes you have a couple of colleagues that might crowd around a computer or something like that, so just click on the option that best represents you in front of you. Seeing lots of answers coming in, thanks very much for that. Looks like almost 90% of you have voted. That's great. I'll just give it a couple more seconds to catch any stragglers that might be distracted at the moment. And that's great. I'm going to close the polls now. Okay, thanks very much for that. And now I'm going to introduce Kim. Unfortunately, Kim isn't able to join us by webcam today, but Kim Buxa, prior to working at Enterprise and Non-profits, Kim spent many years putting her commerce degree from UVic to work while managing programs, projects, and workforce in the corporate offices of the telecommunication sector with a desire to have a greater impact on the local and global communities around her. Kim left the corporate world years ago to pursue a Masters of International Relations in Mexico City. On completion of this graduate degree, Kim returned to her lower mainland home to apply her knowledge and expertise to local community development and nonprofit projects in various sectors through her current work at Enterprising Non-profits. Kim, I'm going to switch the screen over to you. I trust everyone can see that. There it is. Thanks, Kim. Thank you. And thanks, Shelley and Josh. That's been fantastic. So I'm just going to run through the introduction to Social Enterprise, which is part of the day-long workshop I travel around the province doing. So as Josh mentioned, EMP is a collaborative program that's housed and operated here in the Van City Community Foundation, and you can see it there. We have a couple other funding partners and delivery partners in terms of our activities around the province. There's obviously a whole handset, that aren't up there in terms of various post-secondary institutions that we work closely with and other corporate supporters that we have as well. EMP itself has been around for about 20 years, and I've been with the program coming up on five years. So while many of you may not actually be familiar with the program, we have been out there for a long time. And typically we're in touch with about 500 nonprofit organizations around the province each year. So we have a pretty extensive distribution list and contact list and a really good read on what's happening around the province in terms of nonprofit businesses, enterprising nonprofits, and social enterprise. So what is social enterprise? You already heard Shelly talk about it and I think we all have the disclaimer now that there's lots of definitions out there and lots of uses of the terminology. And as Shelly said, we recognize that there's really broad and high-level understandings of social enterprise. And for us, and we certainly recognize that as well, when we're talking about social enterprise simply because we're housed on the charity side and in the nonprofit side, for us, we are typically recognizing or speaking to or working directly with nonprofit businesses. So that's our definition, is that it's a nonprofit business owned or operated by a nonprofit. So obviously owned is a recognizable concept rather than operated, which is usually a program within the nonprofit that is generating a certain amount of revenue still through the sales of goods and services that ultimately contribute back to that program activity or the entire nonprofit itself that it's working within or working for. So again, the terms are varied. You might hear social impact businesses, you might hear social ventures, you might hear social enterprise, and we're all kind of tired of talking about it so we're just wanting to get on with it. So just a quick slide up there to show you the different kinds of impact businesses that fall under social enterprise or social ventures or however we distinguish them. All having, as Shelly mentioned, that component back into the community, addressing community needs and challenges in various forms, whether it's through local businesses, women's businesses, Aboriginal businesses, co-ops, etc. So many on the for-profit, all doing good stuff and needing to do that good stuff through revenue generation. So for us, it really is a verb. It's not a thing. When nonprofits are social enterprising or enterprising nonprofits, that's just it. It's a tool or a means to an end to the ultimate goal of their social component, what it is that they're ultimately trying to achieve. So we do say it's a verb, although we do talk about it like it's a specific model, a number of business models within that, that it's really just a tool and a toolkit. And in terms of business models, they exist in every sector you can think of. So if you can think of a certain area, I could probably give you an example of a nonprofit business that exists in that same sector. You can see from this slide that many of the activities, especially when we're talking about employment-based, are often in low-skill entry-type businesses where there's a lot of space for those nonprofits to play in the market, a lot of room, whether it's something like landscaping, manufacturing, recycling, that sort of thing. Of course, we're also familiar with retail when people hear that I'm a social enterprise and they give me the glazed overlook. Many of my friends and family still don't know what I do except that I do that thrift store stuff. So that's probably a model that most people are familiar with, although a very, very historic model that still works today, of course, but we're definitely looking at more innovative models these days. As Shelley mentioned, we're seeing more in the terms of car shares. Recreation, of course, has been around forever. Food security is a big one. So seeing not just farmers markets, but other ways of getting supply to buyers. And one of the newer ones, again, that Shelley mentioned on was healthcare. So again, recognizing that we need more inclusive communities and not everyone has access to various components of healthcare, whether it's dental or medical. And nonprofits are stepping in to fill that gap. And again, why are nonprofits doing it? It's usually because they recognize the need in the community and ultimately that need goes back to community inclusion and ensuring that everyone hangs access to the full components of a healthy community, which are environmental components, social components, food, healthcare. You could see on here, again, looking at specific community inclusion related demographics, such as youth or seniors or individuals with disabilities are facing mental health issues. Ultimately, ensuring that they have access to education, access to employment, access to the arts and culture, and of course, healthcare and good food and nutrition. And ultimately, as you can see down in that corner, and as Josh mentioned right off the top, there is absolutely an economic component to it. I think many of us forget that nonprofits play a huge economic component in our communities, especially in rural and remote communities when there's other businesses that might pull out or natural resources that might change. It's often the nonprofits and nonprofit businesses that sustain those communities or step in to fill the gaps that have been left from the pull-out. In any case, when we're talking about social enterprise, and I think that's probably applicable, whether you're on the for-profit or the nonprofit side of it, is it's really about talking about a blended value. And Shelly talked a little bit about value for money or what we're hearing as best value and procurement. And so, for any social enterprise or business with a social component, you really need to be talking about both, both your social returns or your social impacts, as well as your financial returns and your financial impacts. Ultimately, it depends on who your audience is and what your goals are. Of course, many nonprofits that stay in the subsidizing component where they're operated within a nonprofit typically are going to have more social impact in return and maybe not so much on the financial return. And other ones that are in the for-profit component where it might be a separately operated, separately owned and operated business, owned and operated by the charity or nonprofit, then you're likely to be talking a little bit more about the financial return and how those returns ultimately feed back into the social mission of the owner, which is the charity or the nonprofit. But always talking about both. And this is another timeline or extension of what you saw with Shelley's presentation that really kind of shows what traditional what traditional corporations have looked like in terms of nonprofit incorporation or ownership and for-profit ownership. Nonprofits, of course, traditionally always being in the grants and donations and slowly seeing a need for more financial sustainability. So having a fee for service component, having excess capacity that they sell. And then on the for-profit the same thing has happened that they've traditionally been strictly focused on profit but are seen through the environmental movement has saw a change in thinking and responsibilities to the community. So we saw the CSR corporate social responsibility and slowly the two have merged into the middle. So that's why again you can easily see that they can both be called social enterprise.  Well the other one is on the for-profit but both having those social and financial components. And you can also see that I've got the 3C tech under there as Shelley talked about. So while it is a community contribution company it's important to notice that it is under the for-profit incorporation model. It certainly has the contributions going back into the community but ultimately it is an incorporation model for for-profits. And also important to recognize that any for-profit can be donating or giving back to the community and receiving those the tax credits and tax deductions are available with that. And so just to clarify and again like I said this is a workshop part of a workshop that I provided in a day long situation to non-profit. So this is a highly condensed version but often important to clarify some of the terminology that a lot of the time non-profits think they're charities whereas unfortunately not all non-profits are charities. All charities are non-profits but non-profits do not necessarily have charitable status unless they've sought that out from the federal government. So really two different governments you're traditionally dealing with non-profits at the provincial level although could be at federal and then charitable status at federal level and then you do have cooperatives that are on both for non-profit as much as some individuals like to challenge me on that. There's definitely definitely on both sides of the fence there and then non-profits or charities simmed as you or I or an investor could be a sole proprietor we could be in partnership and in terms of owning a for-profit or a 3C again as you can see it's tucked in under there. If we zoomed into the non-profit model and I touched on this a little bit but this is more of a social enterprise continuum for us kind of the spectrum of social enterprise beyond gifts and donations you would start seeing fee for service which is definitely making a non-profit enterprising maybe not so much into the full-blown social enterprise but definitely enterprising and entrepreneurial so we see that and then we get into the more familiar social enterprise models that we deal with and especially in terms of defining success is unfortunately a number of groups and others that are still on that learning learning road or learning path think that social enterprises are only in the profitable spectrum when they are often also in the subsidized or as I like to say stretching their dollars a little bit more a little bit better and also the self-sustaining so those are two really important components especially if they have a strong social mission it's hard to expect that they that's operated within the non-profit that it would get to a profitable status so in terms of subsidized they may still need some portion of their costs covered by their parent organization I often say at that point they're likely to be covering expenses of the program or the activity but perhaps not the salaries of the individuals that are managing that activity or program whereas self-sustaining of course is covering both you're able to cover the program costs as well as the salaries involved and well we all know what profitable means and at that point hopefully using all three of these as most organizations are we know from Imagine Canada the kind of god parent of charities across Canada recognizes that most non-profits are using one and more likely two or three of these different components to sustain their non-profits and generate revenue or income so again why do they start normally non-profits recognize as we all recognize the needs in the market and by the market it's usually the community that's one and the same in a lot of cases so it's really recognizing that there's a need in the marketplace or for certain individuals that could be filled through some activity that they're doing or want to do ultimately advancing their mission hopefully contributing some kind of financial component back to the non-profit or back to the charitable mission social enterprises need to know about all three of these but the hardest decision that comes out of these three little options is which one is the priority and that's how we see really strong good social enterprises is when they know their blended values so again we're back to that one of the first slides there blended value, money, market and mission it's important to be thinking and talking about three but ultimately you have to know which one it is that is your priority and it's funny that that's a hard thing to do and I realize that in some ways the way to frame it is actually the reverse which is which one are you willing to compromise on and so just looking at those in some detail local market need we often use the example of farmers markets which of course are fulfilling the need for both the farmers or the suppliers as well as the buyers and the consumers and actually these days of course serving more than just farming and food needs there's baked goods and canned goods and crafts and arts and my farmers market has musicians and non-profits advocating for different things so definitely a community hub again seeing non-profits step in to fulfill healthcare gaps such as dental care in Vernon we're seeing that also in the Kootenies and in the north where non-profits are stepping in as well as First Nations organizations or communities stepping in to ensure their members have access to that and that's going back to a lot of information that's showing that dental care is actually directly related to poverty in terms of if children don't have access to dental care they tend to drop out of school or be less likely to go to school in which case they're less likely to receive the education they need to receive employment which just starts the cycle all over again so a lot of large organizations are really watching not space of how non-profits can participate in healthcare and then you've got organizations like the Ski and the Bakery which actually the market need was exactly that the market need was that there was no Bakery in the Hazelton so this is up north for those of you that aren't familiar with it and when the natural resources and the communities kind of slow down there was no longer Bakery or coffee shop on the highway which seemed like a bad idea and so a couple moved in there and decided to open a Bakery and while they realized that that was a need in the community they also realized that there was individuals with disabilities that did not have access to employment so not only do they provide employment at the Bakery they also ensure that those individuals have access to it which means they actually go and get them so they have transportation because as you can imagine in some of these smaller communities there's no transit like the wonderful not working sky train we have here in Vancouver and the other market need that is noticeable and again as I said is traditionally ensuring an inclusive community is access to training employment education training and employment so you've got organizations like Cleaning Solution which you heard Shelly mention which is a janitorial service here in Vancouver and MP Enterprises which is my third option there which is again similar janitorial but more waste removal in terms of outside waste removal and vandalism removal and again they are Cleaning Solution is a permanent employer so they have permanent staff they're up to about 90 individuals these days and MP Enterprises is actually more on the training side of it so their staff are there for a more condensed amount of time it's not forever but up to about 24 months or as long as that individual needs to get their skills and life skills up to snuff that they can then move on to permanent employment and then you've got Pagnana which is up north in Prince George and as it suggests it's a training employment group for First Nations that not only trains First Nations but also employs them so that's both giving and taking at the same time there for them traditional mission based of course is the ultimate goals of mission of course we've seen this forever in terms of museums, cultural centers, theaters it's about ensuring that there's access to arts and dance and culture higher education society in Haida Gwai is just that it's a post secondary which some of you might be familiar with a post secondary course that takes advantage of the unique biodiversity economic and biodiversity happening in Haida Gwai so they have a semester at Haida Gwai so to speak it's about 20 students going there it's accredited through UBC and UVIC and it's replicable that's the amazing thing with some of the spaces that we have in BC and across Canada these small world remote communities they still have something to offer that nobody else does so why not look at ecotourism and figure out how to use that in terms of having dollars come into the community to support the members of the community that live there year round all the time and then other ones are like Vancouver Aquarium, Science World all of these other ones have different components of pursuing that mission in terms of environmental or cultural having access to that lastly of course and the one that like I said gains a lot of attention is how our social enterprise is being profitable and I've only got three up here but there are definitely a lot of options and it's important I think to understand that a lot of non-profit businesses still scale in terms of having larger and larger and larger and larger impact but at the end of the day they're still a non-profit so they still come to zero at the end so they might start employing three people there's ten people and then going up to a hundred people and all you're going to see is zero on the balance sheet but ultimately their impact and their budgets are going up so these ones are actually pursuing money these folks get to actually say we're all about the dollars trying to get as much dollars from the marketplace as possible to go back into the non-profit or charitable mission you've got restores which I'm sure many of you are familiar with which is essentially a thrift store for new and slightly used building goods which is fantastic and I encourage you to go if you're doing any kind of home rentals it's one of my favorite places to go although you can't go in and just look you're always going to come out with something similar to Costco I would say then you've got organizations like a tier property management which is exactly as it suggests it's a professional management company for property similar to any other major property manager you would see in BC or in Vancouver and they all of their proceeds go back into their women's resource center they started that out of their property management within the women's resource center and have it as a separate organization separate business and the Prince George Aboriginal Friendship Center which you can see in the picture there has a bunch of social enterprises these days but they're leveraging all of that off of one of their first ones which was they became a landlord so they had the opportunity to get out of leasing property and an opportunity to get into buying and when they purchased they bought a five store building that they did not need all of the space they leased or rented out the space they didn't need and it ultimately paid for everything and then they've been able to leverage that purchase into other purchases so just a bit of some examples there there's many many more if you're ever ever looking for examples feel free to contact me normally in the workshop that I do I spend some time on looking at like I said what is it that you're ultimately trying to achieve and how are you going to get there so we look at mission impact your social enterprise and your business success how that's going to be defined in terms of again that self sustaining or profitable or possibly subsidized and stretching and what the what the contributions look like from your parent organization and or other stakeholders and investors your community itself we usually take the nonprofits through a readiness component I was just talking to a group yesterday that felt like they were ready and everything was moving at lightning speed which is really uncommon for nonprofits and I had to hesitate hesitate to them that it's probably not going to continue that way and as we talked more and more they realized that there may have been some gaps they were either ignoring or just not familiar with to look at so ultimately again looking at your organization that clear and shared mission what is it that you want to achieve many mission or market hardest hardest decision you'll ever make they'll ever make and even when it's made it's an ongoing conversation important for organizations as any entrepreneur to look at the environment or the system that they work within what the strengths and weaknesses are do a SWOT analysis making sure that they have the right systems as you can imagine most nonprofits and charities did not start up to be a business and therefore don't necessarily have the systems to implement a business and it's important to recognize some of those things of course early on sooner rather than later including people and looking to see if those organizations are learning organization that does not refer to them being in the education sector but rather that they're flexible already and adapting to the community that they work in as things change whether it's community needs or demographics the business itself as you can imagine it requires a champion it requires someone that has business expertise or acumen and wants to learn about business or know about business they certainly need buy-in again in terms of a small business so social enterprises nonprofit businesses are small local businesses usually minus some of the entrepreneurial thinking that other social entrepreneurs have so it's a longer process most of our organizations the average is about two years of planning so it's quite literally double what probably most entrepreneurs spend in terms of thinking about their business and again looking at small businesses start up at three to five years of profitable or achieving those the goals that were intended for social enterprise are usually looking at five to seven years so important for supporters and economic development agencies and intermediaries to recognize that capital launch capital plan of course is expensive expensive for launch human and other resources so again these groups are always looking for where they can access money and we're trying to encourage them to not only be looking at free money of course to be finding other sources they need to they don't usually always think about again the marketplace and I always use the example that entrepreneurs are usually living and breathing their business idea talking to people about it googling it looking it up looking at their competitors figuring out how they can enter the marketplace and nonprofit practitioners just don't have that time let alone capacity to to be giving it that much thought process so we go through an extensive conversation and evaluation of ideas and thinking about what might seem like common sense to other business folk in terms of structure this is a popular question of course that I get and you've heard me touch on it already that how do you most nonprofits are asking how they should be structured what do they have to be what can they be and it's important just to know that there's various options available it really ultimately depends on where the money is coming from where the money is going to go and what it is that you're ultimately trying to achieve so that's usually my pushback it's the same pushback that you'll get if you were to talk to our lawyers who specialize in this that it's really thinking about those three things I would say traditionally many nonprofit businesses start in the first category there you can see this triangle with the one and it could just as easily be three little triangles in there that it's like I said it's happening out of something that they're already doing that turns into fee for service that might then turn into full-blown business with a business manager and certain resources dedicated to maintaining that there's single purpose the next one there is a triangle on top of a triangle and that one is essentially things that you see for associations or festivals where you've always known that you had to bring in dollars in order to do what you do so there's always that one and then this is the owned option where again a charity or nonprofit could own a separate entity it's as you can see it's arms length or it's connected but not connected it has to have of course two separate sets of books two separate sets of control and have have different ownership or has the ownership of the nonprofit or the charity but again can't have the same board can't have the same financials could certainly be an option for partnerships and this is essentially moving down the line similar to the 3C that have for-profit or charity could own a 3C so is it legal another big question we get yes it is and that's again why I put up that slide earlier that again it's important to recognize that charities are of course more heavily regulated because of the charitable status and nonprofits so they are more restricted in terms of activities business activities it would have to be related business otherwise it has to go back to this previous structure if it's business related or if it's related business then it could be held within to a certain point until it's making money and if you're making money it's important for charities to understand that you do have to pay tax it you can't use this as a tax shelter you can't use this as a tax shelter for a business so it is legal but always important to talk to us and talk to a legal professional about what the options are what the definitions are important for all of you and nonprofits to understand again that as Shelly was mentioning more and more services and dollars are available to nonprofit businesses so this slide is just touching on that but not only traditional donations and grants there's an increase in sponsorship available equity of course for that last option where you can share ownership debt is one that we're really trying to push with nonprofits to wrap their heads around that mortgages and credit lines lines of credit are not a bad thing it's important to know how to use them properly but this is another gap that in knowledge and education that nonprofits face you've got patient capital which is our favorite kind of nice nice capital that don't ask for their dollars back for a long time as I said it's definitely a longer road for nonprofit businesses than other small businesses and ultimately the goal is sales and you can see all the different kinds of access points for dollars and services increasing regularly as as Shelly said as the awareness grows there's definitely more individuals talking and more individuals looking at investing so I'm just going to touch on some of the resources and what we do in addition to these workshops and presentations as I said I do workshops around the province but I certainly go out and do presentations to boards intermediaries other funders connecting all the time trying to connect the dots trying to raise the awareness so there's our website you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well we do have an extensive resource library on our website which you can see the one thing in addition to the day long workshop that we have as a resource is the Canadian Guide to Social Enterprise which the day is actually based on and you can find that under plan as you're seeing in there under manage we have tool kits and under purchase if you're looking for the yellow pages of social enterprise and I encourage you to go to purchase and you'll see our marketplace there so again another list similar to what you can find on HubCat that is a vetted non-profit social enterprise list of businesses important for you to find out what's going on in your community you can look and see what's happening in other communities so it's a great resource there and again for the purchasing to find out who else you could be purchasing from when you're doing your purchasing landscape and could you be buying it from a non-profit when you're purchasing coffee could you be buying it from a local business or a social enterprise all of that good stuff so just kind of again looking and thinking about where your dollars are going differently so ultimately this is the roadmap that we use for developing a social enterprise these are areas that we would potentially grant to we are a grantor up to 10,000 which is a small grant in a lot of cases but we are a repeat offender so we will keep granting to you if you keep going down the path and keep applying to us looking at ideas again that readiness primarily focusing on feasibility and market analysis which is the huge huge gap for non-profits for those of you that are on the business support side that's a big space for non-profits is market assessment feasibility and ultimately plunking that information into a business plan and getting launched so those first areas and the strengthening and evaluation is where we focus our attention and resources that's the website as I was saying under plan you can see all of those themes so this again is the guide the guide can be requested from me in hard copy or you can download it or any portion of it for free off of the website again you can see those different themes each of them has a landing page resources templates exercises associated with each of them under market under manage again toolkits this is one of the toolkits that the provincial government was wonderful to fund us and they have we brought an advisory community together to identify some of the gaps in business skills for the non-profits are having so this is what came out of that again each of these has a slide has a presentation tools and templates for non-profits to use really good whether you're a non-profit or not and really good whether you're going into enterprise and business or not the other toolkit we just completed was an employment toolkit which is again referring to inclusive employment ensuring that all individuals have access to employment and these are some of the themes that came out of that advisory committee and research and report that looked across Canada but primarily at BC again you can find those under manage we also have the resource library you can simply be searching for our resources online if you want to be under key keywords and again under purchase you can see that there's more for social enterprises in terms of the yellow pages of what's happening and who's out there and you can add them yourself if you have social enterprises that you know of they're not on the list then I encourage you to I encourage you to add those there it is there so again and it's for all across Canada right now we're somewhere between we're somewhere around 650 social enterprises that are listed there and again vetted nonprofit businesses small grants we are a matching grant program so we request that the for profit that the social enterprise has contributing equal or greater which I think is pretty fair for any kind of lender we don't see it necessarily as a grant so much as as an investment in a partnership it usually is going to a consultant to do some portion of of planning or research for them it could be in any kind of component for directly related to the planning and development as I listed earlier but it can't be for operations overhead implementation and while the projects usually last much longer than the 12 months as I said that we're involved it can't be you can't be using retroactively can't be covering retroactive costs again that's where how the split usually is it's very rare these days that we would we would fund readiness or ideas at 2500 it's more likely that we would collaborate and either send myself out or find another consultant or stakeholder to participate in that process and then like I said maximum 10,000 for the larger larger documents of a feasibility study business plan or marketing plan and more likely some portion of that to do some portion and then ultimately those organizations could come back to us and come back to us so that I will I will leave it at that like I said that's a really tight small component of the full day but it gives you an overview and I think as Shelly mentioned as well in terms of next steps or what what you guys could be doing is simply be more accessible and aware of social enterprise more accessible to the non-profits in your community and reach out and talk to them and let them know that you're there and able to support them in some way if you're sitting on their board certainly certainly express the ideas and your your availability to them that way or what this resource is it's really for us it's really about making sure that non-profits know that we're out there if you're economic development officers or community futures or Chamber of Commerce or tourism whatever accelerators in your community then again really important to open up your doors and make yourself accessible to social enterprise and even if you are make sure that they know it that was the big issue that we saw in the past is that a lot of services were available to social enterprise they weren't not available to social enterprise but because they weren't actively saying it social enterprise non-profits felt like they could not access it so again it's a funny funny conversation sometimes that about services and whether or not you're available or how to get through some of those terminology challenges but certainly if like I said if there's intermediaries on the line on the webinar then I encourage you to find out who your organizations are know that there's resources for non-profits know that they're contributing economically to your communities and that they need to be well supported and that they can use your help even what you think is common sense would be helpful to them. Awesome thank you so much Kim for filling out the second half of that webinar there's certainly a lot of information to cover in there and I can see why it's you're usually developing in a one day session so thanks for condensing it down to those bite size pieces for us today in the short time that we had so we're now at the end of the content for our webinar and we'll be launching into a Q&A so as I mentioned before you'll find that Q&A box on the toolbar for go-to webinar so feel free to type in your question there I'll receive them and then I can read them out line for our two presenter Shelly and Kim to answer as best they can just while I'm waiting for some questions to come in I'll kick off with a question of my own and you know this is probably either for Shelly or Kim to answer whatever you think is best so for let's say local leaders whether it's you know the elected council or say an economic development officer for a region if they wanted to attract or more easily facilitate social enterprise in their community what would be some good first steps or some general best practice to try and encourage that kind of business growth networking opening the door having ground table creating the conversation it's Kim by the way thank you for that concise answer Shelly do you have anything to add to that sure and I guess I could turn my webcam back on now that I'm not eating my lunch anymore I think that that's a really good answer we've been doing a lot of work with chambers of commerce in particular to make sure that their doors are open to social enterprises and that they're inclusive but they're also as Kim said sort of openly saying that they're inclusive because she's right in that a lot of social enterprises particularly the nonprofit side don't necessarily see themselves as a quote unquote business so they're a little bit reluctant to approach those organizations that are primarily seem to be serving the for profit community I don't know if there are for example bylaw issues that would stand in the way of social enterprise that's something I'm not necessarily familiar with but folks out there might know better than I whether there are some some things in the way that maybe could be addressed or removed and I think it's there's kind of a just a divide between I would say that the traditional for profit business and these more socially social impact focused business and trying to as much as you can when you talk about business and you talk about economic development in your community to make sure that there's the social enterprises reflected in that conversation and included in that conversation as well because I can't claim to know what all of the issues are that are facing social enterprises or the barriers that they might encounter and no one else is going to either unless you actually ask so you may not be aware of what's standing in their way until you actually have that conversation awesome thank you another question here from Andrea Andrea asks I want to start a glass recycling business in Mackenzie BC and we want to make it a not for profit but we also want to make a resellable product from the glass we collect we want as much help as we can get not sure if this is social enterprise or not but we want to help underemployed groups in our community recycle and also sell stuff so I guess the bottom question would be if is what she describing is that a potential social enterprise and where could she go for more help perhaps besides the resources that have already been mentioned yeah it is a social enterprise from the way that it's been described I would say it's also falling into that common catch that I that I did refer to is that you're wanting to do have all three prior all three options as priorities when really in terms of making a successful social enterprise it's really going to be about focusing on one or at least focusing on one until you're achieving on that one priority and then moving into the second or third priority so if it's an environmental component in terms of glass recycling and up cycling then that's one mission right but if it's if it's employment and training well then that's the second mission so it's ultimately figuring out which one of those it is it's important to understand from a business perspective and you can you could go through this in terms of ID identification on our website or any feasibility is looking at where what are the costs going to be and how would you ultimately cover those costs so as you can imagine training is much more expensive than employing those that have already been trained and if you are doing employing then that is likely going or training than that is likely a social cost that you may not expect the business to cover whereas businesses would normally be able to cover the employment costs so it's ultimately again thinking about where is the money coming from for some of those costs where is the money going to go in terms of output whether it's up cycling employment and what is it that you're trying to achieve employment or environmental or world peace so unfortunately yeah it is but you have to figure out if you have something that you're selling first right if you're not going to be able to sell the product or service then it becomes a really good program right and that's not to say that there's not a need in the community for it but it completely alters where the money is coming from and therefore starts putting you back more of the deeper service revenue generation as a non-profit more so than actually being a social enterprise awesome thanks Kim next question here Kim in your slide on financing social enterprise you mentioned community bonds can you explain what this is yeah community bonds are on the rise similar I mean you might hear them as social bonds as well and I'm not sure how different they would be from a social impact bond community bonds have been around for a long time so while it might sound like a new a new thing it's not the example that we usually use is community schools or private schools often asked for have used community bonds for a long time and always asked for an investment from the parents as their children are going through the schooling system their private schooling system and at the end of it of course the school is hoping that you are satisfied with the education and do not necessarily ask for the dollars back but you could you could ask for that investment back so it's being used there it's also been used the model that's gaining a lot of attention where it's been used is the Center for Social Innovation which is out east in Toronto and now well has five locations not one and they utilized it there where they had and I don't have all the details but certain amounts of buy-in and after so many years it would yield a certain amount of return on that and that was a tool that they used to raise capital raise dollars to purchase a building one of the tools they certainly didn't use it in isolation they would have never been able to raise everything they needed that way but there they used it there and again that's that's a blurry line between community and a social bond there's a white paper on that if you want to find out more you can look at our website for that white paper great thanks yeah go ahead Sean yeah definitely um that didn't occur to me before but this is why the Q's and A's are always so interesting there's a model that's just starting to really emerge in BC called a community investment fund and we have one on Vancouver Island and I know that there's one in Christina Lake and I believe that there's at least one other but I'm not sure where it is and essentially that's a investment fund created locally the one on Vancouver Island is structured as co-op and where local investors can put their money in and it gets invested in local projects or local businesses with a focus on economic development or and in this case particularly they're looking at affordable housing and sort of how that can be turned into a you know a profitable investment model so um there are these are really common in other parts of the country Nova Scotia's had them for a long time since the 90's there are some in Prince Edward Island and I think Brunswick is the other province and I think other governments are kind of looking at them and how to support that model but that would be something to definitely sort of be aware of or consider at the community level is whether you could actually create that kind of a fund that would take investment invested in projects or enterprises um that obviously can generate revenue of some kind in order to pay the return but to really have that sort of focus on economic development in the community or housing or sort of other areas where there's a community need great thanks uh thanks for adding that that's really interesting that's something that I'm gonna look into a little bit more myself uh next question here from Stacy um can business owners that are not NPOs use these grant resources I'm assuming she's referring to uh NEMP's resources yeah unfortunately are well you I mean certainly you can access the website and all of the information that's on there but in terms of grants no grants are specific to nonprofit charitable and nonprofit organizations having said that there are a number of options in terms of resources and low-cost dollars that are available to small businesses but free money is harder to come by great thanks so this one's probably for Shelley a question from Sandra group purchasing contracts present an enormous barrier for small and medium enterprises and social enterprises to access government contracts what is being done in BC to improve access to government markets a comment BC government needs to fund the work of intermediaries if the BC government wants to narrow the gap and encourage more enterprising nonprofits sure and hi Sandra so I think that that's a really good point and that's something that now that we've got our guidelines at the door that we're really kind of we're trying to grapple with we have obviously reflected in those guidelines the idea of just not dismantling but in some way be constructing some of those big purchase contracts to make them more accessible to to smaller businesses smaller organizations we sort of talk a lot about you know partnership and maybe a sort of our impact social impact purchasing we could ask them questions about or have criteria around whether or not if they're a big organization do they involve smaller organizations local organizations in their supply chain in some way so necessarily have to be that they have to pull a big contract you know a part into a dozen little pieces because obviously there's a reason why for efficiency sake we do those big contracts but there's other ways to kind of come that don't mean you have to you know go through you have to issue like 12 or you know to do through 12 RFP processes to try to come up with 12 different contractors to do things in different places across the province so it's something that we're just we're really starting to talk about now it is obviously there is a bit of a tension there between that desire for efficiency and being able to procure things in the easiest possible way because obviously the cost to doing it in a little in the less easy way but it's definitely something that we're aware of and something that we're talking to folks about awesome thanks Shelly a question here from Colleen our chamber is offering our first social enterprise award as part of our business awards of excellence which is awesome the only example we have seen of the award description is from the Winnipeg chamber do you have any suggestions for us in developing our award criteria I probably suggest Colleen that you get in touch with either Shelly or Kim offline for that because I'm sure it's probably a pretty detailed answer but perhaps Shelly or Kim you want to give just a quick point or two on that yeah Colleen I'd love to talk to you I didn't catch what chamber you're from I think there's a couple other events and similar processes going on that you could probably use some of the information that the rest of us are using for quantifying or evaluating those but yeah Colleen I'd suggest you get in touch with Kim offline on that one a question here from Lenny is it possible for a non-profit group to create a separate enterprise such as a co-op and right into the rules that the non-profit board has two seats on the co-ops at board of directors a bit of a technical question there yeah that's trying to get a little bit into the regulations that I'm not sure but my inclination is yes you probably want more feedback than that my questions around that would ultimately go back to why it actually poses more questions than why is the non-profit the non-profit can't really be owning it I mean that's not the point of a cooperative why are you seeing the need for the two chairs so I would have some other questions but I think and this is what I always say to organizations when they say can this be done the answer is yes fortunately and unfortunately you have the whole plethora of options available to you in terms of being creative in how you structure that you achieve all of the missions and goals that you're wanting to achieve ultimately whether it's for now or tomorrow or in the future and there's very out of those again there's very a lot of options in terms of control so how you're wanting to how you or your board or your organization are wanting to control those various aspects various aspects again there's a plethora of options in terms of being creative it's obviously important to know some of the regulations so you always want to keep that in mind but it's ultimately important to know that really anything could be done it's just a matter of knowing all of the moving pieces and how they work together awesome thank you a question here from Angela when a not-for-profit runs a for-profit social enterprise are there ever or often complaints or objections from competing strictly for-profit businesses in other words are social enterprise seen as having an unfair advantage this is a question coming from a small town that may not apply in the city yes the answer there yes it's a common it's a common concern and rightfully so ultimately the non-profit business is a small business right so you're absolutely competing on that scale and possibly shifting sales and market so and in a small town it's a little bit harder to record you know for me to say pull up your pull up your boots and for the for-profit to be stronger but it's absolutely there but I think again it's important to recognize a few things that it's not an unfair advantage it's often a level level playing field advantage so everyone has competitive advantages every organization or business has benefits and attributes and features of a product or service that they should be focusing on so in that sense but I also think it goes back to some of what was being said early and going back to terminology of for-profit small-profit social business local business and not seeing everyone as competitors I mean obviously there's a component of competition but ultimately it's really figuring out how to collaborate and work together we always hear when one thrift store opens and another one moves in down the street that they're upset that they moved in and then all of a sudden you've got thrift store alley or antique alley whatever it is so I think it's you know I think in some that's not going to apply obviously to all cases but I think it's it's looking at at your marketplace it's also going back to your marketplace if there's two of you if you are competing with somebody else in your local small community is there a need for two of you you know and that might ultimately be telling you that this isn't the right business for you to go into awesome thanks again just a quick bit of feedback here from Andrea thank you for your excellent feedback I'm excited about the opportunity to employ underrepresented groups in our community to work in glass recycling and create a value-added product also I've been thinking a lot lately about the investors fund for affordable housing as this is an issue in Mackenzie very excited and I'm looking forward to networking with the community to bring this to a reality thank you and Namaste thanks Andrea question here from Morag hope you're I'm pronouncing your your name right there can an existing business be restructured as a 3C or social enterprise through a local economic development society my answer would be yes until you through in the last part okay you can certainly restructure a for-profit to a 3C there's some obviously you have to go through that's easier than converting a charitable business into a for-profit or vice-versa for profit into a non-profit business so I'm thrown off by the last part of the society again I think unless you mean can the society and the for-profit going together and create the 3C in which case I would say yes that are perhaps just assistance on the process perhaps the 3C is fairly new that I'm not sure how many economic development officers or organizations would be able would be helpful at that point but certainly there's definitely some individuals and some lawyers that would be helpful and like I said because they're both on the for-profit side of the spectrum it would be a slightly easier move it would essentially I think be simply addenduming some by-laws and your incorporation great thank you well that is the oh yeah show you want to add something there I think that most of us who have some understanding of the C3 model would probably give the same answer that it's really best to talk to a lawyer about that who can kind of really go through all the implications it isn't a decision to incorporate just like any other I think that just as a to take a for-profit corporation and turn it into a C3 I mean I think your biggest barrier is usually your shareholders and so they're not sort of on board with that notion of really directing a significant chunk of the profit towards a social purpose I mean that can be can be a bit of a barrier for sure so in some ways coming from the non-profit side it's a little bit easier because there's no objections to that focus so that's just sort of something to consider awesome thanks thanks for adding that Shelley so that that is the end of the questions that have been sent in I'll give maybe 15 seconds or so just for anyone else to send in any last-minute questions otherwise I think that that will close things off for this afternoon so just give a few seconds there in case anyone's got any last minute burning questions and seeing none I think we will close it off there for today thank you everyone for coming into to join us this afternoon and hear from Shelley and Kim and of course a huge thank you to Kim and Shelley for coming on and sharing their expertise I know I've certainly learned a lot in you know what is a phenomenal amount of information to cover and what is relatively a short amount of time but if you do have any more questions on on social enterprise or enterprise non-profits I do encourage you to get in touch with Shelley or Kim offline if you can't find their contact info feel free to email economic.development at gov.bc.ca and I can certainly redirect any correspondence that you might have so thanks again everyone we've got to thank you coming in from Sandra thanks Kim and Shelley see you soon and also from Shirley thank you all very informative so thanks a lot everyone and we'll talk to you soon cheers thanks very much thank you