For the past several months, I have been studying the impact measurement agenda sitting alongside and beyond the typical boundaries of SiMPACT’s work. Examples of investments that are a part of the impact agenda include investments across a wide range of social...

Part 2: DECIDE In Part 1 of this article, we looked at design. Our example: Let’s take a small air pollution control company that wants to improve its triple bottom line. After the board of directors outlines their TBL policy guides, they have their company...

Part 5 of Mike’s 5-part leadership series   The University of British Columbia is one of Canada’s largest and most prestigious universities, and consistently ranks among the top 40 academic institutions in the world. Renowned for its Nobel Prize-winning...

On May 27th in Calgary, more than 11,200 people participated in a series of running events organized by the Calgary Marathon Society. Options included a 5k, 10k, half marathon and full marathon events, with a 1km children’s marathon for 500 enthusiastic and...

A social enterprise aims to achieve a triple bottom line (TBL) by implementing ethical social and environmental practices and policies, while still maintaining economic benefits. People. Planet. Profit. Most socially aware enterprises want to implement every...

If you’re a social enterprise operating in Canada, whether as an individual sole proprietor, partnership or an incorporated company, you need to be thinking about HST. What is HST? HST is a sales tax that you collect on behalf of the government. It is NOT income...

So many organizations are still challenged to measure outcomes. Despite much interest, activity and outputs-based evaluation remains the norm. Knowing this, does encouraging the next step, i.e. valuing outcomes in financial terms, really seem like the right thing...

Part 4 of Mike’s 5-part leadership series Collaboration has surely become one of the all-time great buzzwords. Seemingly everyone aspires to be collaborative. Unfortunately, for every successful collaboration, there are dozens of “partnerships”...

5 hurdles to overcome when assigning value to outcomes While the concept of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) jumped the Atlantic from Britain in 2011, it is taking its time to develop in Canada. Unlike American and Australian counterparts that are already testing the...