Selected Writing
I'm curious about philanthropy, civil society, social entrepreneurship, and public diplomacy. Since 2007, I've been sharing and refining my thoughts.Enterprising Prizes
The Social EnterPrize Awards were created by the Trico Charitable Foundation in 2011 to recognize and celebrate leadership and excellence in social entrepreneurship across Canada. The awards look for the best practices, social impact and innovation of organizations...
Belief. That we are selling more than widgets.
Michele, you should go into business. Dad, I don't want to make widgets. Sell widgets. Or improve widgets. - Adamant 20-somthing Michele Belief. The theme of the 2015 Skoll World Forum. A combination of faith and pragmatism. What carries us through when things get...
Silencing myself: the pursuit of a Ph.D.
In 2007, I went on a month-long Rotary Fellowship to Saitama, Japan. It was an opportunity to blend my previous experience of Japan with my new found love of philanthropy. My focus during that month was on how philanthropy appears in Japanese society. It was the days of the export of “strategic philanthropy” from the US and the chatter of “Asia not having traditions of philanthropy”, and I was curious enough to want to dig deeper.
The Holy Grail of Social Entrepreneurship?
We’re often asked for our definition of social entrepreneurship. In the past three years, our answers have morphed. We started purely on the non-profit side, but encountered problems whereby “everyone” was becoming a social entrepreneur. As we shifted toward the...
The trouble with transformation creep
The mantra for transformative change has become ubiquitous. After all, who would opt for treating symptoms, often derisively labelled as applying band-aids, rather than striving for a cure? While the clarion call of transformation also beckons for us, we’re concerned...
Focusing on the “how to”: emergent philanthropy debate must evolve
As a small and relatively new private foundation, we were intrigued by Kania, Kramer & Russell’s discussion of an emergent philanthropy framework. While our initial debates focused on the ‘newness’ and the key elements highlighted in their article were...
