The Trico Charitable Foundation and Enterprising Non Profits-Alberta (enp-ab) recently celebrated our one year anniversary. During the last year we granted $92, 500 in funding to ten non-profit organizations in Alberta. To raise awareness of these organizations and their social enterprise endeavors we will be featuring them on our blog.

 Our first feature grantee is the Association for the Alberta Network of Immigrant Women (ANIW). This organization was founded in 1986 and recently celebrated its 25^th anniversary. ANIW focuses on researching issues that impact the settlement of immigrant women in Alberta. This research is used to develop programs that support and empower these women.  

 ANIW like many not for profit organizations is considering pursuing a social enterprise. They understand and appreciate the value of diversifying their revenue sources to ensure the continuity of their programs. The Executive Director, Kamal Seghal, is familiar with social enterprise and has thought about it as a possible opportunity for ANIW. She has seen examples of social enterprise working in Calgary but was unsure of how to start developing a plan for her organization.

  In 2011, a representative from ANIW attended the Trico Charitable Foundation and enp-ab’s Building Your Social Enterprise Workshop. ANIW realized that many of the social enterprise endeavors they had been contemplating for their organization were possible and that there was support for organizations pursuing social enterprise. Kamal Seghal said that “The stimulus for us to move forward was the support”.

(This Photograph features ANIW‘s staff, from left to right: Nizar Allidina, Chido Samantha Mbavarira,  Rooh Khan, Rosa Martinez-Suarez).

The Leveraging Impact: Philanthropy’s Role in Public Policy session explored perspectives on how foundations are working in the public policy realm.  It was a packed room full of familiar faces of folks with a keen interest in the intersection of public policy and foundation strategy.  I thought I would share some key comments from the four panelists.

Matthew Mendelsohn, Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation

“There has been a hollowing out of public service in its ability to generate policy directives.  Philanthropy can move to provide support for evidence based public policy initiatives.”

Sandy Houston, George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation

“Foundations can act as intermediaries or conduits to bring grass roots ideas and energy up to the policy level.  It is important to invest in people.”

Frances Lankin, Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario

“Foundations can build capacity for non-profit networks to contribute idea generation and problem solving.  We can broker relationships with researchers
to conduct community based research, we can fund research, we can convene broad sense partnerships – with innovators, implementors, and we can lend a voice to advocacy.”

Allan Northcott, Max Bell Foundation

“Foundations are instruments, not conduits for cash.  Key learnings on what’s working include: learning by doing, learning from veterans, learning from specific examples of non-profits playing developmental roles in shaping public policy, encouraging mentorship, exposing high value organizations to sub-sectoral agencies and their work in public policy, and understanding that organizations involved in public policy is a long term commitment and funders need to see it that way.”

The Essential Skills and Strategies for Grantmakers workshop, held Sunday afternoon, provided grantmakers with knowledge, insight, skills, and tools to be effective in our work. As a new member to Philanthropic Foundations Canada, and as a foundation who is actively funding and providing education around social enterprise, I was curious to attend and to see what I could learn.

The session was a synopsis of a larger multi-day program offered by the Council on Foundations.  It was a well-attended session and I thought it would be good to provide some comments from the session that resonated with me:

•  - Clear guidelines, clear communication and clear processes demonstrate respect for grantseekers, implementation of strategy, increased effectiveness and thus, good foundation work.
•  - The iterative process between grantmaker and grantseeker requires deep trust that is developed over a long period of time.  We must be respectful about the relationships we build.
•  - Research data shows that the quality of the communication between grantmaker and grantseeker is the single most important factor in the success of a grant.

Therefore, part of the impact we make as grantmakers includes not only providing funding, but building relationships and then sharing our key learnings and best practices.  Our impact as foundations will be greater with shared transparency around the work we do in partnership with the charities we fund.

The first day of September is a great day to announce the  work happening behind the scenes this summer at Enterprising Non-Profits Alberta (enp-ab).  May and June’s workshops brought in 49 individuals representing approximately 33 non-profit and charitable organizations to learn about social enterprise.  From these organizations, we were pleased to receive 12 very strong applications for our inaugural round of grantmaking.

I’m excited to share the list of our current grantees with all of you.  They represent a diverse slice of the Calgary non-profit sector and within the business development continuum.

We were pleased to see the depth of thinking that many organizations are doing in regards to their social enterprise opportunities. We are keenly aware that social enterprise is not something to enter into lightly and our Grant Committee was impressed by both the organizational readiness and the social enteprise ideas of our current grantees.

As a learning organization, we’ve got a few ideas up-our-sleeves for our next round of grantmaking (kicking off on November 10).   Moving through the fall, enp-ab will continue to host learning opportunities to help our community better understand the language and application of social enterprise – as well as, to coach through the grantmaking process.

A big high five to our current grantees.  We’re so delighted to be able to support your work in the community.