Trico Charitable Foundation was established in December of 2008 by Wayne and Eleanor Chiu. Previously, the Chiu’s built a company, Trico Homes, that over the years has achieved – and continues to achieve – financial success while serving and giving back to the community. Indeed, the “c” in Trico stands for “community”. While Trico Homes began as an entrepreneurial venture that became increasingly socially-minded, the Trico Charitable Foundation turns that idea around and asks “how much impact can you have if you start out socially-minded and use business models to serve that cause?” For the Trico Charitable Foundation, this is the essence of “social entrepreneurship”.  

The Trico Charitable Foundation seeks to close gaps in society by provoking innovation and building capacity in social entrepreneurship. Its work focuses on the Canadian context (specifically Alberta) in three key areas:

• direct programming:
  • training (includes curriculum and coaching) to

                           1. better understand the practicalities and potential of social entrepreneurship, and

                           2. maximize potential: a foundational set of skills to help social entrepreneurs make                                   the most of where they are at and move towards their aspirations as safely and                                       effectively as possible; 

• • funding experiments;

• ecosystem building: building a support ecosystem dedicated to social enterprises “scaling.” Here “scaling” is one or ideally all of: growing, achieving systems change, solving social problems, and expanding our thinking on how business models can address social needs; and

• data: giving social entrepreneurs a voice by collecting data that truly tells their story and enables policy-makers and others to make evidence-based decisions on how best to help social enterprises scale.