By Jasmine Retzer, Student, Mount Royal University
• The Calgary social enterprises profiled in this article will be the subject of SEWF tours on October 2, 2013. In total, 15 local organizations were toured. A special thanks to Thrive, who helped set up the tours.
• This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Trico Charitable Foundation and Mount Royal University. [/author_info] [/author]
Creating soul-enriching art, eating lovingly prepared food, making a steady income and having a place to call home – sounds like a recipe for the good life. Yet it is a life not often shared amongst every member of the community. This is where three social enterprises are making their mark, building inclusive communities where everyone has the opportunity to exercise their creativity, gain employment and own a home.
Studio C is an arts-based project of the employment-focused organization Prospect Human Services. Through collaborative art classes, the project brings diverse groups together in a creative atmosphere with the goal of connecting employers with marginalized and disabled members of the community. Their art gallery offers a space for local artists to exhibit their works of art to the public, along with providing an opportunity to sell their pieces. The Studio’s mission is to create an inclusive, multifarious and productive Alberta workforce.
Cookies on the Go is a non-profit café bakery and bistro that provides gainful employment opportunity for disabled individuals. Supported by the Calgary Progressive Lifestyles Foundation, this social enterprise looks to supply jobs for an array of skill sets, while promoting self-sufficiency, community work and personal growth within disabled peoples.
Habitat for Humanity works towards breaking the cycle of poverty by providing affordable homes and opportunity for homeownership to those in need of a safe and stable place to raise a family. Their Restore sells new and gently used furniture, appliances, building materials and home décor items for a greatly reduced cost to the public. Revenue generated from the store helps to build homes and support the charity.
Habitat for Humanity
“Habitat for Humanity’s mission is simple, we help give people the basic need of a home,” says Southern Alberta’s Business Development and Operations Manager Heidi Lambi, “yet the idea is not giving a hand out but lending a hand up.”
Habitat for Humanity is an international charitable organization whose goal is to provide low income earning families an opportunity to become homeowners. Just like in any home buying market, clients are required to pay for their own home and mortgage, the difference being that the amount they pay is based on a set percentage of their overall income that ensures affordability and allows the clients to relax knowing what their expenses will be.
In an effort to break the cycle of poverty, mortgage payments are recirculated back into the program in order to build homes for future families. Homebuyers also must commit to putting in 500 sweat equity hours; a form of volunteer work that introduces them into the community. Clients are welcomed to knock off some hours by lending a hand in the construction of their new homes.
Building their own homes becomes a very empowering experience for the participating families. They are able to connect with other community members, which has a lasting positive impact on the families’ lives. Moreover, their health and wellbeing improves when given an environment that is sustainably built.
According to Lambi, “One of our participating parent’s has a child who became very ill as a result of his asthma. Once they moved into one of our homes he was able to play hockey this past year with no issue.”
Apart from the mortgage payments, what further helps fund Habitat for Humanity’s charity work is its social enterprise, aptly named Restore. Taking donated new and used household items, anywhere from toilets and sinks to the living room couch, the store resells the products at 50 to 75% less than the market price. The idea is to remove perfectly good home fixings from making their way to the landfill, while also generating a profit to help fund their home building projects.
The variety in price percentage points is because the store also receives new product from one of its partners, The Home Depot, which donates the “return to vendor” items to the Restore. This is product that is deemed unfit to sell by the Depot, usually because of torn packaging and not for any significant damage to the goods.
Much like a corporate retail store, Calgary’s Restore is organized into departments as a means to clearly guide customers to their shopping desires and present itself as a professional home essential establishment. They even sell the necessary hardware and tools for customers to install their new purchases.
“The key thing to making our Restore successful is having a clean and organized store – creating an atmosphere that is hospitable and friendly,” Lambi explains, “We have this big box store mentality with different departments. It seems simple but it makes a huge difference in generating revenue and making it shopable.”
The two Southern Alberta Restore’s (the other in Medicine Hat) combined to generate about 1.8 million in revenue last year, Calgary’s Restore being number one in Canada for total gross sales.
As a result, they were able to donate $550, 000 towards their charity, the equivalent of two homes. According to Lambi, the amount is expected to triple by 2015.
“On average we build five to eight homes a year, depending on funding and our budget. Our strategic plan is that the amount of houses we built in the past 20 years we are going to build in the next five years, close to 150 homes.”
With a blend of volunteers and paid employees working at the store, Lambi says that manpower can sometimes be in short supply. Getting enough people on board to help keep the store operating smoothly is a challenge.
“The volunteer pool is changing constantly,” she says, “we struggle to get people in here, but luckily our home buying participants are required to put in 500 sweat equity hours which provides us with people who are directly involved in the charitable work.”
Paid employees are paid above minimum wage, receive benefit packages and are enrolled in the Employment Assistance Program should they need any help.
Another “stumbling block” has been educating the public that they are in fact in existence.
Firstly as a donation centre where people can drop off their gently used appliances and furniture and secondly as a store where people can shop the donated goods. Their strategy is to think and act like a retail store, in terms of creating store frontage, keeping organized displays, training staff properly and having an accessible location.
However Lambi lends this word of caution,
“You have to gage how much corporate-like business activity you want in your social enterprise. It is important to have it for cost-analysis, but you want that social aspect in view.”
For many people, having a home is the first step to living a happy life. As one program participant has said, “Getting a home is like winning the lottery.”
Studio C
On the second floor of the Art Central building, in the very heart of downtown, is a place known as Studio C, a collaborative art centre where bristly brushes gobbed with paint unite to create colourful canvases and installations. These artistic pieces are conceived by a collection of diverse individuals, brought together in a team setting to work collectively on a creative project.
The goal is to engage partnerships around employment by using art as a means to show employers how it would be to work with diverse groups. The participants, who range from business moguls to marginalized individuals, share the unique experience of working together in an inspired and productive environment, the end result being that they have created something truly breathtaking and innovative.
“It can be strange to make that connection to an art studio and gallery, but the type of work that we do really engages the business community and challenges them to think differently about how they work and who they employ,” explains Manager of Studio C Colin Menzies.
Their art gallery also hosts monthly exhibitions of local artists’ work, where the artists can gain exposure and potentially a profit from their work being shown to the public. These artists also become the teachers of Studio C’s art classes, building a bridge between the arts and business community.
“The gallery provides income opportunities for the artists. It can be hard to be an artist and have employment,” notes Alexi Davis who is the Manager of Disability Services, “working in one’s own studio can be quite an isolating experience for the artist; it can become difficult for them to branch out into the community. Our space offers that opportunity for artists to work within the community and share their talents.”
The gallery also provides a space for the art program participants to showcase the work that they produced. For the business folks this is a great PR exercise.
Their art classes are run through a fee for service system, in that the money received pays for the instructor and class costs. But it is the overall financial cost of running the entire operation that requires additional revenue, which is accessed through funding, fundraising and sponsorships. Mainly though, Studio C’s financial sustainability is in large part due to their parent organization Prospect.
“We have been very fortunate to have Prospect support and contribute to the growth of our operation over these past seven years. We are not yet self-sustainable but that is our goal,” comments Davis and Menzies collectively. However for them it is not about making a ton of money, but rather to enhance the work that they do. “Breaking even would certainly be nice,” jokes Davis, “but it is more about the value that we are providing.”
Part of their strategy for becoming a more self-sufficient business is by developing relationships with sponsors. Studio C believes it can provide a valuable service by helping create marketing opportunities for their sponsors.
“We can bring a creativity and vitality to how their customers are engaged in sponsors’ products and services; give the customers a brand experience. It’s a way of garnering attention and experimenting with how people participate in a brand,” explains Menzies.
In their partnership with Toyota, Studio C developed an interactive mural on a 2013 Toyota Scion at this past summer’s Calgary Lilac Festival. The public was invited to participate in painting colours, shapes and patterns on the car itself, in which the completed car mural was later exhibited in the Toyota Scion dealership. The project demonstrated how sponsors and a social enterprise like Studio C could collaborate and collectively promote their products and services.
It is relationships like these that are moving Studio C towards becoming a more self-sustainable business.
Certainly the financial piece of their business has been a challenge for Studio C. However Menzies makes a clear distinction between finances and social leadership,
“There is limitless potential and value of how creativity can be used to build skills around employment preparation and retention and placement; how can you use art and creativity to do that. We are a living, breathing example of this. Our video is aligned with our audio in that we are actually practicing what we are promoting which is diversity, inclusion and making accommodations in the workplace. Our programs are doing that which is self-sustainable in the social sense, but it is the financial aspect where we need an alignment in being self-sustainable and meeting our social goals.”
Another challenge for the business has been storytelling, to clearly and succinctly explain to people the purpose of the business in a way that can be understood
“How to communicate the relevancy of what Studio C does and demonstrate the connection to other people’s work, or how to make it a necessary part of everyday society,” comments Menzie.
Collaboration has always been at the root of every endeavour they have pursued.
“At the beginning, we became involved with anything or anyone that was related to art and bringing groups together,” says Davis.
But as the years went by, they have learned to be clearer about their objectives and fine tune what they actually stand for and who they work with.
Since their induction, Studio C has been an anchor tenant of Art Central. Yet with the building being demolished in the near future, they will soon become anchor tenants of cSpace King Edward in 2016. For the time being they will be accessing a pop up space, which has yet to be found within the city.
“It will be interesting to see what changes are made when we move, our programming will remain the same and operations, but being in a different space is going to change how we are engaging the public and arts community,” notes Menzie.
Cookies on the go
Many years ago, a young mother sought an innovative way to provide community access to disabled individuals along with experiences that they could gain from. From its humble beginnings as a basement-run agency to a now viable catering and café business, Cookies on the go inspires and connects individuals with disabilities through employment opportunity and community interaction.
The idea to open a café bakery was inspired by the baking classes the agency used to host for clients. It was a huge hit amongst the community, mainly in respect to the sweet satisfaction they felt in contributing to a final (and delicious) product. The simple act of baking cookies and then selling them, became the innovative bite Calgary Progressive Lifestyles needed to give disabled individuals a chance at making an income based on their own efforts and hard work.
To this day, they still sell their self-made baked goods at various locations around the city, but being the progressive people that they are, a café seemed like best fit to bring their mission to new heights.
With a mouth-watering selection of freshly prepared food, the café offers all the bistro essentials from soups to sandwiches along with organic coffee for a $1.25.
“100% of proceeds that come through the door go right back into the pockets of our employees. We have been involved in a sustainability plan in partnership with the government and recently found from our last audit that we are completely debt-free,” explains Sharday Issac who leads Community Relations at Cookies on the go.
Because of this incredible financial gift, the business is able to reach their goal of becoming a newly renovated bistro and expand the capacity of their space. Moreover they are able to successfully enhance their mission of providing disabled participants with gainful employment.
One such participating member, Devon Kusey, is now the community facilitator of the company. Five years ago he came to the Cookies on the go as a volunteer and was given the opportunity to pursue his passion and interests in graphic design within the business.
“Working here has been a very heart-warming experience for me. They have been gracious enough to work within my skill-set and help me to grow and develop them,” he says.
Working alongside Isaac, Kusey designs and writes the monthly newsletter and helps foster community development and partnerships in the city. He is a living example of the enterprise’s goal, to integrate people with disabilities into the workforce and build an inclusive society.
While they are in a comfortable spot financially, the challenging part for them is their location.
“The café doesn’t have a lot of walk-in traffic,” notes Kusey, “so we need to develop connections with the people that are surrounding us.”
With their renovations they wish to draw a lot more people into the space, with plans to make the kitchen open for patrons to have an eye view of what a community of disabled and non-disabled members can accomplish together.
Their strategy to spread the word out towards other parts of the city has included strengthening their marketing initiatives, such as joining various social media platforms and creating lasting partnerships and sponsorships with like-minded organizations.
According to Isaac however, gaining attention and new relationships has been difficult as of late due to the recent flooding in Calgary this past June,
“because of the recent floods, a lot of charitable organizations have been put on the back shelf and rightfully so. Calgary is here to help but it has been a recent challenge in terms of getting sponsors on board. We certainly support flood relief efforts and have reached out the community to fundraise, but it has been tough for us to promote our business.”
Actively posting on Facebook, Twitter, canvassing door to door and engaging with their nearby neighbours, has been their way to reinvigorate word of mouth post-flood.
“The market is there, you just have to fish for it,” says Isaac.
Isaac looks forward to networking at this upcoming World Forum. She believes that this meeting of innovative minds will truly inspire Calgary’s social enterprises and non-profits along with opening doors for global partnerships amongst attendees.
With a new chef on board, plans to introduce a food truck and an upcoming name change, Cookies on the go is an ever-expanding business, whose evolution mirrors the growth of their participants.
This series of articles comes from a partnership between Trico Charitable Foundation and the Faculty of Arts, Mount Royal University. The goal is twofold, to celebrate Calgary social enterprises and to showcase the many ways Arts students can help organizations. For instance:
- interior design and art history students can help with design,
- history students can help with research,
- anthropology and sociology students can help with statistical analysis and culture,
- psychology students can help with understanding markets and interpersonal relationships, languages students can help with translation of French or Spanish,
English students can help with writing, and students in policy studies can help with analysis of economics and political issues.
Having the ability to tell stories with great finesse, skill and enthusiasm would be a wonderful asset for the three social enterprises profiled here. They require writers who are dedicated to uncovering those key messages lingering within the plethora of stories their clients have to tell; impactful and inspiring words that would be of great benefit to their marketing department.
Click here to learn more about how students from the Faculty of Arts, Mount Royal University, can help your organization.
More About SEWF
The Trico Charitable Foundation was honoured to host SEWF 2013. It made history in a number of ways – it was a first for Canada and attracted a record number of speakers and attendees (1,000 individuals from more than 30 countries and over 100 speakers from 20 countries) – but we are most proud of the quality of the discussions on Skills Building, Social Finance, Indigenous Social Enterprise, Collaboration, Policy and Research, and Social Innovation.
We would like to thank the following partners for making SEWF 2013 possible:
Organizing Partners:
- Social Enterprise Council of Canada
- MaRS Centre for Impact Investing
- Social Innovation Generation (SiG)
- The Canadian Community Economic Development Network
Lead Sponsors:
- Suncor
- Vancity
- Government of Canada
- Canadian Youth Business Foundation (now Futurepreneur)
- Social Change Rewards
Presenting Partners:
Supporting Partners:
Friends of SEWF:
Media Partners:
Each year SEWF gives a different host country an incredible opportunity to celebrate and nurture its own social enterprise movement. The inaugural SEWF met in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since then it has been to Melbourne, Australia; San Francisco, U.S.A; Johannesburg, Africa; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Learn more about SEWF’s history here.
SEWF 2014 will be held in Seoul, Korea from October 12-16. Hosted by the Work Together Foundation, this significant international gathering has an ambitious agenda: “Social Change through Social Enterprise”. Learn more here.
