Provoking Innovation and Building Capacity in Social Entrepreneurship

Aspirations for social enterprise set the bar too low

Two common refrains – hoping for the day when every business is a social enterprise, and claiming that social entrepreneurship “is a verb, not a noun” – sound positive. In fact, they’re holding us back from performing among the virtuosos of the world.

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Prizes of $270,000 celebrate all stages of social enterprises across Canada

At its core, social entrepreneurship uses business models/ markets to solve social problems. Regardless of whether it’s an individual or an organization, regardless of their choice of incorporation- non-profit or for-profit, these elements are the driving and amplifying force.

We support social entrepreneurship.

We are a private foundation that believes in supporting social entrepreneurship through programmatic, grant making, and partnership approaches. We take a systems view to every decision we make and foster social entrepreneurship by supporting the ecosystem and providing social entrepreneurs with capacity building resources.

We are entrepreneurial.

We believe in making social entrepreneurship mainstream. We know we can’t do it alone. Which is why we don’t just fund organizations; we work with them and learn with them to move the sector forward, taking risks along the way.

Happy New Year! The start of 2023 gives us the opportunity to reflect and learn from 2022. Although 2022 came with its challenges, the past twelve months were busy, historic, and made great progress in advancing both social entrepreneurship and Calgary's role as a hub for social entrepreneurship.

Co-Founders Katie Forsyth and Claire McLoughlin of Friendly Composting discuss cash flow, learning how to pace themselves, impact, and next steps.

This year’s NU national awards competition featured six finalists for the awards. The NU Community Board offered two primary prizes: The Board Award ($25,000) and the Audience Vote Award ($25,000). In a surprise turn of events, we also decided to award each finalist who did not receive a primary prize an award of $5,000.

Namada was created through the collective wisdom of a Social Impact Working Group consisting of the Government of Alberta, AB Seed, and several key community partners, including the Social Enterprise Fund, Trico Foundation, and United Way Calgary.  The group committed to lengthy, ongoing conversations over the course of a year to really dig deep into how they might better support and understand the social enterprise ecosystem in Alberta.

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