We’re getting excited for our re:Vision 2011 Earth Hour After Party!

It’s going to be an awesome networking event following the re:Vision 2011 conference. There are also a limited number of tickets available to the public here.

Drinks and refreshments are included with entry. Party tickets are included in the re:Vision 2011 conference fee.

We only have a few tickets left for re:Vision 2011, so if you want to join the day-long event, book your ticket now!

The party starts at 7:30 pm @ the Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Ave. Toronto, Ontario, M5T 2C7

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Group shot from re:Vision 2010

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re:Vision 2011 brings together all the key players: entrepreneurs, innovators, policy leaders, investors, students, educators, and government to discuss emerging issues and trends in social enterprise.

Discover opportunities and tangible actions you can take to advance social entrepreneurship in Canada.

Learn more…

1.7 million non profits. How are we going to fund them all?

YSEC has some thoughts (re-posted from TakePart.com):

There are roughly 1.7 million nonprofits operating across the U.S. and Canada, and estimates suggest 45,000 to 60,000 are added to that list each year in the U.S. alone. In my home province of Ontario, one in six workers is employed in the nonprofit sector.  As encouraging as that is, there’s a problem.

Up to now, nonprofits relied on donors or granters for their livelihoods. This limited their capacity to do good, since they were basically living “paycheck to paycheck” from funders. This perpetual vulnerability diverted the staffs’ time and energy from doing the work to raising the funds. Nobody thinks big under these conditions.

It’s a recipe for mediocrity, for short-term reactionary planning. And it’s why so many of our biggest social problems are still rampant. But the world can’t afford small-scale thinking anymore.

So it’s time to do things differently. Social enterprises are ventures that have a triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit. They provide products and services that make the world a better place, and they do business in greener, more equitable ways. They make money by changing the world, and the more good they do, the more revenue they generate. It enables them to act for big, fast-paced, transformational change.

Young people are at the arrowhead of this movement because they’re the world’s best resource for outside-the-box thinking. That’s why at the Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (YSEC) we are cultivating the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

As the first community of our kind in Canada, we expected an uphill battle in spreading the word about social entrepreneurship. Instead, we realized the ground was fertile for seeding social entrepreneurship, especially among young people. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and universal—permeating through class, race and corporate/grassroots lines. In our first year, we worked with more than 500 young social entrepreneurs in Toronto alone, helping them launch social-purpose ventures.

We’ve put our money where our values are by starting the country’s first fund for investing in young social entrepreneurs, and it’s paying off: our inaugural loanee yielded a three-fold return, and we’re almost ready to make our second investment.

In light of ballooning demand from young social entrepreneurs we are launching inVenture: Canada’s first social venture incubator for young people. Next summer, inVenture will bring 15 to 20 of the country’s most promising social ventures to be mentored by leading executives, social innovators and serial entrepreneurs. At the end of the incubator, the participants will pitch to dozens of investors and foundations, trying to secure the funding they need to grow their start-ups. We believe it’s the key first step in accelerating our country’s transition to a smart and equitable economy. Not to mention, the U.S. Department of Commerce reports that business incubators are five to eight times as effective as other public investments in creating jobs; so the economic upside is timely.

And we ask for your support to make it happen. You can TakePart by contributing your votes to help us win the $100,000 we need to make it happen from the Refresh Everything contest.

Social entrepreneurship is the next movement. inVenture will help us to ignite it, and we think that’s worth voting for.

Do you have a skill, passion, or hidden talent you want to offer? Do you have a service you’d like to purchase in support of non-profits?

Join YSEC’s special “”Skills Drive”" MeetUP co-hosted with Well of Change on Wednesday, July 28th at the Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Ave, 4th floor, 6-8pm.

Discover a new way to raise funds for your own organization or favourite charities & non-profits.

Come and donate your services or buy someone else’s.

All proceeds go to YSEC or to your choice of charities registered with Well of Change.

Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada has a one-of-a-kind opportunity to win $100K in the Refresh Everything competition by Pepsi to support good ideas for the world. The way we win is through votes. Your votes.

What will we do if we win?

We’ll launch InVenture – Canada’s first program to help young people launch businesses that can change the world.

We’ll bring 20 of the best start-ups we can find, have them learn from Canada’s best business minds, and then fill a room with investors interested in them.

We’ll help build businesses driven by social missions. Businesses that focus on renewable energies & cleantech, micro-finance, global education, health access, arts & culture, etc. Businesses that propel us toward a more social, greener economy as fast as possible.

So why is InVenture important?

• It will create jobs. 97.5% of businesses in Ontario are small businesses. And they account for 52% of net job creation across Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

• Young social entrepreneurs are asking for it. Since January, we’ve had nearly 60 requests for this kind of help.

• We can make it happen. That’s why we’ve recieved letters of support from PM Paul Martin & Premier Dalton McGuinty. We just need the money.

• There’s nothing like it in Canada.

Please vote for us.  Everyday if you can. Here.

Thanks!

- From the YSEC team.

Before the mix of festivities and chaos hit the streets of Toronto this past weekend, YSEC joined a panel of young entrepreneurs representing the city at the G20 Youth Summit. Known as MY SUMMIT, the event convened youth delegates from all the participating nations.

Moderated by Gavin Sheppherd of The Remix Project – a community organization with several budding social enterprises – the panel was prodded on their thoughts about the challenges and opportunities the city holds for young entrepreneurs.

Their verdict? Canada needs more community hubs and informal associations dedicated to young entrepreneurs, but stands to gain significantly from looming transformations in all social systems – from energy and agriculture, to healthcare and education.

As the delegates spoke about means of influencing the future, social entrepreneurship seemed to captivate their interest.

A delegate from South Korea contemplated the distinction between social enterprise and corporate social responsibility, while another from Mexico was concerned that developed nations were yet again dictating a prescribed development path for emerging economies by suggesting that they develop in cleaner ways. The latter point was an important cue in establishing a framework for collaboration among nations, but misses the point that a global full press of social innovation is needed to adapt to a rapidly shifting world. While it is entirely reasonable to demand that developed nations assume much of the burden of ensuring better social and environmental practices, it is also vital for all nations to do what they can to stimulate, aid and practice wide scale social innovation.

The event revealed the depth of interest young leaders from around the world are taking in social entrepreneurship as a concrete way forward. In contrast to the weekend’s moments of despair in the streets, the sense of promise was palpable. And that’s a very good thing.

YSEC recently went through a Quarterly Business Review where we looked back over our year so far and evaluated what’s worked well and where we can improve. We used this information to help us map out our plans for the upcoming year (which we’re super excited about!). Keep an eye out for more information on this soon.

A great book that helped us in this process was Peter F. Drucker’s “The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask Your Organization“, which is a self-assessment tool for non-profit organizations and businesses.

The book lays out 5 questions that appear simple and straightforward. However, discussing the answers out loud with our team forced us to articulate our answers in new ways and turned out to be a clarifying and useful process.

What do you think? Are these questions useful or obvious?

The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

By: Peter F. Drucker

Question 1: What is our mission?

• What is the current mission?
• What are our challenges?
• What are our opportunities?
• Does the mission need to be revisited?

Question 2: Who is our customer?

• Who is our primary customer?
• Who are our supporting customers?
• How will our customers change?

Question 3: What does the customer value?

• What do we believe our primary and supporting customers value?
• What knowledge do we need to gain from our customers?
• How will I participate in gaining this knowledge?

Question 4: What are our results?

• How do we define results?
• Are we successful?
• How should we define results?
• What must we strengthen or abandon?

Question 5: What is our plan?

• Should the mission be changed?
• What are our goals?

Presented by YSEC & George Brown College’s Institute for Entrepreneurship & Community Innovation (IECI).

This 4-part series will take you through the steps of creating a business plan for your enterprise, social enterprise or nonprofit.

Outcomes:

- Draft a business plan
– Get an expert opinion on your idea’s strengths & weaknesses
– Utilize market research to create financial plans
– Create a draft marketing plan

Taught by Professor Mark Simpson, Co-ordinator & Professor of Management Studies, International Business Management, Small Business Entrepreneurship

June 2, 9, 16, 23   I    6-9pm

George Brown College
230 Richmond Street East

50% discount for YSEC Members. To become a member click here.
35% discount for additional members of your team.

Limited seating available. Register here.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghindo/1739299123/

- Assaf Weisz, Executive Director, Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada

Last week I had the glorious task of looking back at all the group meetings our organization has had in the last 9 months. The record: 550 hours of meetings, and over 200 meetings. That works out to almost a meeting every day.

The fact is, most start-ups rely heavily on group meetings to move forward. In fact, at the earliest stages of group formation, sometimes meetings are the only places where the initiative “exists”. That’s all well and good because at the start there are many important conversations to have. The task of the organization is to concretize their vision, values, group dynamics, planning, etc.

It’s important to know when your team is at this stage, but critical to know when you need to move on. If you find yourself doing most of your work in meetings, that’s an indication of trouble.

My advice: use meetings to set the plan & policies, and use the rest of your time to actually do the work.

So how can you make group meetings more effective?

Here are 7 nuggets of hard-earned advice:

1. What Do You Want? Start with the end in mind. Even if the conversation changes direction organically, come into every meeting knowing what you’re looking for from it, and make sure everyone is one the same page.

2. Prepare! Whatever you’ll need at the meeting should be prepared beforehand to make the conversation more effective. If that means sending around a presentation 2 days before so everyone is caught up, do it.

3. What Is It About? Making an agenda is really about taking your best guess at what you’ll be discussing, and how long you expect to discuss it. The length of time you allot for a discussion is often a signal of how you expect the conversation to unfold. Every agenda item should have a desired result, outcome or next step.

4. Use Your Agenda. It should be a guide for the evolution of the conversation. Warn the participants a minute or two before it’s time to move on.

5. Be Willing To Ditch It. Sometimes, the conversation that emerges is more important than your original agenda, or completely changes the context in which the first one was planned. You decide what’s more important, but use this sparingly.

6. Is It Worth Everyone’s Time? This refers to a lot of things. First, when thinking about how long a meeting should be, multiply the timeslot by the number of participants (ex. 2hrs x 5 participants = 10hrs). The answer is the amount of productive time your organization is devoting to this. Prioritize accordingly.

Second, expect everyone to be on time and finish on time. These are signs of respect for everyone’s time. If your team stretches these boundaries a lot, make a change by starting on time (and not reviewing the discussion when people come in late), and by finishing on time.

7. Relaaaaax. Bring a good mood to the table! This will make your team better problem solvers, and ensure that you enjoy your time with eachother more. Some groups start and end with a ritual. Whatever you end up doing, own the time and space – make it uniquely yours.

Meetings are necessary, but misusing the time can lead to frustration and stagnation – things start-ups can’t afford. By focusing on how you conduct them, and by only having them when you need to, you’re likely to be far more productive.