Yes, thank you.
Thank you to the committee and to our MP, Brad Butt, for inviting us to present on our work at the Eden Community Food Bank and to speak on social finance from the charitable perspective, from our perspective.
I'll start by telling you a bit of a story about my background. I was first called an entrepreneur about 20 years ago, after I founded and established a not-for-profit charitable organization for at-risk youth. At the time I said, “How can I be an entrepreneur? I am not a business person. I didn't start a business. I don't have investors.” But I did raise millions of dollars over the years to help homeless and at-risk youth to have a better life. I was, and I am now, what people have come to call a social entrepreneur. My investors are donors, and the return on investment I was promising and delivering was the social return of changed lives.
lt used to be that people found a charity they liked, one that did the charitable aims that they were interested in—for example, a refuge for abused women, or food for hungry people—and they made a donation without any expectation of any specific change or reporting on that change. The relationship was much simpler: the charity did the work and the donor made a donation to support that work, end of story.
Today there is a greater expectation that their donations will effect a change, often a specific change that is more long-lasting, and that the change or outcomes can be measured and reported. From individual donors to family foundations to the United Way and other major funders, all have begun to ask for outcomes and measurements towards the achievement of those outcomes. This has established a new dynamic, a two-way relationship with greater accountability to the charity's investors to report on the social return of their investment. I think the charitable sector and those who support it are ready for a change.
I'm from the Eden Community Food Bank, and we're in a time of transition. We are no longer just a food bank. We are changing from a traditional model of food banking—mainly food collection and distribution, a short-term response to the immediate need of hunger—to a new community food centre model that provides a more long-term and sustainable response to hunger, and hungry families, in western Mississauga. It's the social enterprise projects and also our fresh produce box program that are part of that new direction.
Charities are looking for new ways to generate income to expand their community impact. Donor dollars aren't as available as they once were. More and more requests to major funders often means that more organizations get less funding. Currently mostly of us are developing our own initiatives, working on proven models that we can find, and doing what we can. A national framework for developing social enterprise projects and making a social finance space or even a new corporate form, a new identity different from charity and from non-profits, would provide the foundation needed for that transition.
We also talked about measurement and how we measure. I believe a comprehensive, consistent, and universal measurement mechanism would also be helpful, because there are so many measurement tools out there. A unified measurement tool across the board would be helpful as social finance policies and programs are developed in Canada.
Current limitations to social finance come from the Canada Revenue Agency. The rules and regulations restrict a charity's involvement in social finance opportunities. There is confusion over what a related business is, and charitable boards are fearful of the CRA rules. The risk of losing their charitable status makes it difficult for charities to explore social finance opportunities.
I was an advisor on the start-up of a ministry to at-risk youth that operated a coffee shop, and when we applied for the charitable registration status, we were refused two or three times because they thought it was a failed business that was just trying to get a tax break, whereas 10 or 15 years ago it was on the forefront of this social enterprise trend and we were providing jobs for youth at risk.
The bottom line is that social finance in Canada is still relatively unknown. In the non-profit and charitable sectors there would need to be a lot more education on social finance and an easy-to-step-into opportunity for organizations to test the waters; basically more business-minded people with a heart for social development, where business and charity combine, to be able to work together.
One pitfall I see is that there are limited donation dollars available in Canada from businesses, foundations, and even individual donors. If we create a space where corporations can, instead of donating to a charity, invest with the idea of getting a return, that might take away from the donation dollars of Canada, so I just warn against that. Foundations are being asked to set aside a percentage of their funds for social enterprise projects. Again, that would take away from those charities that are asking for requests. Even for individual donors, given the option of making a pure donation with a social return or making a donation with a potential financial return, that's a hard choice to make for Canadians with their limited dollars.
I'll pass it over to Peter to talk specifically about our programs.