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Visionary collaborative partnership sets the stage for social innovation leadership in Toronto
With support from the Toronto Community Foundation, the Centre for Social Innovation's Enterprising Non-Profits Toronto program awards grants to fifteen organizations.

February 16, 2010

The Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) announced the allocation of $121,000 in funding to fifteen recipients for 2010 through its Enterprising Non-Profits (enp-to) program. Tonya Surman, Executive Director of CSI and Valerie Hussey, Director of Social Enterprise confirmed that the selected grantees represent diverse communities in Toronto that are focusing on building organizational capacity through social enterprise.

enp-to builds the capacity of nonprofits to integrate financial and social outcomes by providing grants for skills development, training, feasibility and business planning. The micro-granting program is designed to seed social enterprise. Forty-eight proposals requesting almost $400,000 in funding were received and reviewed by the funders.

The funders’ collaborative is a pooled fund. Seventy-five percent is directed to grant disbursement and 25% to coaching and program delivery. The funders are committed to the value of building relationships and shared learning while pursuing a common goal. These funding partners set the framework for the program, review and adjudicate the proposals, and the insights they gain into the emerging social enterprise sector is knowledge they return to their organizations.

The 2010 grant recipients and their projects include:

Learn more about each social enterprise project (PDF, 3.5 MB) ››

About Social Enterprise and enp-to
Social enterprise encourages greater resiliency and independence within the non-profit sector by helping organizations to stabilize and diversify their funding through revenue generating enterprise. The result is stronger non-profits and healthier communities.

Enterprising Non-Profits began in BC in 1997. It has delivered over 800 workshops to non-profit organizations and invested in excess of $1.6M in the sector, helping to kick-start more than 65 social enterprises. In 2008, CSI launched an enp demonstration project in Toronto.

Enterprising Non-Profits Toronto is a partnership of the Centre for Social Innovation, Toronto Community Foundaiton, and BC-based Enterprising Non-Profits.

About CSI
The Centre for Social Innovation is a dynamic social enterprise with a mission to catalyze social innovation in Toronto and around the globe. CSI combines shared space creation and animation, project incubation and program delivery. Enterprising Non-Profits (enp-to), a project of CSI, exemplifies an approach that is collaborative, systems changing, and entrepreneurial.

About the Funding Partners
enp-to, a partnership of foundation, credit unions, corporations, individuals and government, believes social enterprise is a valuable means to achieve impact in the community. The program partners are:

  • Catherine Donnelly Foundation encourages innovative projects, initiatives and programs that offer the greatest possibility for change while advancing the interests of the poor in the areas of transitional housing, adult education and the environment.
  • City of Toronto grants are partnerships or investments that help the City of Toronto achieve its social, economic and cultural goals for its residents. The City's goals are better achieved by supporting the work of organizations that are closer to the communities they serve.
  • The Co-operators is making a meaningful difference in the communities where we live and work. Through The Co-operators Foundation, financial assistance is provided to social economy enterprises, emergent co-operatives, community economic development initiatives and other worthy causes in Canada.
  • MaRS helps entrepreneurs bring new and innovative ideas to the marketplace. It is a convergence centre with a mission to help new ventures by looking at the big picture, including how to support the broader determinants of health.
  • Social Capital Partners is a social finance organization that believes market forces can be utilized effectively to solve structural social challenges. Social Capital Partners arranges for growth financing and provides advisory services to successful businesses that integrate a social mission into their HR model and expand career opportunities for disadvantaged populations.
  • Toronto Community Foundation is the managing partner to the program. The Community Foundation connects philanthropy with community needs and opportunities in order to make Toronto the best place to live, work, learn, and grow.
  • Toronto Community Housing is Canada's largest social housing provider and home to more than 164,000 tenants with low and moderate incomes - about six per cent of Toronto’s population. Toronto Community Housing works closely with other agencies, companies and organizations. Toronto Community Housing's many partnerships help deliver on its mandate to provide quality housing and build great neighbourhoods.
  • Toronto Workforce Innovation Group has the mission to be a catalyst for training solutions grounded in research and guided by multi-stakeholder perspectives. Our key partners include business, labour, government, community organizations, educators, women, persons with disabilities, youth, Aboriginals, francophone, racial minorities, and immigrants.
  • Urbanspace Property Group is a mission-driven developer focusing on the preservation, restoration, and adaptive reuse of historic and architecturally significant spaces. Urbanspace owns and operates 401 Richmond St. W and 215 Spadina Ave. and has cultivated these buildings to provide space for the creative sector and social entrepreneurship.
  • Vancity is a progressive credit union that supports social enterprise with the not-for-profit and co- operative sectors through advocacy, research and investment. Vancity has provided core funding to the ENP-BC program since 2001 and supported initiatives in sector development and policy work.


More Information
Learn more about our partnership on the enp-to program ››