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The Non-Profit's Dilemma: Innovate or Perish

With no place to hide from change, the next decade will bring unprecedented transformation to Canada's non-profits. This metamorphosis will be driven by metrics unleashed by open data; new behavioural insights; deepening new technology penetration; demographic shifts (e.g. aging population's service demands, millennials assuming workplace leadership; generative partnership approaches; and, revamped government commissioning of contracted services (Gs+Cs).

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Collective Impact Backbones - Different Approaches

A closer look at the array of collective impact efforts reveals a diversity of backbone infrastructure designs as well. Depending on the size and scope of the collective impact effort, and the unique context it is operating in, the backbone may look and be structured differently.

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Hey, What's the Buzzing Sound?

A buzzing sound can mean many things. When I was a kid growing up on an Iowa farm, a buzzing sound usually meant bees were near by...typically a scary thing since I was pretty sure they had me in their tiny stinger sights. Ah, but there are buzzing sounds that are not at all scary and indicate good things are happening. I heard one just like that last week in Buffalo, New York.

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The Potential of Merging Public Policy with Community Development

What would happen if we blended community development with public policy? Would we be better off if local governments took a community development approach to municipal administration? Vibrant communities are built when citizens and local government work together to make change. The best way to determine the answers to these questions is to study the work of municipal government advisory committees.

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A Conversation in the Avenues

On Friday March 4^th a group of twelve neighbours from the Avenues in Peterborough, ON gathered together for an après work beverage at a new establishment located in the neighbourhood to discuss what is awesome about where we live and how we can make it even better.

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The Journey to Transformation Starts with a Resurrection of the Ordinary

There is a great deal of caring, conserving, creating, innovating, entrepreneuring, protecting, advocating for all life on earth (human, plant and animal) that is done by so-called ordinary people. A quick scan of my friends and neighbours reveals C. who has been growing organic lettuce and greens for 15 years; P. a young mom of two who is leading a campaign to stop dirty coal-bearing trains from entering Canada; J. who is a sole source of support for a friend who may never recover from a debilitating stroke; W. who stopped the trees on our local dyke from being cut down; V. who is caring for her ageing mother; T. and his neighbours who cleaned up a local stream making it possible for salmon to return and D. who is part of a network of support for a friend with cancer.

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