SOCIAL ENTERPRISE INITIATIVE @ ROTMAN
Research News
Curriculum News
Community Engagement
Ann Armstrong, Director
The mission of the Initiative is three-fold: to generate and to disseminate learning about the nonprofit and social enterprise sectors through collaborative research, curriculum design and community engagement.
Research News
As part of the research dissemination activities for Rotman Nexus , two presentations were presented at the Business As An Agent of World Benefit Conference in Cleveland, Ohio in October 2006, convened by the Academy of Management and the United Nations Global Compact.
Alumni Ushnish Sengupta and Fyaz Faisal presented a paper, “Entrepreneurship as a Change Agent for Women in Low Income Communities: The Regent Park Experience” which describes their experience of mentoring a group of immigrant women through a business startup process. The paper demonstrates how immigrant women suffering from social and cultural barriers have been able to successfully access management skills, knowledge and training offered by various service providers to improve their livelihood through developing a profitable and sustainable economic enterprise.
A second paper, “Social Return On Investment as a Method for Measuring the Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts”, by Ushnish Sengupta, Liz McBeth, and Ann Armstrong was published in a virtual forum. This paper describes the benefits and challenges of applying SROI to CSR activities. The paper notes that the benefits of SROI for corporations engaged in CSR include similarity to familiar ROI calculations, ability to compare returns from different social investments, ability to assign accountability for measurable targets, and the ability to maximize the social returns from CSR activities by applying an appropriate SROI method for a particular industry sector. The challenges include a tradeoff between reliability and validity of different SROI models.
Professors Ann Armstrong and Anil Verma are working on an extensive study of the social economy in southern
Ontario
. They are participating in the $1.75 million SSHRC-funded Community-University Research Alliance for Southern Ontario's Social Economy.
The
University
of
Toronto
, Imagine
Canada
and the Ontario Co-operative Association partnered on the grant, which involves scholars from 11 southern Ontario universities – Ottawa, Carleton, Queen’s, Trent, Toronto, York, Ryerson, Guelph, Wilfrid Laurier, Waterloo and Western Ontario – as well as the universities of Harvard, St. Andrew’s in Scotland, UQAM in Montreal, Saskatchewan, Victoria, New Brunswick and Mount St. Vincent. Twenty-two community organizations are also involved in the project.
The project is headquartered at the Centre for Social Economy and is directed by Drs. Jack Quarter and Laurie Mook.
The research involves (1) mapping the social economy, (2) assessing the impact of the social economy, (3) improving the capacity of the social economy (4) developing policy and (5) extending theory.
Corporations Must Look at Social Values: Prof (Axiom News, January 16)
Curriculum News
A new course, Entrepreneurship with a Social Mission, is being offered in the fall 2006. The course will introduce students to the theory and the practice of social enterprise in Canada and globally. The course complements another course on the social sector, Non-Profit Consulting. Together, the courses provide students with a broad and rich understanding of the social sector.
Community Engagement News
In the spring of 2007, Rotman faculty offered our small business course in Regent Park. Like last year, we worked closely with the Regent Park Neighbourhood Initiative. In addition, we worked with the University’s Anti-Racism and Diversity Office, the YMCA’s Small Business Centre, Rotman NeXus consultants, some of our alumni as well as successful entrepreneurs, bankers and potential investors.
The course was well received and exceptionally managed by Michael Hartmann and Peter Scott of our Executive Programs. Click here for the story from the May 10th, 2007 issue of the Toronto Star.
___________________________
One of our 2007 students, Shahriar Siddiqui, worked on a project in Bangladesh through MBAs Without Borders, www.mbaswithoutborders.org.
“Co-sponsored by MWB, the Aga Khan Foundation and CIDA, Shahriar is working with the Research and Evaluation division at BRAC in Bangladesh. He is a research associate conducting analysis and viability assessments for the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction-Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR-TUP) project.
BRAC is one of the world’s largest non-governmental organizations based in Bangladesh. Established in 1972, BRAC today is present in all 64 districts of Bangladesh, over 65,000 villages and has 4.8 million group members of which 4.3 million are borrowers. In recent years BRAC has extended its development activities to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Africa.”
From: www.mbaswithoutborders.org/shahriar-siddiqui-bangladesh-07
March, 2007: For the second year in a row, a team of our students won an international case competition at George Washington University School of Business! “ The GWU International MBA Case Competition, which has been held each spring for the past 12 years, brings together MBA student teams from international business schools to analyze a current situation facing a nonprofit organization and present solutions that draw on the organization's assets.”
Sarah Stern, Ellie Avishai, Hala Kosyura and Abhijit Rawal defeated teams from 20 other business schools! This year’s case focused on AARP - “AARP is a membership organization dedicated to enhancing the experience of aging through advocacy, information, and services.” AARP wanted to know if it should expand is services to include the 25 to 34 age group. The Rotman team developed a detailed proposal for AARP to consider that targeted young families. The team’s recommendations were well received by AARP!
Rotman CARE Enterprise Partners Internship Scholarship
September 2006: The School has piloted an internship with CARE Canada. In summer 2006, Kelly Gauthier and Salima Rawji received the inaugural Rotman CARE Enterprise Partners Internship Scholarship. They worked both in the CARE office in Toronto and in the field - http://www.care.ca/CEP/CEP_e.shtm).
In Kelly’s words… “In addition to an exciting field assignment in India, I had a fantastic opportunity to get to know the corporate side of CEP, work with the CEP staff and have some exposure to CARE Canada as well. While in the office in Toronto I had a chance to work on a number of initiatives, focusing my time on a research project on social return on investment. We developed a scorecard and screening system to evaluate potential projects & investments, using a standard set of criteria for determining the level and type of engagement.”
In Salima’s words… “Two of my major projects included due diligence work in Zambia and developing a scorecard and screening tool that would measure social and financial returns on a single scale. Both assignments were fascinating. The summer started with a six week stint in Canada researching the best practices in social enterprise in order to develop the screening and scorecard tool. Learning about how all the leaders in the field choose investments got me itching put my newly gained knowledge into practice. Luckily, I had the opportunity to travel to Zambia for five weeks to perform due diligence on two potential investments. The first was an agribusiness venture, run by small holder farmers growing Sorghum; and the second was an established micro-finance institution looking to transition into a full banking organization.”
The internship experience was a great success, not only for Kelly and Salima, but for CARE Enterprise Partners too. Jesse Moore, Director of CARE Enterprise Partners comments that “All of us at CARE Enterprise partners were impressed by Kelly Gauthier and Salima Rawji – in just three short months, they became valued members of our team and provided us with key input for our Canadian and international operations.”
Regent Park Small Business Course
In spring 2006, the School, through its Executive Development Programs, piloted a small business course for members of the Regent Park Community. A group of ten faculty, staff and students worked with the Regent Park Neighbourhood Initiative (www.rpni.org) to design and to implement the course. Participants were coached and created a variety of business plans. One the last day, the participants presented their business ideas to an expert panel for feedback.
Keep an eye on this
page
for further updates.
