Described as Ontario’s “Social Impact and Leadership Academy”, Studio Y was an idea that began in June, and Hamoon Ekhtiari was brought on to lead the project as director.

Ekhtiari explains that the mission is to support young, emerging talent so that they can pursue a life of purpose, realize their full potential, put their ideas into action, and create a better future for both themselves and their communities.

He calls the program an “inflection point”, where young adults can look closely at what they’ve been doing and what they want to do next.

What is Studio Y exactly?  Open to youth ages 18 to 29 residing in Ontario, this 8-month residential fellowship program nurtures leaders and change-makers of tomorrow.  Participants will spend their time pursuing a personal endeavor that they’re passionate about, working on projects across the province with MaRS as well as its partner organizations, and becoming champions for leaders and change-makers through movement building.

“The program is focused on people who have a couple years of experience but are looking to find a way to amplify the impact they’re having and taking their work to the next level,” said Ekhtiari.

Speaking with Ekhtiari, there’s a sense that such a program is needed.  Youth think about their future juggling work to have food to eat and a place to live, and about the ideas and projects they want to pursue.  Often there is much going on.  Studio Y provides an experience of clarity and growth with coaching, mentorship, space (literally and figuratively), and a $20,000 living stipend.

“At the core, Studio Y is about making the better reality,” said Ekhtiari.  He adds that by providing space, youth can look at “where am I at and where do I want to be, and how can I not only realize my full potential for myself but also contribute to building a better society around us.”

Whether an artist, entrepreneur, or scientist, Studio Y seeks three things in participants: character – what’s their story, where do they come from, and what they’ve been working on; contribution – what experience they have in leading and change-making already; and fit – whether they are a fit with the program at this moment.

Interested participants can begin applying online on October 1st for one of 25 spots.  Applications close on October 21st and the program will start January 2014.

“Our ultimate focus [is] on how do we do everything we can to support each participant to be able to realize their full potential and go to the next stage in their journey, whatever that stage may be,” said Ekhtiari.

“The program is designed so that you can also choose your own pathway.  So you may choose to start your own venture or business, you may choose to go inside an existing organization and work in there to help create change, you may decide to pursue further education.”

Ilse Treurnicht, the CEO of social innovation centre MaRS Discovery District, will be joined by Tom Kloet, CEO of TMX Group, the company that owns the TSX, to open trading.

Others in attendance include Dr. Eric Hoskins, Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Employment, and Adam Spence, who has led the development of the SVX and is the Associate Director of the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing.

After the official announcement, a venture day demo will follow.  Ten of the ventures on the SVX will give short presentations.

SVX was conceived to mobilize capital for public good.  It will be a place where investors and funds can connect with local impact ventures that demonstrate a double or triple bottom line – social and/or environmental impact and the potential for financial return.  These ventures include not-for-profits, co-operatives, and for-profit businesses.

The new platform aims to create a win-win situation for both investors and entrepreneurs by reducing the time needed for and cost of due diligence with screened investment opportunities, and providing an avenue for ventures to access capital and financial expertise.

Hundreds of students across the US responded to this question asked at last year’s Lend for America Summit by starting microfinance initiatives at their college.

“That’s 32 universities in 19 states disbursing $376,000 in microloans to underserved communities nationwide,” said Charity Yoro of Lend for America.

Lend for America is an alliance founded in 2009 in response to a growing number of students starting microfinance institutions to spur economic development in their communities.  It provides technical assistance and creates networking opportunities for these organizations.

Every year, the Lend for America Summit invites students to come together for a weekend of training and peer learning.  This year, the fifth annual event will take place on October 11 to 13 at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“In Philadelphia, our goal is to bring together the next generation of leaders to offer training on how young people can make a meaningful impact in their local communities,” said Vanessa Carter, Executive Director of Lend for America.

The agenda will focus on best practices for microlending and enabling students to help the working poor in their communities, including some of America’s most troubled cities such as Durham, North Carolina and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

One of the goals of the summit is to encourage students to start campus microfinance institutions or “Campus MFIs”.  As a member organization of Lend for America, Campus MFIs receive support such as access to a resource library, small grants, and on-site consulting.  Membership fees last year were $200.

Intersect Fund, the parent organization of Lend for America, was also a student-led initiative out of Rutgers University.  Today, it is one of New Jersey’s largest microlenders.

CITI Community Development is this year’s lead sponsor.  Other sponsors include Campus Philly and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Jillian Buriak, a chemistry professor and senior research officer of the university’s National Institute for Nanotechnology, led a team comprising of post-doctoral fellows Erik Luber from the Faculty of Engineering and Hosnay Mobarok from the Faculty of Science.

“Half the world already lives off the grid, and with demand for electrical power expected to double by the year 2050, it is important that renewable energy sources like solar power are made more affordable by lowering the costs of manufacturing,” said Buriak.

Mobarok was responsible for discovering a way to dissolve the particles to form ink so that it can be used to literally paint or print solar panels.  Luber tackled the task of making the material responsive to light.

What does this mean for the average consumer?  “My goal is that a store like Ikea could sell rolls of these things with simple instructions and baggies of screws and do-dads and you could install them yourself,” explains Buriak.

Before then, the team is currently experimenting with the nanoparticles by spray-coating them onto large solar cells to test their efficiency. They have applied for a provisional patent and have secured funding to scale.

Photo credit: University of Alberta.

In one case, a single mother earns approximately $23,000 per year which, according to the federal poverty line of $15,825 in 2012, means she’s not living in poverty.

The problem is that amount of money doesn’t go very far in a city like New York.

Author Pam Fessler talks about three problems with the poverty line.

The first is that it doesn’t account for geographical difference.  It doesn’t matter if you live in New York or rural South Dakota, for instance.

The second is that it’s based on a 50-year-old formula that assumes Americans spend a third of their income on food.  But in today’s terms, the price of food has fallen greatly and people only spend about a sixth of their income on food.

And finally it doesn’t consider government benefits such as food stamps and tax credits.

This essentially means the US can’t accurately describe the number of people living in poverty.  How many are at risk of falling even further towards the base of the pyramid?  The National Poverty Center found that the number of people in the US living on less than $2 per day increased by 160 percent from 1996 to mid-2011.

In response, NPR reports that the government had started working on a supplemental poverty measure, considering regional differences and government benefits.   But it won’t make it in time for when the new poverty numbers come out in September.

This new business structure is designed to give companies with neither purely nonprofit nor for-profit functions a legal environment to conduct business.  For example, similar to for-profits, CCCs would be able to issue dividend, albeit restricted, to shareholders.  Whereas similar to nonprofits, the company is free to pursue the social or environmental well-being of a community.

As far as the regulation is concerned, CCCs will be subject to an asset lock that ensures at least 60 percent of assets are used for the betterment of a community.  A CCC will also have to pay taxes and make sure they distribute no more than 40 percent of annual profit as dividends.  Every year, they will be required to produce and publish a community contribution report.

After becoming a CCC, the business must have the words “Community Contribution Company” or the abbreviation “CCC” as part of its name.  For example, if Social Enterprise Buzz were a CCC, the name would become “Social Enterprise Buzz CCC” or “Social Enterprise Buzz Community Contribution Company”.

A company can also use the incorporation number as the company’s name, but the name must end with “B.C. Community Contribution Company Ltd.” – for example “123456 B.C. Community Contribution Company Ltd.”

To incorporate as a CCC, the steps differ for existing and new businesses, but the business must have at least three directors.

An existing business, whether they are a nonprofit or for-profit, would consequently become a for-profit CCC.  Should a nonprofit decide to become a CCC, their nonprofit would be dissolved.

For-profits, upon unanimous consent of the company’s shareholders to become a CCC, would have to submit a Name Request through BC Registry Services and select the option to convert a BC company to a CCC.  This online process costs $30 and a service fee of $1.50 plus GST.  Then they would file a “Notice of Alteration (from a BC Company to become a BC Community Contribution Company)” through BC Corporate Online, which costs $100.

For new businesses, they would similarly do a Name Request through BC Registry Services.  Again, this costs $30 and a service fee of $1.50 plus GST.  Once they name is approved, they can apply to incorporate the CCC through BC Corporate Online for $350 and a service fee of $1.50 plus GST.

“This new model will unlock new ways to generate meaningful, local employment in B.C. and generate economic wealth for our province by encouraging private investment in B.C.’s social enterprise sector,” said Minister of Finance Michael de Jong.  “I’m excited to see the positive impacts the C3 model will have on B.C. businesses and communities.”

Detailed steps of the incorporation process for CCCs can be found on the BC Registry Services website.

“Social impact bonds have traveled from concept to execution faster than any other social innovation in recent history,” said Kippy Joseph, associate director for innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation.

They have also caught the attention of all levels of government.  Today, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Social Impact Bond Technical Assistance Lab (SIB Lab) at the Harvard Kennedy School announced six winning U.S. state and local governments in a national competition that will provide the winners with pro bono technical assistance to develop pay-for-success contracts using SIBs.

The winners are: Colorado/Denver, Connecticut, Illinois (with additional support from the Dunham Fund), New York, Ohio, and South Carolina.

SIBs are tri-party contracts between a government, service provider, and financial intermediary to fund programs that deliver measurable social benefits.  If and when improved social outcomes are achieved, the financial intermediary who has provided the investment will be repaid as a result of public sector savings.  Like a conventional bond it has a fixed term, but it does not offer a fixed rate of return.  Rather, returns are contingent on social outcomes achieved.

The winners were chosen by a selection committee made up of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, former Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez, and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jeffrey Liebman.

They were evaluated based on the level of commitment and readiness demonstrated by the government, the feasibility of the proposed projects, and the extent of interest in applying the SIB model to new policy areas.

Each winning government will receive support from the SIB Lab including a full-time Government Innovation Fellow who will be based in the government agency that will be spearheading the initiative, pro bono advisory services, up to six months of programmer and data analyst time, and a small amount of flexible funding for removing barriers of SIB implementation.

The governments plan to use SIBs to address issues ranging from early childhood education to helping seniors remain in their homes longer.

During the event, with many student attendees wanting to learn more about social entrepreneurship and innovation, an audience member raised a question that delved into corporate social responsibility (CSR) – Is a company involved in CSR a social enterprise?

From a legal perspective, Indiana University Professors Robert Katz and Anthony Page argue that social enterprise and CSR can differ even though they share a common goal of societal good.

Peter King, who is the founder of UK’s first merchant services social enterprise Ethecol, also notes a difference between CSR and social enterprise.  Although King is not too keen on definitions, he found that CSR emphasizes a lot on reporting and has an institutional demeanour.

The Government of Manitoba adds to this discussion by definitively stating that a company involved in CSR is not a social enterprise.  Although companies with CSR initiatives invest profits into the community, their core purpose is to generate wealth for their shareholders.  On the other hand, community impact is embedded into the primary goal of a social enterprise.

The China Business Council for Sustainable Development also chimes in by presenting a fundamental difference between CSR and social enterprise.  Unlike companies with CSR activities, social enterprises create direct impact in the community through their business products or processes.

The Changemaker Showcase is an event designed to feature TED Talk-style presentations by local social entrepreneurs, followed by discussions to inspire students to explore the possibilities of becoming change agents in their communities.

Today, Ashoka Canada will be hosting another Changemaker Showcase at Ryerson University.

Editor’s note: The Changemaker Showcase at Ryerson University is not hosted by Social Spark as originally indicated, and was removed as a result.

On one end of the spectrum, Canada and its provinces have legislation that allows nonprofits to be incorporated and charitable status to be granted.  On the other end of the spectrum, businesses can register as a profit-seeking corporation under the Business Corporations Act.

The new corporate structure, known as “community contribution companies” or CCCs, will serve as the middle ground for hybrid businesses, similar to the benefit corporation legislation and low-profit limited liability company (L3C) in the U.S. or the community interest company (CIC) in the UK.

Beginning July 29, 2013, CCCs can be incorporated in British Columbia under changes to the Business Corporations Act.

CCCs are modeled after CICs in the UK and therefore largely resemble one another.  The basic premise is that CCCs must have a purpose that is beneficial to the society at large or a segment of society.  At the same time, they have characteristics that distinguish them from current forms of incorporation.

 “Asset lock” and dissolution

Should a CCC dissolve, it will be subject to an “asset lock” that limits the distribution of assets to shareholders to a maximum of 40 percent.  This means at least 60 percent of its assets must go to an entity subject to a similar “asset lock”, such as another CCC, or to a registered charity or nonprofit.   CICs in the UK also use “asset locks” to ensure that assets remain dedicated to social purposes.

Private investment and dividends

Unlike nonprofits, CCCs can accept equity investment, issue shares, and pay shareholder dividends.  However, unlike typical for-profits, CCCs are limited by the amount of dividends they can issue, which can be no greater than 40 percent of annual profit, unless shareholders are registered charities and other “qualified donees” under the Income Tax Act.  The idea is to ensure a portion of profits remain in the company and are used towards social purposes.

Community contribution report

CCCs are required to produce and publish an annual “community contribution report”.  This report will provide details of the CCC’s activities, transfer of assets, amount of dividends that were declared, the identities of shareholders receiving dividends, and a list of persons who are remunerated more than $75,000.

Taxation

To date, CCCs receive no preferential tax treatment.   Under the Income Tax Act, to qualify as a tax-exempt NPO, the organization must not be a charity, must be organized and operated exclusively for social welfare, civic improvement, pleasure, recreation, or any other purpose except profit, and must not distribute any of its income.  Since CCCs do not qualify for an NPO, it will be subject to tax as a regular corporation under the Act.  However, if an NPO incorporates a CCC and holds shares in that taxable CCC, this does not, in itself, cause the NPO to lose its tax-exempt status.  Canada Revenue Agency has indicated it would need to assess the NPO’s situation on a case-by-case basis.

Final remarks

The new regulations were approved by Order in Council on February 27, 2013.

“We are the first jurisdiction in Canada to create a Community Contribution Company.  There are a number of wonderful social ventures and social entrepreneurs in our province and these amendments will support the great work they’re doing and will help them to continue to find new ways of addressing some of our social challenges,” said Gordon Hogg, Parliamentary Secretary for Non-Profit Partnerships to the Minister of Social Development.

According to the province, a 2011 survey revealed that social enterprises in British Columbia provided services to nearly 700,000 people and generated no less than $60 million in revenues.

“The growth in social enterprises over the past decade has been phenomenal – evolving from a radically new idea to mainstream thinking for today’s graduating MBAs,” said Jim Fletcher, BC Partners for Social Impact co-chair.  ”The range of activities and markets is expanding rapidly, yet the surface of their potential has barely been scratched.”

Elsewhere in Canada, Nova Scotia received a similar approval on the Community Interest Companies Act on December 6, 2012.  CICs incorporated in Nova Scotia will also be subject to an “asset lock”, be able to accept private investment and issue share capital, and produce an annual community interest report.  There is no word yet on when the regulations will take effect.

Executives from Participant Media gathered at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design yesterday to reveal details regarding the August 1st launch of the cable network, called pivot.

“Over the past 9 and a half years, through 43 films, Participant has built a reputation for content that is entertaining, commercial and high quality, while at the same time, inspiring and empowering to audiences.  pivot marks a seminal moment for us with the launch of a channel for people who care about the world around them,” said Pariticipant Media CEO Jim Berk.

Taking over the The Documentary Channel and Halogen TV, it is estimated to reach over 40 million subscribers at launch.

pivot will provide over 300 hours of original programming in its first year.  The first six series given the go ahead are TakePart Live, a daily live talk show; HitRECord on TV!,  a variety show produced and hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt; Raising McCain, a docu-talk series starring and produced by Meghan McCain; WILL, a modern period drama by Craig Pearce, writer of “Moulin Rouge” and “The Great Gatsby”; Jersey Strong, a real reality series that profiles two unconventional Newark families, one involved in gangs and the other running a law firm; and ten, one-hour documentaries produced in a joint venture with Univision News and Latin World Entertainment, aired in English by pivot and Spanish by Univision.

“The success of this network will be based on its impact.  Both our programming and distribution model are designed to disrupt conventional wisdom,” said Evan Shapiro, President of Participant Television.

“By building the network around our double bottom line, we spark change through entertaining stories told by powerful voices such as Joe, Meghan, Craig, the Marks and Univision.  By combining the dominant Pay TV model with an unconventional streaming package, we are adapting to changes our audience has already made.”

Those without a television will also be able to watch the programs through a mobile app for a few dollars per month.

In terms of reruns, pivot has acquired the rights to NBC/DirecTV’s Friday Night Lights and Farscape, as well as Little Mosque on the Prairie, a Canadian sitcom about a Muslim community in Saskatchewan.

Details of a partnership with the Rolling Stone were also announced.  The Rolling Stone will create a three-part issue special editorial this fall, combining reports from homes, campuses, workplaces, online, and the streets to profile the Millennial Generation’s influential, emerging artists, technologists, entrepreneurs, activists, athletes and politicians.