Happy New Year! I hope that everyone had a great holiday season and that 2013 is off to a good start. I’ll be hitting the ground running this January, starting with facilitating a conversation around social innovation at The Two Twenty tomorrow morning as part of their First Tuesday series (moved to the second Tuesday this month, as very few people would show up for anything at 7:30am on New Year’s Day!). Here’s the description from the Facebook page:

In Saskatoon and around the globe, there is a wave building, and its name is social innovation. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship move beyond the traditional models of charity and service delivery. Social entrepreneurship, crowdfunding, grassroots involvement, asset-based community development – these and many more creative approaches hold the power to change the playing field and spawn new methods of solving complex and daunting social issues, That being said, individuals and groups who drive social change often encounter barriers that preserve the status quo, like funding criteria that privilege certain types of organizations and activities over others, or a simple distrust of new ideas.

This First Tuesday, Brian Hoessler of Strong Roots Consulting wants to know how social innovation can be better supported in Saskatoon, with an eye towards building a diverse network of people and organizations around this topic. As a growing city, we have the opportunity to build our community’s capacity to tackle these challenging issues – be a part of the conversation!

If you can’t make it but want to contribute your thoughts around this topic, drop me a line! I’ll also post a summary after the event to continue the conversation.

Another mini-project I’ll be working on over the next week is a short series on planning for non-profits, using the analogy of the traditional New Year’s Resolutions. Whether it’s getting in shape or improving your programs, a lot of the fundamentals are the same, as are the pitfalls. What’s the best way to avoid having your goals fall by the wayside? Stay tuned.

When I started my undergraduate degree, I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I was studying psychology and my default career path at that time was to stay in school for 8-10 years to become a research professor or a clinical psychologist. However, I didn’t take that path; over those four years I decided instead to pursue a career working with the people and organizations dedicated to making the world a better place (full disclosure: I still ended up going to grad school for a Masters degree, but in a field more focused on community development and social change).

The experiences in university that helped shape my current path were primarily in a small basement office that was home to the psychology students association, on which I served for three years as a member of the group’s executive. Our mission of supporting our fellow students and trying to build a sense of community was not an easy one – for one thing, a high number of students who attended this large university campus were commuters and often did not want to stay around campus after class. Our lack of resources and constant volunteer turnover as students graduated also made long-term planning difficult.

Despite those challenges, our small association was able to make a difference. We developed some innovative academic and social events, we built meaningful connections with students, staff, and faculty, we even created a new organizational structure that made it easier for people to contribute to the growth and leadership of the association. We had setbacks and frustrations along the way, but when I graduated, I felt that our small group of dedicated individuals made a difference, if not in the world at large then at least our little corner of it.
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