Miss Towa

Yonge-Dundas Square (YDS) is seeking proposals from qualified agencies or individuals to work on behalf of YDS to develop and solicit multi-year sponsorships for two of the Square’s annual programming streams.

The Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), in partnership with the Province of Ontario, TD Bank, Microsoft Canada, Alterna Savings, KPMG and Social Capital Partners, is proud to announce a new social finance initiative for social entrepreneurs. This exciting collaboration brings government, business and nonprofits together to support intrepid changemakers working across sectors in farming to finance and everything in between.  

This government, business and nonprofit collaboration is all about enabling entrepreneurs and innovators to turn their ideas into world-changing impact by supporting promising early stage social enterprises with access to capital and CSI’s existing acceleration programming and services.

The Ontario Catapult Microloan Fund is a social finance tool to create an enabling environment in which social enterprise in Ontario can thrive. This is not only important for Ontario’s economy, but also crucial to addressing the challenges we face and creating a better world.

The Ontario Catapult Microloan Fund will:

• Make between 15 and 25 investments into early stage social enterprises (nonprofit and for-profit)
• Provide loans of $5,000 - $25,000 to eligible social ventures/enterprises
• Provide a range of support to enable the social enterprises to succeed
• Undertake a full impact assessment of the investments over a 2-year process

To be eligible, the social enterprise:

• Must be an Ontario-based social enterprise
• Must be incorporated as a for-profit, nonprofit, or other business model as acceptable to the loan review committee
• Must be a member of the Centre for Social Innovation, but not necessarily a tenant at a CSI location (see Community Membership)
• Must be working on the development of a revenue-generating social enterprise
• Must have fewer than 25 full-time employees
• Must have annual revenue under $2 Million
• Must be addressing a social, environmental, economic or cultural challenge

The Catapult Microloan Fund will be administered by CSI and a specifically appointed review committee comprised of CSI’s partners and independent experts. Although the review committee will hold the final decision, the CSI community, mentors and issue experts will be engaged as a part of the process to help make the most informed decisions.  Everyone involved will be looking for the following key success factors:

1.     originality of the idea

2.     scalability: potential for scale / impact / transformation

3.     entrepreneur / team’s ability to deliver success and their track record

4.     feasibility of the project – is it likely to succeed?

5.     expected social, environmental, economic or cultural impact of the   project

6.     financial sustainability

7.     community support for the idea / project

To receive important updates about the microloan fund, please subscribe to the mailing list HERE. The application process will commence in mid June, and the first round of investment will be made in September.

Together, we’re catalyzing new ideas for a better world. Because it’s up to us!

The Centre for Social Innovation is a coworking and meeting & event space for people who are changing the world with three locations in Toronto and a new location in New York City. Our diverse community of changemakers is hundreds of members strong, connected through virtual and physical spaces, and working together to make the world a better place. Our programming, network, shared services and workshops catapult social innovators towards success. Find out more at socialinnovation.org

rosalindrobertson:

Gawker is crowdsourcing TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS to pay off the drug dealers who have a video that allegedly shows the mayor of my city smoking crack.

And I think everyone in this city should ask - How DARE you?

Let me talk to you a second about drugs, criminality, poverty, gangs and guns….

“Do you - gawker editors, managers, owners - have ANY IDEA what I could do with $200K? Do you know what kind of lifesaving research that could pay for? Do you know how much fresh fruit that could put in elementary schools in our impoverished neighborhoods?”

- well said and seconded!