Accelerating our Impact: Philanthropy, Innovation and Social Change

As social marketer Eric Young has observed, “Social innovation is not just about
improving the innovative capacity of social organizations. Rather, it is about innovations
in our capacity to organize social and financial resources to achieve large-scale
social impact.”
Finally, adept social innovators
• balance thinking and acting, standing still in order to perceive system
patterns and moving quickly to take advantage of opportunities;
• engage both the power of established institutions and that of the grassroots;
• manage both the dynamics of success and the dynamics of failure and are not
drawn off course by either. 23
When Cindy Blackstock, Executive Director of First Nations Child and Family
Caring Society 24 , studied the enormous gap that existed between the Canadian
voluntary sector and First Nations agencies dealing with children and families,
she discovered a self-perpetuating stalemate. Agencies on reserves were reluctant
to get in touch with voluntary agencies because they had no experience of
working with them, few if any contacts, and a history that advised strongly
against inviting outsiders to work on questions of child welfare. On the other
side of this cultural divide, voluntary agencies refrained from getting involved
on reserves, saying “We don’t go where we are not invited.”
2.1
Beyond funding
Cindy is a classic social innovator: she sees opportunities where others see barriers
and she is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve results for her community.
She began to systematically remove obstacles by creating the Caring Across
Boundaries (CAB) program. Using a curriculum developed by First Nations writers,
CAB provides workshops to on-reserve family and child welfare agencies,
and to voluntary sector organizations, informing each about the nature and
approach of the other. Through structured encounters hosted by the reserve,
mutual understanding leads to joint agenda setting and a range of collaborative
projects, such as an Aboriginal Mentorship Project in collaboration with the Boys
and Girls Clubs of Canada. Trust is slowly building and families and children are
benefiting as a result.
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23 These abilities with corresponding examples are described by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and
Michael Quinn Patton in Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed, Toronto: Random House, 2006.
24 For more information on this initiative, visit: < http://www.fncfcs.com > .