Dozens of social purpose organizations have joined the Solidarity Working Group since its creation nearly two years ago to learn more about how they can advance inclusion and diversity within their own ranks.

Fifteen organizations signed onto the Solidarity Working Group’s public pledge in July 2020 to create a standing meeting on inclusion within the sector, as well as developing performance indicators to measure progress. They also called for the development of anti-racism and anti-oppression training for all Investment Readiness Program and Social Finance Fund partners. 

As well, the Group promised to develop an intermediary for African Canadians in the Social Finance Fund, and a self-determined fund to provide small grants and non-repayable loans to members of historically excluded groups working in Canada’s social finance and social enterprise sector. Since the public pledge went live in 2020, the Solidarity Working Group’s membership has gone up to 78 organizations.

Since forming, the Solidarity Working Group has managed to hire a full-time staff assistance collaborator thanks to resources from SETSI and other partner organizations. It now has a research committee and activations committee — meant to bring in new members — as well as a funding and partnerships committee. Beausoleil says those subcommittees now have chairs — and the Solidarity Working Group now has co-chairs, Nova Scotia-based Louise Adongo and Peter Frampton. 

“Over the last two years, we’ve been able to create greater inclusion, diversity, equity, and access through training, capacity-building, and gatherings, bringing folks together consistently, building out committees,” says Victor Beausoleil, executive director of Social Economy through Social Inclusion (SETSI), who convened the Solidarity Working Group and  co-wrote its central Stronger Together solidarity statement.

“Now we can really focus on the governance model of the Solidarity Working Group – so we can actually create work plans and timelines and milestones around each sub-committee’s work and the broader work as we scale,” Beausoleil says.

Buy Social Canada, a community capital social enterprise, is one of the original signatories to the Solidarity Working Group pledge. In a statement to Future of Good, Tori Williamson, Buy Social’s director of education and communications, says it is working on diversity and inclusion training with SETSI and decolonization work with Nahanee Creative, a Squamish-owned social change agency.

“We feel the Solidarity Working Group is an important place to create accountability across the sector and better support each other and our communities,” Williamson’s statement says.

Meanwhile, the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), another original signatory, says it has strengthened its internal and community DEI training, and  integrated DEI into its hiring process. CSI is also looking to shift the system of entrepreneurship education and development through the adoption of seven design principles from the Women of Ontario Social Enterprise Network that include commitments to anti-oppression. 

In the summer of 2020, members of the Solidarity Working Group met with then-Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussein to ask the Canadian government for another $150 million of investment over the next two years into Employment and Social Development Canada’s Investment Readiness Program, with – among other requests – a focus on enhancing access for Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs. (That $150 million investment does not appear to have taken place). 

Jo Reynolds, social innovation specialist at CSI, told Future of Good that CSI has contributed $10,000 to fund the Solidarity Working Group directly. Reynolds says the organization has also participated in the Group’s efforts, including research last summer on how inclusion, diversity, equity, and access practices are used by social purpose organizations and accelerators in Canada.

However, not all signatories have been willing to explain their progress. Michael Toye, executive director of CCEDNet, says his organization prepared a list of actions it has taken since the signing of the Stronger Together solidarity statement, but declined to provide it to Future of Good because it had not reported its progress to the Solidarity Working Group.

“Furthermore, a list [of actions] would not do justice to the scale of the issues being addressed, the ways in which we are grappling with them, or the trials, lessons and learning we are doing,” Toye says in a statement to Future of Good. “It also risks being construed as performative, creating an atmosphere of competition or unfair comparisons among sector groups.”

Vancity Community Investment Bank (VCIB), another signatory, held DEI workshops for its executive, clients, and the public. The bank also sponsored the BlackNorth Initiative, financed a loan to build a Black-run Montessori School in Toronto, and ran mandatory Indigenous awareness training for its entire staff.

However, according to information provided to Future of Good, VCIB was “unaware of details as to which items we have completed” on the Stronger Together Solidarity Statement.

And at least one of the original signatories isn’t with the Solidarity Working Group any longer. David Upton, CEO of Common Good Solutions, says his organization is no longer actively involved with SETSI’s (and the Solidarity Working Group’s) work – although he says he has a good relationship with Beausoleil.

“One of the problems I had was that SETSI didn’t have any Nova Scotia board representation,” Upton tells Future of Good in an interview. “That’s a form of exclusion in my mind.”

He also doesn’t think something like the Solidarity Working Group will be effective in smaller regions like the Maritimes, compared to more densely populated areas. “To my knowledge, there is no program on the table for investment capital intended for African Nova Scotian investees,” 

As for Common Good Solutions’ own work, Upton says staff have taken anti-racism training. There’s also a working group within Common Good that works on diversity. About a third of the staff are people of colour, Upton, adds. “We are actively engaged in the process of inclusion,” he says. “Do we get it right all the time? I wish we did. But we try hard.” 

The Solidarity Working Group’s efforts are far from simple. When asked what it must overcome to change the social purpose sector, Beausoleil had a ready answer: “Racism. Microassaults. Microinvalidations. Microaggressions. There’s racism embedded in all of these ecosystems.”

Beausoleil said the social enterprise and social finance sectors still have a lot to fix amid North America’s racial reckoning. Still, he remains hopeful that the Canadian government’s various initiatives like the SFF and IRP are taking inclusion into account.

“Racism is still overt and covert within the space,” he said, “but I believe that the federal government is aware of this, and they’ve made a lot of commitments. They’re working towards ensuring that inclusion, diversity, equity, and access are prioritized around a lot of the opportunities that are deployed right now.”

Tell us this made you smarter | Contact us | Report error