Pillar Nonprofit is pleased to release the Open for Business Pre-Consultation Report for the Social Enterprise Sector.
In December 2013 and January 2014, Pillar Nonprofit Network in collaboration with Ivey Business School led the facilitation and coordination of an Open for Business (OFB) pre-consultation for the social enterprise sector in Ontario.
Because the social enterprise sector is emerging and diverse, at this time there is no unified body that can speak on behalf of the sector to government, supporters or even to other sectors. Accordingly, the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade & Employment (MEDTE) tasked Pillar Nonprofit Network with facilitating six Open for Business pre-consultations across the province. Through the pre-consultations, Pillar was able to gather information from social enterprise practitioners on what the sector needs to support new and existing social enterprises
The process was one of open data gathering and giving a voice to the participants. This resulted in recommendations and potential action items for consideration in the formal OFB process. The feedback from this process has informed the recommendations to MEDTE contained in our report. The key issues identified in the pre-consultations will, in turn, inform the priorities to be addressed in the Open for Business roundtable process.
Pillar Nonprofit Network would like to acknowledge Chris Moss (associate consultant, Pillar Consulting & Advisory Services) and Dr. Oana Branzei (Associate Professor, Ivey Business School) for their work in preparing this report, and thank the Ivey Business School and MEDTE for their support of this project.