Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1 - A Snapshot of Social Enterprise in Canada
This chapter is available for download in our resource section.
Twelve social enterprises from across Canada share their stories and profiles. Why they started, how they grew, their challenges and successes.
Chapter 2 - An Overview of Social Enterprise
This chapter describes —
- the growth of social enterprise in Canada;
- our definition of "social enterprise” and related terms;
- answers to common questions about social enterprise;
- reasons why groups decide to start a social enterprise;
- benefits of starting a social enterprise;
- the range of non-profit social enterprises; and
- types of non-profit social enterprises.
Chapter 3 - Readiness for Social Enterprise
This chapter provides you with ways to ready your organization for the challenge of starting a social enterprise, and includes worksheets and assessment tools.
It describes the process of assessing —
- organizational readiness;
- social enterprise readiness; and
- business readiness.
Chapter 4 - The Enterprise Development Process Continuum
This chapter presents a common set of enterprise development stages and briefly discusses the key elements and goals you can achieve at each stage:
- Vision and objectives
- Idea generation and opportunity identification
- Pre-feasibility analysis
- Feasibility study
- Business planning / capacity building / legal context
- Launch
- Start-up
- Evaluation
- Growth / reinvestment / adaptation / evolution
Chapter 5 - Identifying and Assessing Enterprise Opportunities
This chapter provides a structured process you can use to identify and screen potential business opportunities. It outlines how you can complete the following steps:
- Pre-steps
- Generate ideas
- Quick screening
- Second screening of ideas
- Feasibility study
- Business plan summary
Chapter 6 - Planning for Your Social Enterprise
This chapter is available for download in our resource section.
Social ventures are, by their very nature, complex undertakings. It's hard enough to create a new company that can identify a new market need and serve it while building infrastructure, raising capital, and meeting customer demands. Social ventures aim to do all of this as well as another daunting task — creating value for society beyond the financial bottom line.
Business planning, both the process and the resulting document, can provide incredibly powerful and positive tools for a new enterprise. A business plan isn't just a forecast about one program, function, or resource. Instead, it’s a framework that blends expectations about multiple factors and articulates them in a plan that presents future opportunities for the venture.
Chapter 7 - Performance Measurements
In addition to developing your business plan, you’ll want to develop a way of measuring, or evaluating, your social enterprise. In this guide, we call this evaluation process “performance measurement,” but similar processes are known as “social impact assessment” or “social return on investment.”
This chapter —
- discusses the importance of measuring (and planning to measure) the impact of your non-profit enterprise;
- presents a basic approach to developing a measurement system; and
- identifies several approaches currently used, and discusses some of their key characteristics.
Chapter 8 - The Legal Context
This chapter is available for download in our resource section.
This chapter —
- Outlines the CRA policies and guidelines that you should consider if you’re a non-profit with charitable status. CRA distinguishes among business, fundraising, and fee-for-service activities. It also determines whether your business is related to your charitable mission and therefore permitted within your non-profit structure, or if it’s unrelated and therefore should be set up as a separate entity.
- Explains a unique situation where a training business, social business, or a business providing low-cost necessities might be considered a charitable program in its own right (as opposed to a related business). CRA has developed specific guidelines that may apply to you if you’re a community economic development organization operating a business or if you provide your services in an “economically challenged community.”
- Discusses different ways to structure your business if you want to operate the enterprise outside your non-profit structure. This section covers for-profit subsidiaries and co-operatives.