Established in 2008, the Trico Charitable Foundation seeks to provoke innovation and build capacity in social entrepreneurship. We believe social entrepreneurship can be leveraged to close gaps in society.
For us, social entrepreneurship is any organization or individual, for-profit or not-for-profit, that uses markets and new ideas to solve social problems.
The Social EnterPrize awards celebrate leadership and excellence in social entrepreneurship across Canada. The awards are presented biennially and provide organizations with financial support as well as support for their public profiles via bespoke videos. Storytelling is one of the most powerful forces in humanity. As a private foundation, we have learned that our work is better when we tell stories and when we listen to them. One of the great challenges to advancing social entrepreneurship lies in the way we tell our stories. What is needed are stories that reveal, and perhaps even revel in, the hard-fought journeys and extraordinary impact that are at the heart of being a successful social entrepreneur.
Download the TurnAround Couriers Social EnterPrize Case Study
To these ends, we saw an opportunity with the Social EnterPrize recipients to have their story told in a much deeper way than we had ever attempted before. The result is a series of social entrepreneurship case studies that, in terms of the breadth of the organizations studied and the depth of the analysis, is the first of its kind in Canada. The subjects and the authors of the studies are as follows:
| Subject | Post-Secondary Institution | Targeted Release Date |
| YWCA Metro Vancouver Hotel/Residence | Okanagan School of Business Okanagan College | April 08, 2015 |
| TurnAround Couriers | Diversity Institute Ted Rogers School of Management Ryerson University | April 22, 2015 |
| EMBERS Staffing Solutions | Sauder Centre for Social Innovation & Impact Investing, Sauder School of Business, The University of British Columbia | May 06, 2015 |
| JUMP Math | QSB Centre for Social Impact, Queen’s School of Business | JUMP Math 20, 2015 |
Storytelling is no easy task, and these are no average journeys. For us, these stories have challenged our assumptions and have taken us deeper into social enterprises than we had seen before. The studies have exceeded our wildest expectations. For that, credit is due to each recipient, not only for their leadership, but their candour; and to each post-secondary institution, for its hard work and thoughtful analysis.
What we know is that our work has only begun. We hope you enjoy these studies, and that they entice you to tell your story. We are eager to hear from you @tricofoundation and will continue share our insights at www.tricofoundation.ca.
Table of Contents
| Introduction by Trico Charitable Foundation | |
| 1. Preface | |
| 2. Literature Review | |
| 3. Introduction to TurnAround Couriers & its Social Mandate | |
| 4. TurnAround Couriers as a Social Enterprise | |
| 5. Planning | |
| 5.1 TAC as Socially Innovative | |
| 5.2 TAC’s Financial Needs/Goals | |
| 5.3 TAC’s Social Objectives | |
| 5.4 Balancing ‘Mission’ & ‘Money’ | |
| 6. TurnAround Couriers’ Competitive Advantage | |
| 7. Current Business & Governance Model | |
| 8. Journey/Development Path of TurnAround Couriers | |
| 9. The Future | |
| 10. Lessons Learned | |
| 11. Works Cited | |
| About the Authors | |
