Financial management tips and insights from Walter Hossli, Executive Director of Momentum, founding member of CCEDNet and one of the most experienced CED leaders in Canada. 

BACKGROUND

For the past 20 years, Walter Hossli has been the driving force behind the Calgary CED organization Momentum.  Momentum serves about 4,000 low-income Calgarians annually in 20 programs including, trades training, micro loans for business start-up, professional immigrants’ accreditation, financial literacy and matched savings programs. 

But it wasn’t always this way.  In 1991, Momentum had a budget of just over $300,000 and was caught in the project funding treadmill common to many CED groups.  By learning to cost properly, diversifying funding sources, building surpluses and reserves and creating a strong organizational culture, Momentum’s annual revenues grew to over $5.2 million in 2010, with reserve funds of over $1.6 million.

In this session, Walter shares the lessons he’s learned over the last 20 years and tips on how strong financial management can catalyze organizational passion, performance and independence – and ultimately better results for communities. 

SPEAKER

• Walter Hossli, Momentum
  Walter has been Executive Director of Momentum since it was founded in 1991.  Under his leadership, Momentum has won the Community Achievement Award from the City of Calgary, been recognized by the Tides Canada Foundation, by Charity Intelligence as one of the most effective organizations in Calgary and named one of Alberta's top 50 employers. Walter is a founding board member of CCEDNet, and he helped establish Vibrant Communities Calgary, an organization dedicated to fighting poverty.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Financial Management of CED Organizations by Walter Hossli, on Canadian Centre for Community Renewal
   
• An Executive Director’s Guide to Financial Leadership by Kate Barr and Jeanne Bell, on Nonprofit Quarterly
   
• How Much Should a Canadian Charity Spend on Overhead?  By Mark Blumberg, Blumberg Segal LLP. 
   
• The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle by Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, on Stanford Social Innovation Review.
   
• The Operating Surplus: What’s Right for Your Organization? By Sandi Humphrey, on Canadian Society of Association Executives
   
• For more about Walter’s vision of community see, his talk at TEDx Calgary
   
• Get to know Momentum with their last Annual Report

Thursday, September 27
12:00 noon EDT
Format: 30-minute profile of a social finance initiative in Canada followed by a 30-minute, cross-country check-in

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About Karim Harji:

Also available via webcast

Digital engagement empowers individuals to make an impact in ways that were never before possible.

Crowdsourcing has been used to build groundswells of participation in philanthropy, business and politics, so what can it do for health care?

Let's find out together

Featuring two globally recognized crowdsourcing experts:

• Rahaf Harfoush is a digital innovation and Foresight Strategist who was invovled in the Obama presidential campaign
• Jeff Howe is an author, the creator of the term Crowdsourcing, and a former contributing editor at Wired Magazine

This event is free of charge. Space is limited.

>> MORE INFO & REGISTRATION HERE

A feature webinar discussion with Mike Lewis on Resiliency – a next step for local economies in the transition to a low-carbon future. 

BACKGROUND

Twenty years ago, Mike Lewis was already one of the leading voices for community economic development in Canada.  As editor of Making Waves, he saw first hand how local action can help turn around impoverished neighbourhoods and communities.  But as his work expanded internationally and across sectors, the emerging spectres of climate change and peak oil cast community renewal in a new light. 

In his new book, The Resilience Imperative, Lewis and co-author Pat Conaty of the new economics foundation draw on their wealth of experience to show how energy, food, housing, finance and other sectors familiar to CED practitioners can be reinvented at a more local and regional scale, buffering communities from the economic shocks that the global transition to lower-carbon economies will likely entail. 

The Resilience Imperative is firmly grounded in extensive research carried out by the BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance.  With endorsements from David Suzuki, Bill McKibbon, Hazel Henderson, Gar Alperovitz, Robin Murray and many others, The Resilience Imperative offers practical solutions for a cultural shift to solidarity, co-operation and sufficiency in a future that respects the earth’s ecological limits. 

SPEAKER

Michael Lewis, Canadian Centre for Community Renewal, has been engaged in community economic development (CED), development finance and the social and co-operative economy for over 35 years, Mike is a prolific author, and respected practitioner who’s been involved in entrepreneurial development, network building, strategic assistance to CED organizations and curriculum design for community resilience. 

EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK

• Fossil-Fuel-Free Kristianstad
• Kirklees, U.K.: An area-based approach to to energy efficiency, housing affordability, and jobs
• Sweden's JAK Bank: Liberating Community Finance from the Ball and Chain of Compound Interest
• Affordability Locked In: Community land trusts – good news for households, communities, & taxpayers
• The Best of Three Worlds: Mutual Home Ownership combines housing affordability with equity and fairness
• The Co-operative Land Bank: A Solution in Search of a Home
• The Housing Treadmill: Why we're on it - What it's costing us - How we get off

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• The Resilience Imperative (more information on the book and a link to purchase)
  http://www.ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/resilienceimperative
   
• Canadian Centre for Community Renewal
  https://communityrenewal.ca/
   
• Review of The Resilience Imperative in thetyee.ca
  https://thetyee.ca/Books/2012/07/13/Resilience-Imperative/
   
• The Resilience Imperative and Civil Disobedience
  https://steadystate.org/the-resilience-imperative-and-civil-disobedience/
   
• BC-Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance
  https://www.socialeconomy-bcalberta.ca:443/

Co-operatives United is an inspiring global festival of events and exhibitions set in Manchester, UK, to mark the close of the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives. With 1 world premiere, 3 exhibitions, 10 conferences, 45 countries, 150 workshops, 200 exhibitors and 10,000 people, Co-operatives United will inform and inspire everyone building an ethical economy and a better world.

Read more >>

Social innovators know that social innovation is not a fixed address. We do not find the permanent solution to the complex problems that face our societies and our environment. What we can do is increase our understanding of and our capacity to respond to such problems in continuously innovative ways.

Join Dr. Frances Westley, best-selling co-author of Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed (2006), as she shares new insights into understanding complexity and transformative change, and the critical dimensions of “maybe”.

Six years after the publication of Getting to Maybe, Dr. Westley reveals her insights into exciting new thinking and practice to create conditions for social innovation. Her presentation will include ideas and examples to highlight:
•    The importance of resilience concepts – strategies for both increasing and decreasing pockets of resilience within our social systems
•    The potential of social innovation design labs for supporting system change
•    The connective role of institutional entrepreneurs and their relationship to the inventiveness of social entrepreneurs

Frances Westley is one of the world’s leading experts on social innovation. As the Director of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISER) at the University of Waterloo, she leads an active research team that is exploring the dynamics of how change happens in complex, linked social and ecological systems.  The WISIR staff and faculty team has launched the Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation (sig.uwaterloo.ca) and is educating and networking professionals from all sectors across Canada, to work together for significant innovation on our shared, systemic challenges.

Join Dr. Westley for this public lecture as she shares new insights into social innovation.

Tuesday September 18, 2012, 7:00-8:30pm

UVic Social Sciences and Math Building, Room A104

For more information call 250-472-4539