Social Innovations Journal

All Hands on Deck: Enabling Social Innovation

2023-02-27T12:47:05-08:00

Social innovation's rather unsympathetic relationship with promoters of Intellectual Property (IP) and commercialization as the holy grail of economic success is not a deficiency; it is quite intentional. The process of creating lasting change on complex challenges takes time and requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. Intermediary action-oriented agencies like SI Canada can provide the network and process innovation infrastructure to support the development and testing of transformative ideas. Synergistically, academy-based knowledge brokers like The/La Collaborative can help leverage knowledge and skills to produce the evidence needed for systems-level investment in these transformative ideas.

The Role of Innovation in Systems Change

2023-02-27T12:58:28-08:00

The Tamarack Institute’s adaptation of the Multi-Level Perspective Framework (MLP) offers a way for social innovators to visualize comprehensive change strategies within complex environments in an accessible way. The MLP allows collaborative groups to see their mutually reinforcing activities – the dynamic interaction of activities and outcomes at multiple levels – and understand how their efforts cumulate over time. It offers a way to zoom in and out, focus on leverage points, and share the narrative of a complex change journey.

Accelerating Community Innovation: The Role of the Field Catalyst

2023-02-27T13:11:20-08:00

This article explores the contribution of community innovation – a place-based form of social innovation – as one of five interconnected practices to advance community change. It also profiles how Field Catalyst Intermediaries – a unique form of intermediary – play a high-impact but often invisible role that enhances the success and impact of promising community innovations. Examples drawn from Tamarack Institute’s 20+ years' experience as a Field Catalyst Intermediary illustrate how promising community innovations are strengthened, linked, and amplified to achieve high-impact, lasting transformation on an array of complex social issues.

Tamarack: Unlocking the Power of Community Innovation

2023-02-28T08:17:00-08:00

To generate the results that communities urgently need to tackle today’s social challenges will require more than simply making incremental changes to our current approaches. Working harder alone is not enough. The breakthroughs that are required will only be found with new approaches that are commensurate to the scale of our current opportunities. Community Innovation has become imperative to effectively address our society’s most significant issues. This article explores the principles, characteristics, and benefits of community innovation.

Communities Building Youth Futures

2023-02-27T13:18:38-08:00

Tamarack Institute’s Communities Building Youth Futures (CBYF) is an initiative funded by the Government of Canada that seeks to reduce barriers to education for youth across the country. Using case studies from three CBYF communities, this article explores the meaningful and wide-ranging impacts of putting youth at the centre of decision-making efforts. CBYF utilizes a collective impact approach, which empowers community leaders to create and implement strategies that respond to specific challenges of youth in their communities. Together, these diverse collaborators carry out initiatives that create community and systems change to support youth in overcoming multiple barriers in their learning journey from high school to post-secondary, training, or employment.

Communities for Climate, Gender, Racial, and Income Equity: Seizing our Interrelated Opportunities

2023-02-27T13:29:20-08:00

The devastating effects of climate change are being felt most profoundly by those who least contributed to the problem and who are already impacted by poverty, colonization, and racism. There’s a lot of talk about addressing poverty in a way that has positive environmental impacts. This article offers examples of how communities are taking holistic approaches to tackle interrelated challenges and supports, with the leadership of Indigenous Peoples and those committed to mitigating climate change's economic and human impacts.

This article supports communities - and the philanthropic, government, and other systems that support them - in taking a holistic approach to tackling these interrelated challenges.

Participatory Grantmaking: Ceding Decision-making Power to Local Communities in Peel

2023-02-27T13:39:07-08:00

Philanthropic foundations are increasingly being challenged to make their funding more equitable, transparent, and accessible. Decision-making power in philanthropy has traditionally been concentrated in the hands of wealthy individuals or private foundations, while communities have had a limited say in the decisions that ultimately affect their lives. This article explores participatory grantmaking as a place-based social innovation approach that shifts decision-making power to the very communities impacted by the funding decisions. This article draws from the Tamarack Institute’s insights and learnings from an innovative Participatory Grantmaking Pilot project that focused on building equitable economies for immigrants and refugees in the Peel Region (Ontario, Canada) in partnership with the WES Mariam Assefa Fund.

Social Capital: Creating Connections to Foster Community Innovation

2023-02-27T14:36:24-08:00

Social capital refers to the networks, relationships, and norms that facilitate cooperation and coordination among individuals and groups within a community. When it comes to community innovation, social capital can play a critical role in fostering creativity, knowledge sharing, and collaboration among community members.

The Innovation Ambition Continuum

2023-02-27T13:04:12-08:00

Three Innovation Ambitions Continuum is a tool designed so that changemakers can think more clearly and collectively about their work and how to plan and evaluate it. It is a work in progress that captures some basic insights that have emerged from scores of social innovation initiatives. This article describes each of the innovation ambitions in greater detail.

Government Sustaining Community Innovation

2023-02-27T13:50:14-08:00

Supported by national movements like StriveTogether and the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement, dozens of communities across the US and Canada are transforming systems to support economic mobility – not just for some but at a community-wide scale. Here we explore roles that governments have played in scaling and sustaining the community innovations that are the roots of these transformational changes. Now more than ever, the government (and all sectors) must persist in leveraging power toward never-before-seen justice – but we are encouraged by how we’ve seen government-scale local innovation so far.

Building for Impact: Building Sustainable Collaborations

2023-02-27T14:01:08-08:00

Creating a sustainable collaboration is usually an afterthought of the collaboration planning process than a designed and intentional practice. The Tamarack Institute, which supports more than 400 place-based collaborative planning tables, developed a useful guide that identifies 10 core factors that build sustainability and 10 resiliency practices. The ability of collaborations to identify sustainability at the beginning of their process also increases their ability to be innovative and agile. The guide includes advice for both practitioners and funders about how to build sustainability and resilience from the start in community change planning processes.

Collaborative Governance – Leveraging People and Process

2023-02-27T14:04:33-08:00

Effective collaboration requires that partners maintain a dual focus on both the process of governance and the engagement of the people around the table. The engagement of partners is often an overlooked part of collaboration efforts. We make assumptions that there is shared commitment and engagement and are disappointed when partners back away from the table or lack the engagement expected. The process of governing a collaboration is equally complex. This paper explores practices to improve the people and governance process leading to more innovative and responsive collaborations.