 So welcome everybody. I am Sandra Amar and I'm your local TechSoup Connect host, which is a program of TechSoup. TechSoup Connect is a global network of tech for good meetups and we're all over the world and it's a non-profit that helps other non-profits get implemented and use technology effectively as TechSoup Connect. A little bit about me. I've been hosting these types of events and webinars for the Ontario chapter of TechSoup Connect for about just over two years now. I started just as a pandemic hit so I didn't get to do any in-person events but maybe one of these days that'll change. I work in technology, I work full-time and I also on the side do consulting for small businesses and non-profits and as well as a whole bunch of training. I am also currently the national president for the One Parent Families Association so I understand the difficulties of working as a non-profit and getting tech to work for you. A little bit about our community values. If you haven't been here before we welcome everybody and we put our community first. We're here to support each other in order to build stronger non-profits and technology is one of the tools we use to help you build stronger non-profits. We're happy to invite participation. We all have something to learn from each other and obviously you should go without saying we treat each other with kindness and respect. A little bit more about what TechSoup can help you with. TechSoup can connect you with a whole bunch of different donated and discounted products. These are just some of the examples and some more examples of what you can get through TechSoup and this is an example of just how much you could save by going through TechSoup as opposed to purchasing these items individually through the retail channel. If you need additional tech help feel free to check out the forums on TechSoup.org. They're a great resource where you can share information and get the questions answered on a host of technology related topics. As I mentioned if you are interested in hosting an event like this as we're moving into kind of live things if you're in the Toronto area which is where I am if you have any venues that maybe we could use for an in-person meeting I'm open to starting to have conversations like that as well. There is one more event happening on June 22nd all about digital transformation and it's going to be a really interesting topic so keep an eye on your email for that if you haven't already it is posted on our Ontario chapter event page at events.techsoup.com and with that I will stop sharing and hand it over to our guest of honour today who we've already learned so much from this year we've had you hear a few times now Omar but I will let you take it away and tell us a little bit about you and teach us about you an exciting thing. And hello everyone it's really my pleasure to be here with you today and I'm really passionate to share my understanding about the digital social enterprise. So my name is Daniel Omar I'm a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa and Royal Military College and I'm also the founder and executive director of two companies Vectors Group and Vectors Institute both focusing on the needs of non-profit organizations. So they are both social enterprises they are registered business but they function as a social enterprise because it's also our passion to support non-profit organizations and charities and today I'm going to talk about social enterprise digital social enterprise. I know you have heard about social enterprise but today I want to highlight the advantages of digital social enterprise and give you some practical tools that you can use to develop your business plan for a digital social enterprise. If you have any questions please jump in it's not a big group so feel free to jump in and ask your questions or if you have any comments please feel free to join. I may not be able to see the chat box messages some drive will appreciate if you can help me with that but I'm switching to my presentation now and I will not have access to the chat box or limited access. Okay so digital social enterprise the big question is why do we need this digital social enterprise we are a charity we are a non-profit organization enterprises for businesses why do we need it and the answer is simple actually to create some additional funding resources for your non-profit organization and even when you are in good stage good positions in terms of funding social enterprise can still be a good option for your sustainability and to mitigate risks in the future as there are different options donors corporate sponsors crowdfunding grants events and traditional fundraising channels and digital social enterprise is one of the newest ones relatively newest ones and today I'm going to focus more on digital social enterprise but some of the content is definitely related to social enterprise and I will briefly explain why digital social enterprise is more promising than a classical social enterprise. The first reason and this is basically the summary of the following couple of slides the first reason is this is a growing market and I'm going to show you some numbers which will definitely convince you that this is a big opportunity and the second reason is the government support you might have seen some government grant opportunities and you will see more grant opportunities in the near future that encourage non-profit organizations and charities to have their own social enterprise to be more specific so the Canadian government and non-social finance fund which is in total 755 million dollars so this is the money for non-profit organizations and charities to establish or to grow capacity to develop capacity in social finance market so the term social finance market is too generic but it basically means there will be funds to support your social enterprise investments and one of the practical implementations of the social finance fund is investment readiness fund so they open this fund a couple of times a year and it looks like they will continue to offer this fund until the end of 2023 and potential extension to further years but now they started with 50 million dollars program to help non-profit organizations to build capacity so investment readiness means that this is a term for businesses not for non-profit organizations it used to be but the world is changing now non-profit organizations and charities they also need to be investment ready so investment ready means people will make donations to you corporate sponsors will fund your cause they they will put money and you can even do some joint business together this is not just for business it's also for good but it's literally the same thing convincing the funders and the investors that you are the right organization for them to so the government has a clear and highlighted interest in funding social enterprise ideas and now the first word digitalization so digitalization is creating a second economy that is vast automatic and invisible in our daily life you i'm sure almost all of us use digital channels very commonly so not only we use the social media or internet or Netflix or other digital products but we also use it to purchase our needs and more and more people use internet as their primary source of procurement or purchase so they're right bringing about the greatest societal of people since the industrial revolution and this is not a promise only for the businesses or the government it's also an opportunity for the non-profit organizations and i'm going to show you some numbers to convince you that it's a promising opportunity now those are the e-commerce sales by country as of 2021 i don't have 2022 but you can imagine that the numbers will just increase and if you look at canada we spent over 44 billion dollars for e-commerce and when you have a digital social enterprise you can literally sell products all around the world you don't need to limit yourself to your country you can literally target global markets and another interesting statistic is about the growth of the e-commerce so as you can see north america the growth rate the annual growth rate is over 18 so this means every year we will use e-commerce or digital platforms more and more and this also means we are going to use the classical traditional platforms less and less because the total amount of money is limited and now it's shifting from traditional markets to digital markets and again maybe it's a good time to remind her this market is not just for businesses okay so we know that nearly one million businesses compete on e-commerce maybe over one million now globally but this is so big this market is so big there is also big room for non-profit organizations and charities to start their own digital social enterprise also to promote their charitable activities but today's focus is business or social enterprise so this is a big opportunity for non-profits and charities to generate some additional funds through internet and it's not only the businesses when you look at the government index OECD digital government index i don't want to go into details but i want you to notice that canada is in the top six okay canadian government this means canadian government prioritizes digitalization so when government prioritizes digitalization it also means that future grant opportunities will focus on digitalization more and more grant opportunities will focus on digitalization digitalization is a broader topic and i know you are familiar with it but our focus today will be on digital social enterprise but having a digital social enterprise would also make you ready for other digital opportunities it will build a capacity that you can communicate with your funders and governments and for future opportunities for future digital opportunities and so the solution the the practical tool that i came up with is i like using the abbreviations and then the abbreviation of the seven rules of thumbs miracle m i r a c l e and i'm going to briefly explain what they mean the first one is the mindset okay then so i have been working with over maybe nearly 200 non-profit organizations and over 1000 non-profit professionals they are amazing people i love all of them they are amazing people but they don't have the business mindset most of them and they don't have to right because this is not the nature of their work they need to know how to help people how to listen to people how to understand their needs and how to develop the solutions for the community but the life has its own roots so any non-profit organization if they want to survive they need to comply with the rules of new worlds and this new world requires sustainable funding structure so social enterprise is even inevitable step for all non-profit organizations so non-profit leaders they need to adjust their mindset and maybe think like a business person in certain cases the revenue of the digital social enterprise will go to the charity that's there is no no question about this but when you operate the social enterprise you need to think like a business person and this mindset also requires adjustment alignment and flexibility because rapidly changing market environments and technology related industries means that social enterprises must swiftly adjust to market challenges so something that works today may not work next week and this is the nature right so this is the nature of business world you have to be flexible you need to be dynamic to respond to the dynamically changing needs of the customers and in digital markets this is even much more difficult but one big advantage non-profit organizations and you have is you are closer to the people you know what they need you have supporters and imagine there are two sellers and one of them is is owned by a charity and the other one owned by a global company i will prefer the one that works for the charity right because this way i can get the service or good that i want in the meantime i can also contribute to a charity so if conditions are equal if the price is equal if the quality is equal many people will prefer your digital social enterprise so you have a bigger advantage when compared to the other businesses as far as you can compete in terms of price in terms of quality and in terms of customer expectations so the mindset this is a big question okay so i took those two pictures one of them is a boat and the other one is a train the train is a much safer platform much safer vehicle because it has this railroad and it has limited flexibility but it is safe but on the other hand if you try to become a boat then you literally have no limitations you can go all around the world without following any predefined path but of course it's more risky so there is a saying Einstein saying i like this very much that said he says the safest place for boats is are the harbors right so in the harbors they are safe but the boats are not designed to stay in the harbors so the safest action for non-profit organization or charity is to rely on government grants or individual donations and don't do anything else but this strategy will not bring them anywhere and this strategy will not ensure sustainability or growth and with after the covid you must have noticed that many organizations struggle to find additional funding resources and social enterprise seems like the the best option and most sustainable option because if you have a profitable social enterprise then you don't need to worry about grants you don't need to worry about individual donations you and you have the flexibility to use that money as there are limitations about government grants or charitable donations but for social enterprise you're bored and you will have the flexibility you might enjoy but this mindset it's easy to say of course there are several questions who when where how why what and you can add more questions to that and when you look at the statistics there are some scary numbers 80 percent of the businesses fail in the first five years and this ratio is even bigger even higher in the social enterprises because many social enterprises are operated by people who doesn't have the business background or business mindset and there are people try to operate them as a non-profit and eventually they lose money and they fail it's this number is also valid for any businesses shall this prevent us from taking any further steps no it shall not because there are also good numbers and I want you to look at those numbers okay and and the names so in 2018 if you look at the top 10 companies in the world Petro China Exxon and none of them are except Microsoft most of them are non-digital companies but when you come to 2018 you can see the big change now the top 10 is occupied by digital companies or the funding or the financial resources for non-profits are shifting from traditional markets to digital markets and this is where you should be this is where your strategies should target so the next step the next letter in the minor miracle is the idea so what can you do okay let's do let's start the digital social enterprise but what are my options is Amazon the only option to sell stuff is Shopify the only option you have no they may be good options but then you're not limited with them there are different types of products or that you can offer so just to give you an idea like you can offer free services and get earn money through other channels like advertisement or corporate sponsors or you can offer on demand services subscriptions peer-to-peer e-commerce freemium so you start with a free version and then to get the premium version you have to pay extract there may be some open sources so if you can generate some visibility some some action on a digital platform then it has a value this is something you can sell you can use advertising or you can use some hidden revenue tactics so I don't want to spend too much time in details but what I want to highlight here is there are so many endless options for your non-profit organizations you have to be creative and innovative and you will see lots of business opportunities for your social enterprise I want to share a couple of social digital social enterprises that I know so shop or good is a zone by a Canadian charity women multicultural resource and counseling center in Duham and this is their platform they recently launched it it's similar to Etsy or Amazon and there are private vendors but the private vendors are from underrepresented communities okay so when you purchase something from this platform certain percentage goes to the charity and and and the remaining part goes to someone who's in need okay so this this is a good feeling because this way you help one charity and one person in need at the same time while receiving your another platform is online food bank so we have over 3000 food banks in Canada and online food bank is the only digital version okay so it's it generates money it's not free but we all know that it's for a good reason another one is a charity fight this is a digital platform for non-profit organizations to promote their services and they have a membership fee so they are a service provider just extra right so TechSoup is a non-profit organization but it generates some revenue not and this is a perfect example of digital social enterprise so in terms of ideas I also want to share some additional options so website social media platforms they're not the only options now there's another trending topic actually it's already very popular and we all use it the applications instead of websites some companies focus on applications and if you look at the 2020 numbers or the past you can see the increase in number of applications and number of gains so can a non-profit organization sell a game application yes why not so social enterprise is independent from the mandate of your non-profit organization you can open a factory you can open a restaurant you can develop a game application it doesn't matter as far as it doesn't conflict with your overall values you can literally do any business to generate revenue for your non-profit organization just just like private sector there's no so just to give you an idea of case or what type of applications can you develop lifestyle mobile apps so let's say if you are a religious organization for example you can people can use your application to get received daily motivating messages or some I don't know they you can develop applications for live scribe social media mobile applications well this is already a mature market I don't think any non-profit organization can compete with Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter but maybe in your local area you can have a social media platform that that can create some revenue for your organization utility mobile apps it gives you the impression that everything that can be taught is already taught right but this is not true because we when we look at numbers we can see this increase in the growth of digital market increase in the number of applications this is a huge and your organization can be there too games entertainment mobile applications this is the most the biggest market and if you have the capacity why not this can be your market as well productivity mobile apps and news information outlets mobile apps I don't know it may or may not be related to the non-profit sector where you can come up with a news application specifically for the non-profit sector why not because do you know any application that focuses on non-profit sector I don't recall maybe there are but I don't recall maybe they didn't do the marketing very well yet but this can be a good opportunity and if you start thinking in this area I'm sure you will come up with much better ideas so that the next letter in the solution is the idea and I want you to look at those numbers okay so because numbers are convincing so we when you make a digital social enterprise decision it has to be related to numbers for your charity it has to be related about the impact but for social enterprise it's all about profitability because if it doesn't generate revenue for your non-profit organization then there is no point to start a digital social enterprise so we specifically need to focus on numbers seven people seven billion people worldwide are using mobile devices okay and almost all of your clients your beneficiaries your donors your sponsors they use digital mobile devices mobile app downloads number is over 258 million okay so this is a big number and you can be you can get your share from this page and the total monetary value of this market is 157 billion every year people spend 157 billion dollars worldwide okay and the next item next letter is R okay so next item is resources and those are the resources you need to be you need to make ready before you start your digital social enterprise your finance your HR your physical space information stakeholders and leadership okay so you can start it literally you can start the business in 15 20 minutes in Canada officially but what is next you need a person to operate to run the digital social enterprise and it's starting a digital social enterprise without completing the resources is like a car with a missing tire okay so you will absolutely fail if you have the finance if you have the HR but if you don't have the stakeholders if you don't have the product if you don't have the leadership that can guide that can lead your digital social enterprise so before you launch it you and this is important okay because many organizations they like the idea and it's like a bent wagon they just okay we need to have a digital social enterprise and they start it and after a couple of months they fail because they don't they they are usually not prepared enough to launch their digital social enterprise okay so resources they must be ready before you launch it and of course after launch your resources must be ready it must be continued to be ready this is the only way to make it and the next stage is action okay so where are you going to start how are you going to operationalize your digital social enterprise you start with the idea solution so what is the need and what is your solution to it okay it's like business investment and then you do some research before you jump in and this research can take a couple of weeks can take a couple of months and in some cases it may even take a couple of years so McDonald's for example when when they first before they opened their first store in Moscow they spent six years for feasibility analysis okay so some research some preparation period may take longer but in your case I think you definitely spend with these couple of months to make sure that your idea is the right solution for the market but this is not enough then you need to have a validation stage okay before you publicly announce it you can try it in a smaller circle and then make some adjustments before you officially launch it and when you launch it you need to brand it okay so shop for good have you heard about shop for this is because they didn't do branding and marketing enough okay and when there are billions of web pages and there was no way for us to know all of them or find them so they you need to brand yourself and market your digital social enterprise and the next stage is funded okay so even the social enterprises they need some initial capital they will not generate revenue the first day will take some time and during this time you need to fund your digital social enterprise and once you have the fund then you need your structure your system you form your teams and then only after then you launch your digital social enterprise and this is the action phase so this is a model developed for business model development okay so it's a very it's it's an academic study or a practical tool that that you can use to develop business models and business models is also a term originally developed for the business world but now since we are talking about social enterprise we can use the same term and the tool in the nonprofit sector to okay so let's say you decided to start your digital social enterprise what do you need to start what are the questions that you need to answer how can you be sure that you talked about everything you need to we made some ideas like we need to think about finance what are my products i need to think about space etc etc but i want to make sure that i don't miss any important detail so conva model convas model is a practical model uh and a good starting point and i will and it has nine areas that you need to and four of them are about your capabilities and and the the others are related to to the value created for your stakeholders and those are important areas to answer now so i gave an example here this is about wikipedia which is a nonprofit organization so the first section first question key partners who are your key partners if you are in Ottawa for example in the start of it should be your key partner if you are in Ontario provincial government should be your key partner or united way should be your key partner who's your key partner because when you need support you want to make sure that you have strong partners of course when available when you have them but when you fill in this form this convas model you will easily see whether you are ready or not if you don't have key partners and maybe it's not a good time to start your digital enterprise okay and the second question is what are the key activities what do you offer what do you want to do you cannot just say okay i'm starting in social enterprise you have to be very specific i'm going to sell ice cream so this is my key activity i'm going to sell the best ice cream in toronto okay so um it's up to you how you feel in this but at least there has to be something that makes true makes sense to everyone and the next question key resources okay what are your strengths so how what are like your finance i mean a very critical position we have 1000 volunteers we have a social media account that is followed by 50 000 people while those are key resources that you can put in this list just to give you the confidence that you need to take the name and if you continue with the other sections value proposition what is the value proposition of wikipedia access high quality content deliver your knowledge to many people this is for wikipedia okay but for your organization what is the value you offer so in my example the value of i offer is the most delicious ice cream in toronto right so this is my value and remember we are talking about the social enterprise not your charity because the value that the charity offers is different than the value that your digital social enterprise will offer ice cream is okay for a business but ice cream is not okay for a charity right so you need to separate your social enterprise and charity this is really important because if you merge them then your social enterprise has a high risk to fail but it will also affect your nonprofit organization and then customer relations relationships so how are you going to communicate with your customers and you may even start from an earlier stage who are your customers okay so who do you think will come to your website or who will download your application you need to think about that too and the customer segments well this is related to the previous question but it makes sure it ensures that there is no gap in your business plan you think of everything that matters for the success of your digital enterprise so for wikipedia it is mass market but in your case you can target huge or you can target mothers you can target children so you have to but when you follow this guideline it forces you to answer all questions and see the gaps if there are any and the next one is the cost okay and this is probably the most important component is business mindset many people many entrepreneurs and many social entrepreneurs start with thinking about how much profit can i make oh my god i'm gonna make one million dollar but this is not the right point to start you need to think about the cost because if you can save the cost you can generate profit and increase your revenue and this column model just encourages you to think properly and follow the right steps and then revenue steps i think this is the biggest one where is the money where will you get the money because now we are you don't for your digital social enterprise you don't have donors you don't have government grants you don't have grants and you may not have corporate sponsors so you need to answer this question where is the money and if there is no answer then it's not a good investment it's not a good entrepreneurship now the next letter is c continuity okay you you start your digital social enterprise and one week later your board members wants you to report how much money you generated and the answer is zero right so you cannot generate revenue in one week it takes three years in average for a business to set up and the social enterprises are not the exception so you need to give three years for a social enterprise to fully become set up of course after first year you may target the break even point but first year you might you may definitely lose money but to get the actual results you definitely need to rate minimum three years and so at the early stages of your products there will you can expect a big increase but you have to be realistic there is a maturity level and after this point you cannot grow your business and just like any other business digital social enterprises also have it and after certain time they are not feasible anymore so you also need to have an exit strategy when the time comes and this may not be an academic input but based on my former experience I can definitely put this in my list luck is an important component sometimes you do everything right where you may not get the results and you may have some different explanations but I call it luck estimated number of e-commerce sites 12 million to 24 million in total okay less than one million of these sites sell more than one thousand in here so one thousand or less is not a feasible entrepreneurship it's not good for your digital social enterprise so you try to be in the first one million out of 24 million investments this seems like a scary percentage but on the other hand you have this capacity you have this team you have the comport and you are living in one of the best countries in the world in terms of opportunities for digital social enterprises so when so you need to be aware that you may fail there is no guarantee to succeed but if you succeed this is a perfect solution for funding of your non-proliferation and good business doing right things being professional and being institutionalized will increase your chances to succeed and the last one is careful management of available resources and we call it economy but you can also use efficiency or effectiveness of your organization so reducing the cost optimizing the expenses increasing the profitability and doing the marketing and branding and having the right product determining the right price anything you can think of to make a business a regular business to succeed are all applicable to digital social enterprises as well so this is so those are the seven steps of successful digital social enterprise and this concludes my presentation here and now i'm gonna stop sharing and answer your questions or listen to your comments if you have it's very informative it's a lot like running but it's like running your own business it's not just it's and it's a bit of a different mindset for from the non-profit world where you're thinking about how you're gonna do good for people it you really need to focus on the business aspect to make it work absolutely and there there may be a misinterpretation or oversimplification of social enterprise idea you may be an amazing leader amazing non-profit leader but it doesn't mean that you will be able to operate a digital social enterprise as successfully as your non-profit organization it's you may be a good pilot but you may be a terrible captain so those are different things yeah a different skill set and a different approach similar but different but yeah exactly i haven't seen any questions come through the chat if anyone has any questions or wants to come off mute and ask them directly or discuss anything we can perfect i believe you're going to share the presentation as well sorry if anybody has any questions please feel free to reach out to me or anybody in my team we are a social enterprise we do a lot of pro bono services to non-profit organizations we will be happy to support your causes thank you so much it was great to have you here again and i guess with that we'll sign off and thank you everyone for joining us have a good day