The Zugunruhe Project is loose but passionate and growing group of like minded individuals dedicated to or at least interested in the advancement of the social enterprise sector in Canada in general-but with a twist.

We are focused on the FOR PROFIT segment of the social enterprise sector.  In other words, we seek to advance the social purpose/mission enterprise, community contribution company, or "CIC", community interest company or the Benefit Corporation (all variations on the same theme depending on the Country or jurisdiction.

And this distinction is important.

You see,  the  Not For Profit (NFP) sector, due to declining government funding and donations, has been working to diversify their traditional revenue streams (grants, donations)  for years. Mainly by trying to develop a limited commercial enterprise on "the side". And indeed a whole industry has sprung up to help NFP's run businesses on the side-a complex matter for a host of reasons including tax law.

However, the issues and unique operational, reporting and legislative challenges faced by a For Profit (FP) entity when trying to attract capital to achieve similarily impactful social or environmental betterment are unique. And therefore, this segment requires a separate voice.

While disagreements abound on so many issues, we believe experts, politicians, and communities of all strips are in agreement on one thing: We have enormous social and environmental issues to deal with locally and globally.

And these issues are complex and will require all the horse power we can muster from all pillars of society to address them. Given the relative size of the NFP sector (about 1:10) versus the FP sector, we can't truly see impact unless the FP sector's energy and resources can also be directed to create social and environment benefit.

And helping to make that happen is what we are about.

How are we doing this? 

First, we have launched a tightly curated blog on the topic (www.zugunruhe.ca)  as well as a community radio podcast series called "No Guts, No Change" (http://countyradio.ca).  

Our goal is to help you make sense of the fast growing body of social enterprise discourse, experiences, and research so that your energy, capital, and ideas may be increasingly directed to this new important sector. 

To deepen our efforts to educate on the subject of social purpose business, we also held our first rural conference on "Building A Social Enterprise Sector In Your Community" flash conference (we called it that because it was quickly pulled together and short!). Highlights from this event are also on the website. We hope to launch more in the future.

Still not sure if matters to you?

If you are a socially/environmentally concious entrepreneur, investor, academic, a policy maker, or a consumer, you will want to explore what this concept and the movement supporting it because it might help YOU make the world a better place as a result.

So at this point we would love to invite you to check out our new blog and podcasts as a start. ( http://www.zugunruhe.ca).  And get involved in the conversation we have worked hard to start.

Thank you for considering this invitation.

Petra Kassun-Mutch

petra@zugunruhe.ca