In 2023, the Community Sector Council of Newfoundland and Labrador (CSCNL) launched the Social Innovation Lab and its flagship pilot, the Social Enterprise Through Acquisition (SETA) program, to preserve small businesses while diversifying revenue streams for community organizations. SETA connects community organizations with businesses available for acquisition in rural Newfoundland and Labrador to ensure that these businesses continue to serve their communities. Potential buyer organizations can access up to $15,000 to cover transition-related costs. They also receive one-on-one assistance throughout the process. The program supports a variety of acquisition models, including full business purchases, worker co-operatives, and transfers of specific assets, such as equipment or facilities. The SETA program helps business owners by playing a confidential matchmaking role, identifying buyers who share similar values through outreach and partners such as community business development corporations, and creating profiles for prospective buyers. To ease organizational strain on community organization buyers, CSCNL also aims to connect them with wage subsidies, student placements, and newcomer employment programs – or, in some cases, to facilitate acquisitions that include existing employees. For community organizations that are not yet ready to venture into acquisition, CSCNL offers revenue diversification training (the Thriving Non-Profits program) in partnership with Scale Collaborative and the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. CSCNL demonstrates how social enterprise models can preserve critical services while building long-term resilience. Succession planning, often treated as a private matter, can instead be a powerful tool for community development, economic stability, and social innovation.

Many young people across Canada face barriers to accessing education and employment, particularly in remote, rural, and Indigenous communities, which can affect their long-term well-being. The Tamarack Institute sought to address these challenges through its Communities Building Youth Futures (CBYF) network. From 2019 to 2024, it developed the network and implemented programming in 20 communities across 11 provinces and territories. At its core, the initiative provides young people with opportunities to shape local youth support strategies themselves. Rather than giving convening responsibility to existing staff, CBYF compensated local youth for taking on these roles, leading community engagement initiatives, and co-creating solutions with adults. The resulting strategies went beyond traditional employment and educational programs to support young people holistically, including their basic needs, mental health, and cultural identity. Tamarack acted as an intermediary between each community and the federal government, providing a backbone of funding, facilitation, and capacity building throughout the program. It also took on the administrative work of reporting, which allowed community organizations to focus on program implementation. CBYF’s multi-year funding enabled hiring at least one full-time employee in each community, mentored and supported by the CBYF program staff, to build skills and experience. Youth often have ideas for how to address challenges in their own communities, but may lack the support and resources to make substantive change. Initiatives like the CBYF model demonstrate ways to engage them not as subjects of policy, but as active agents with the knowledge and skills to shape it.

Vancouver is the first major city in Canada to institute a mandatory community benefit agreement (CBA) policy, after years of advocacy from community stakeholders including Buy Social Canada. The policy, which applies to developments over 45,000 square metres in size, requires that developers demonstrate their best effort to reach three targets: 10% local employment, especially of members of equity-seeking groups (inclusive employment); 10% local procurement (from within Vancouver); and 10% social procurement (from verified social impact or equity-seeking businesses). Projects must continue to practice social procurement and inclusive employment throughout their operations. The New St. Paul’s Hospital redevelopment, owned by Providence Health Care, is the first project to trigger the City of Vancouver’s CBA policy. Buy Social Canada is the CBA’s independent third-party monitor, overseeing compliance and supporting its success. Since construction started in 2023, the New St. Paul’s Hospital redevelopment has generated nearly $100 million in social procurement spending and $200 million in local procurement spending. Beyond the dollars flowing into the local and social economies, Buy Social Canada is using this first major project to develop networks, demand, and, eventually, capacity in the social enterprise community. Buy Social Canada is striving to make the New St. Paul’s Hospital redevelopment, and by extension the Vancouver CBA policy, a clear and transparent model for other projects and cities to follow. Following its iterative and aspirational approach to advocacy and policy development, places across Canada can build on this momentum to create local social returns on development investment.

Imagine a single program that creates meaningful employment opportunities, revitalizes derelict properties, and makes homeownership a possibility for local low-income families. It exists in downtown Sault Ste. Marie thanks to the Affordable Home Ownership Program (AHOP), an innovative partnership between the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the District of Sault Ste. Marie Social Services Administration Board (DSSAB).  

Sault Ste. Marie is the third-largest city in Northern Ontario, with a population of 72,000. It is experiencing a high level of housing pressure and a growing wait for social housing despite its comparatively affordable homes. At the same time, there are many abandoned properties downtown, which contribute to lower property values and raise concerns about safety among neighbours. More recently, the city’s economy has also suffered in the wake of U.S. tariffs on the steel industry, which have resulted in widespread layoffs and unemployment despite investments (from both the private sector and the federal government) aimed at shoring up the sector.  

In the Rideau/Vanier neighbourhood of Ottawa, a network of social service organizations has transformed the decommissioned Rideau High School into a vibrant centre for connection, learning, and support. The Rideau Community Hub is a centralized resource located in a community facing high rates of inequality, food insecurity, social isolation, and persistent poverty. Managed by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, it hosts around 30 non-profit organizations that provide childcare, a food bank, immigration resources, after-school programs, vaccinations, Indigenous cultural services, supports for seniors, and entrepreneurship training for newcomers. It employs 150–200 people and serves up to 500 visitors each day, building community cohesion and strengthening the local social fabric. The Hub offers versatile spaces that include a 700-seat auditorium, a black box theatre, a full gymnasium, a cafeteria, a children’s play area, two soccer fields, and a community garden. And it strengthens social infrastructure, bringing residents together for cultural, recreational, and health-related programs while improving access to essential services, supporting small business development, and fostering a stronger, more inclusive community.

Downtowns across North America are still recovering from the impacts of the pandemic, compounded by public health and homelessness crises. Real progress is being made, but these improvements are not always visible or well understood by those outside these districts. To showcase the measurable, even transformational, changes happening in the central core of London, Ontario, the Downtown London BIA created the Downtown Momentum Report. Produced in collaboration with City of London staff and informed by data from Environics and the BIA itself, the report communicates to the BIA’s 1,400+ member businesses the progress that has been made and confirms the City’s commitment to revitalizing the downtown, outlining coordinated strategies for investments and programs in five areas: Economy, Vibrancy, Inclusion, Resilience, and Identity. The Momentum Report also serves to recognize the City of London and other partners for their support and investments, provides media with credible data to share downtown stories, encourages investors to build on the momentum of downtown projects, and offers valuable information for students studying urban issues. Ultimately, the report helps shape a more accurate and positive narrative, reinforcing why continued investment in a healthy and vibrant core is essential. report helps shape a more accurate and positive narrative, reinforcing why continued investment in a healthy and vibrant core is essential.

Homeway Benefits is a British Columbia-based company that is redefining workforce benefits by making a path toward homeownership a standard part of employee packages. As home ownership rates continue to decline and younger Canadians have fewer pathways to buy homes, Homeway partners with employers to help employees build financial stability through an innovative savings model. In this program, 5–10% of each employee’s paycheque is matched by the employer and invested into a fund, allowing employees to accumulate between $15,000 and $30,000 toward a downpayment over a three- to four-year term. Partnered with the North Peace Community Foundation to manage the fund, Homeway Benefits piloted the model with the Fort St. John Association for Community Living (FSJACL) and is now working to expand it more broadly. While this program was designed for rural and northern communities, the concept is adaptable for urban centres; Homeway Benefits is currently in communication with Key, a company offering 2.5%-downpayment mortgages in Toronto and Vancouver, to explore potential collaboration. By turning the dream of homeownership into a shared journey between employers and employees, Homeway Benefits helps individuals build lasting equity and stability, while their employers benefit from improved retention and loyalty.

In addition to improving construction efficiency and sustainability, modular solutions can also address urgent social needs by delivering supportive housing and site services for people with nowhere else to go. The “sleep cabin community” is a supportive housing model that creates clusters of 20 to 50 furnished cabins surrounding a central community centre offering 24/7 staff support and wraparound services. In Waterloo, The Working Centre operates a 50-cabin site equipped with electricity, heating, and cooling, providing mental health and addiction supports, as well as helping residents transition to permanent housing. In Peterborough, the Elizabeth Fry Society manages a similar 50-unit Modular Bridge Housing Community as part of the city’s Interim Housing Solutions strategy, connecting residents to supports and long-term housing. Since 2019, about 140 cabins have been installed across Ontario, helping to reduce homelessness and save lives. Although these projects often face initial community resistance, many neighbours ultimately become advocates – volunteering and supporting the initiative, demonstrating how cabin communities embody compassion and possibility.

Based in the Greater Toronto Area, Reena’s intentional community housing model reimagines housing as a foundation for dignity, autonomy, health, and social inclusion by integrating care, accessibility, and community under one roof. Through three purpose-built residences – the Sandy Keshen Reena Residence (2012), Lou Fruitman Reena Residence (2021), and upcoming Frankfort Family Reena Residence (2026) – Reena provides homes for seniors and for individuals with developmental disabilities and physical and mental health challenges. Each residence provides essential services such as medical care, mental health supports, life-skills training, and personal care, enabling residents to live independently within inclusive, mixed communities rather than segregated facilities. This model has potential to help alleviate Ontario’s long-standing shortage of supportive housing – over 40,000 individuals are on waitlists, with the result that many people who would do well in supportive housing are institutionalized, unnecessarily hospitalized, or homeless. Developed in partnership with Ontario Health and a number of organizations such as March of Dimes and Safehaven, the model brings multiple care providers together as a single multidisciplinary team. By uniting housing and health-care systems that have long operated in silos, Reena’s model delivers co-ordinated, cost-effective support that is 10 to 13 times less expensive per day than institutional care. Building on this success, Reena currently chairs the Intentional Community Consortium (ICC), which works to solve the housing crisis for those with developmental disabilities.

In April 2023, the city council of Richmond, B.C., endorsed the Richmond Circular City Strategy, an ambitious plan with a vision for the city to achieve 100% circularity by 2050. The circular economy model moves beyond the predominant linear take-make-use-dispose economic model – which leads to the overuse of virgin materials and environmental issues like soil contamination – and embraces closing resource loops to combine economic growth with sustainable practices. Richmond is the first city in North America to adopt this framework, which aligns with the sustainability goals in the city’s Official Community Plan. The strategy, which can be aligned with upcoming federal and provincial programs and regulatory mandates, has six areas of focus: Maximizing Ecosystem Services, Regenerative Food System, Resilient and Innovative Economy, Shared Mobility, Adaptive Built Environment, and Products and Materials Management. It calls for extensive community and industry consultation, which encourages innovation through experimentation and learning by doing, thus supporting the development of new business models and sustainable practices. This inclusive approach also ensures that residents' needs remain central, enhancing community engagement and participation. Envisioned as a flexible blueprint rather than a fixed work, the Richmond Circular City Strategy is an example of cities taking the lead in sustainable urban planning by embedding circular economy principles into their plans and practices to reimagine how resources can flow in a sustainable, equitable, low-carbon economy.

TransformTO, the City of Toronto’s Net Zero Strategy, has an ambitious goal of increasing the number of people who travel by cycling, walking, or public transit to 75% of all trips under five kilometres by 2030. This achievement would increase the number of cyclists in the city significantly – and Bike Training Collective Canada is already planning how to support them. Today, there are about 200 bike mechanics working in Toronto who service 53,000 bikes every year, but by 2030, the city will need many more to maintain its growing fleet – between 3,000 and 12,400. The collective spent two years identifying training organizations and promoting bike mechanic training, and in 2024 began a process of securing the necessary funding to implement its training program. This phase also included employer engagement to help newly graduated bike mechanics find jobs. The initiative has already added nearly 20% more bike mechanics to the industry – a significant change in a short time. In addition to support from industry partners, the program has secured funding from the Centre for Active Transportation, the City of Toronto, The Learning Enrichment Foundation, CultureLink, Charlie's Freewheels, The Canadian E-Bike Association, and the Peter Gilgan Foundation. By anticipating future needs, Bike Training Collective Canada is supporting both economic growth today and a more active city in the future.

CleanStart is a property maintenance service company that grew out of a waste collection and removal project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It now provides stable and dignified work to individuals with lived experience of homelessness, poverty, or addiction, all of which can make finding and holding a job more challenging. CleanStart works with non-profit housing providers, property managers, construction companies, and residential clients to provide junk removal, pest control, and cleaning services. The jobs at CleanStart pay a living wage, include extended health benefits, and provide on-the-job training. Its workforce model is rooted in community understanding and is designed to be flexible to accommodate employees’ abilities and schedules. Through its leadership in social procurement, CleanStart generated over $420,000 in social return on employment in 2024. This figure accounts for the quantitative value of social impact created from the company’s hiring practices, which have resulted in over 50% of its workforce being made up of individuals who experience moderate to severe barriers to traditional employment. For example, over 40% of their staff have experienced homelessness, 20% identify as First Nations, Metis, or Inuit, and 20% identify as 2SLGBTQ+. Over half of their staff have reported that secure employment with CleanStart has significantly improved their housing situation, illustrating the wide-ranging impact of employment support.

Through its WorkFirst program, Goodwill Industries provides supportive employment for people experiencing difficulties finding or maintaining a job. This means that, in addition to employment opportunities, they provide services like coaching and mentorship that help people find and then keep jobs in the face of barriers such as poverty, physical disability, mental illness or addiction, lack of language skills, low education or work experience, and competing responsibilities like caregiving at home. Employees are hired in positions within the Goodwill social enterprise itself through its network of donation centres, community stores, boutique stores, bookstores, cafes, career centres, and Goodwill Business Solutions services, and paid a competitive wage. Both full- and part-time employees have access to health and dental benefits, skills development, and coaching in life, financial, and career skills. Through its “second chance” policy, Goodwill helps every employee develop both a Career Plan and a Life Plan to help them overcome the challenges they are experiencing in any aspect of their life and build a lasting career. In this way, the WorkFirst program sets up all employees with both the confidence and the wraparound services they need to succeed in their careers.

The Inclusive Local Economic Opportunity Initiative (ILEO), a collaborative model convened by the United Way Greater Toronto and BMO Financial Group, brings together the private, public, and community sectors to find innovative ways to reduce economic gaps at the neighbourhood level. The first focus neighbourhood is the Greater Golden Mile in Scarborough, which is expecting to see rapid commercial and residential development as the three major transit projects within its borders are completed, and where many residents earn less than the city’s median income. Among the ILEO’s initiatives to support economic development there is the Storefront Starter Golden Mile, a free three-phase program that helps new and aspiring entrepreneurs launch or scale their ideas through business training, access to startup capital, and relationship building with large corporations within the ILEO network. The program provides business owners with market and retail opportunities in prime locations around Toronto, including the Distillery District and the Yonge Eglinton Centre. Another initiative is ILEO’s Construction Union Employment Pathway, which is a six-week program that helps marginalized, low-income residents in the Greater Golden Mile enter the construction trades. Participants are trained and given paid placements on construction projects locally and across the GTA, and provided with wraparound support services and mentorship. As the Greater Golden Mile evolves, ILEO’s model offers a locally rooted model for building opportunity, resilience, and shared prosperity.

The Toronto neighbourhoods of Regent Park, Moss Park, and St. James Town are home to many new Canadians and a large youth population. Seeing the potential of peer support to ease the transition into life in Canada, the non-profit Happy Mom Happy Children employs local youth to help children achieve academic success and help newcomer families navigate life and school. Through their Tutoring and Youth Employment Program, they train local youth tutors (aged 13 to 29) to provide academic tutoring for children in the community (aged 4 to 12). The paid youth tutors receive mentorship, leadership training, and workshops on relevant subjects like communication, child engagement, and career development. For many young people this is their first job, which they use as a stepping stone to develop their careers. Many return to mentor or train new youth tutors. In 2024/25 alone, 63 youth were trained as tutors, who in turn tutored 127 students. Happy Mom Happy Children also provides services that bring mothers together, such as their Let’s Eat Healthy cooking classes, their Let’s Hit the Gym fitness classes, and their Grab a Book & Join Us reading program for mothers and children. By nurturing local youth, Happy Mom Happy Children is creating a cycle of mutual care and expertise that enriches the entire community across multiple generations.

Big changes, including a subway station on the future Ontario Line, are in the works for Toronto’s Moss Park neighbourhood. Major public and private investments will bring not only subway access but park revitalization, a new recreation centre, and dozens of private sector housing developments. Moss Park is one of Toronto’s lowest income neighbourhoods, with a high number of recent immigrants. In response to this planned rapid development, a group of residents, community organizations, and service providers formed the Moss Park Coalition to advocate for a CBA for the Moss Park Station project in order to ensure the community takes part in shaping these developments – and that it benefits from them. Through community engagement efforts, with the support of the University of Toronto’s Housing Justice Lab in 2024/25, the Coalition issued a report identifying several top issues for residents: affordable housing, tenant protection, food access, and local employment. This report has become an essential tool in the efforts to put pressure on government officials for a CBA that will help the community address their priorities. The Moss Park Coalition has organized across the community and built grassroots capacity to advocate for – and steer the future of – the neighbourhood, in particular fighting against displacement so residents can live well and keep their community in place.

Fireweed Food Co-op (FFC) is a non-profit co-op based in Winnipeg for producers and consumers of food that is grown sustainably in Manitoba. FFC supports the development of a short-chain regional food system that is more resilient to disruptions and can respond to changing conditions more quickly than a globalized supply chain, and that engages everyone from farmers to eaters. It operates three connected projects that strengthen the local food system: the South Osborne Farmers' Market, Fireweed Food Hub, and Fireweed Veggie Van. Since it began in 2016, the South Osborne Farmers' Market has grown to become the second-largest farmers' market in Winnipeg. The Food Hub is Winnipeg’s first cooperatively run aggregator and wholesale distributor of food. Sourcing from over 35 local producers, it provides a competitive alternative to the global supply chain by making it easier for wholesale customers to source locally. The Veggie Van is the most recent venture: a mobile market that distributes fresh fruits and veggies in communities with few fresh food options throughout Winnipeg using a pay-what-you-can model, thus removing common barriers – location and affordability – and increasing food security. These projects contribute to a thriving local food system that keeps more dollars in the local economy, builds important community connections and reduces food waste.

Since 2021, Malvern Family Resource Centre (MFRC) has led the Malvern Urban Farm, an urban agriculture project located under power lines along the Finch hydro corridor in Scarborough, in eastern Toronto. Seventeen farmers each maintain a plot on the urban farm. Together, they have produced over 120,000 pounds of culturally relevant produce – like callaloo, a staple of Caribbean cuisine – and launched 16 small businesses through their urban agriculture skills development lab, as well as supporting many underemployed and low-income residents in the community. Beyond food production, MFRC uses the farm to encourage community engagement through youth training, farm camp programs, and volunteering. In 2024, the Resource Center expanded its farmers' market, increasing vendor participation and food access. It also introduced “Market Bucks” – discreet tokens for low-income families – which successfully supported 200 households and generated a 37% increase in market sales. MFRC continues to expand, recently receiving City approval to add an additional acre under the hydroelectric lines to its farm. Starting in 2025, the Center has also been working with organizations in the neighbouring communities of Agincourt, West Hill, Scarborough Village, Morningside, and Kingston-Galloway as they launch their own community farms. The Malvern Urban Farm demonstrates how underutilized land can be put to productive, community-focused use, supporting neighbourhood food sovereignty, economic opportunity, and resilience.

Cross-Econ, an open-data initiative based in London, Ontario, is helping smaller Canadian municipalities build capacity to derive and share data insights. Established in 2023, the organization uses information from federal data sets to publish standardized dashboards, reports, and maps that foreground local insights for communities. Cross-Econ has developed six national data products to date: (1) a housing affordability econometric model that highlights the benefits of municipal coordination, (2) an open housing-data platform with 30 years of data from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, (3) housing-need benchmark reports, (4) a map of over 90,000 businesses that make up Canada’s climate economy, (5) a national AI-industry map illustrating the AI supply chain, and (6) a Canada Strong Fund map with municipal economic benchmarks. The initiative encourages organizations to keep their data sets open and free to all, making them available on a bilingual website so non-profits, governments, foundations, and grassroots organizations can more easily access, interpret, and share data. In three years and with no marketing budget, Cross-Econ has grown to thousands of users, with maps of over 1,000 communities. By creating a shared municipal data foundation, Cross-Econ is levelling the playing field for advocacy, planning, and decision-making across Canadian communities.

With consumer spending accounting for roughly 60% of Canada's GDP, the impact of purchasing decisions can extend far beyond the transaction itself. Many people want to buy local, but given the complexity of global supply chains and ownership structures it can be difficult to determine a product’s origins – standard labels such as “made in” or “product of” reveal little. The Shorefast Institute’s Economic Nutrition certification program closes this information gap by making the flow of dollars spent at a business or other organization more visible. Certified organizations trace each dollar they spend in a fiscal year and report the results on a label that meets Shorefast’s standard. Modelled on a food nutrition label, an Economic Nutrition certification mark traces the money that an organization spends in terms of geography (percentages to local, regional, national, and international destinations) and of activity (percentages to labour, material, business operations, wages and salaries, etc.). This transparency allows people to see where their money goes and how it strengthens local economies. Certified organizations include private businesses, social enterprises, non-profits, municipalities, chambers of commerce, and Indigenous organizations, demonstrating the concept’s adaptability across sectors and regions. At a time when governments are increasingly required to “buy Canadian” and public interest in supporting local is growing, the initiative's standardized framework for measuring and communicating impact has become more critical. While the model was first developed on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, in 2018, it has expanded to include partners in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, showing the widespread value of connecting commerce with communities. 

Nearly 25% of households in Toronto experience food insecurity, with Black and Indigenous communities disproportionately affected. Traditional food banks are serving more people than ever, faced with higher demand and an increasingly challenging economic environment. FoodShare Toronto’s Grown in TO program tackles these problems with an approach that encompasses cultivation, distribution, and community action to create a robust and truly local food system. On urban farms across Toronto, growers cultivate food that is then distributed in produce boxes and bulk orders to seniors’ residences, schools, Indigenous child and family support centres, and community kitchens. FoodShare’s dedicated team of packers and drivers provides an affordable alternative to commercial delivery suppliers by prioritizing access to fresh food over profit. The organization also supports a city-wide network of more than 50 community produce markets intended to bring fresh food to the places where communities need it, including on college campuses and in the lobbies of social-housing buildings. Through this integrated system, FoodShare is supporting communities from growers to end consumers, improving the predictability of how food moves through the system, and creating a more sustainable, resilient, and local supply chain.