O.N.E. Social Enterprise Partnership Program Toolkit

Brought to you by the Ryerson Social Venture Zone

A challenge facing social innovators (and, indeed, innovators of all types) is that they often leap to a solution without having properly researched and defined the problem. This can negatively impact the venture at later stages, where issues that should have been known much earlier can cause significant delays or even stop the venture in its tracks.

The Ideation Workshop will help innovators further refine their ideas to create a viable social enterprise. Using tools and worksheets developed by Alex Gill, Director and co-founder of the Ryerson Social Venture Zone, participants will work through their ideas using a range of methodologies. Users of the interactive worksheets will perform a range of foundational work that is key to separating the knowledge of the problem from the tools to solve it. You can use this process to help validate your idea and ensure you are truly solving a social problem, rather than trying to fit a problem into a solution.

• The Inverted Problem Pyramid: Learn how social entrepreneurs at Ryerson’s Social Ventures Zone define a problem effectively as the first step in creating a solid venture.
• The Five-Whys worksheet: Learn how social entrepreneurs at Ryerson’s Social Ventures Zone deepen their understanding of a problem and identify its root causes.
• Map different perspectives of a problem: Learn how social entrepreneurs at Ryerson’s Social Ventures Zone expand their knowledge of a problem by mapping how a range of stakeholders perceive it.

Brought to you by the Ryerson Social Venture Zone

Now that you have deepened your understanding of the problem you are trying to solve, you can conduct more formal research to validate your assumptions and take the “no” off the table. The following two tools from Ryerson’s Social Ventures Zone will help you conduct research that reduces your chance of missing something that can cause big problems later and offers a quick method to develop a value proposition for your emerging social enterprise.

• Guerrilla Research Basics: Mining and defining community need (quickly): How can you conduct a fast and effective research process to mine and define community needs, validating or challenging the assumptions behind your idea?
• Value proposition worksheet: How can you quickly create a value proposition for your emerging social enterprise idea?

Brought to you by MaRS SVX

• Advisor Checklist: Working With a Venture through: Ideation, Discovery and Validation. Questions and Resources to test at each stage.

Brought to you by the Centre for Social Innovation and SVX.org

As a social enterprise you are creating impact and making the world a better place. Unfortunately, that means you have to prove that you are accomplishing and measuring impact is one of the most challenging things facing Social Enterprises today. Luckily, there are many frameworks and approaches you can leverage to help you talk about it in terms that are commonly understood.

• Impact Dashboard: Brought to you by the Centre for Social Innovation. Track your impact. Tell your story. Share your results.
• Impact Frameworks presentation: Brought to you by the SVX.org

Brought to you by the SVX and MaRS

How confident are you that your product or service is actually bringing about the positive change you want to create? If you’re trying to reduce the instances of Malaria in Kenya, providing access to free or affordable mosquito nets might seem like the solution. How do you know the nets are being used appropriately and actually reducing the cases of Malaria? How do you know the population isn’t using them as low cost fishing nets? Or fencing? Although a Theory of Change isn’t always the answer, it can be a useful exercise to think of your product and how your customer will actually use it to create your impact.

Theory of Change comes in many flavours but an easy one to attempt is using a logic model. You’ll find a quick presentation going through the above example in more detail, along with an exercise and worksheet you can use to build your own. Like many business tools the Theory of Change uses hypotheses and assumptions. You should frequently look back and see if the assumptions were correct, and if not, revisit the Theory of Change to make sure you’re achieving the outcomes you want.

Theory of Change (+ Vision & Mission):

• Presentation: Vision, Mission, Theory of Change
• Lesson
• Activity Book
• Theory of Change Worksheet

Brought to you by the SVX and MaRS

You’ve built your business, you’ve spent the time to prove that you understand your customers pain points and can deliver a solution they’re willing to pay for. How do you go out and find capital to help you scale things even further?

The investment journey for a social enterprise is very similar to a traditional business with one major difference: impact investors. Depending on the scale and opportunity of your business you may be able to raise capital from traditional investors, impact investors, or both! Regardless, you will need to be able to go through Due Diligence with any potential investor to demonstrate that you’ve put the time and thought into your business to give it the best shot of success.

To help get you get started, we’ve provided a typical Due Diligence Checklist that includes the types of documents investors will be looking for. Now, not every document listed may be relevant to you, but if they are, I’d spend some time putting them together so when an investor is interested in learning more, you can impress them with a well organized, up to date, deal room.

• Investment Readiness: Checklist for Due Diligence

One of the most important tools in your fundraising tool kit is your pitch deck. Pitch presentations come in all shapes and sizes, but unless you are a pitch master, I would stick with the basics and make sure you’re covering the key information investors are looking for. The pitch shouldn’t necessarily answer all questions (that would be a very long, and very boring presentation) but should cover enough to entice an investor to want to learn more.

Here are some resource that might help you prepared your pitch deck, and how, and where to include your impact.

• Pitch Prep: Content, Presentation and Delivery