Funding Innovation Cultivation

While looking into possible funding possibilities for this project, I came across many obstacles. Originally, the plan was to have this event to be fully sponsored by different organizations. After going out and trying to talk to a few businesses and banks, I quickly realized that people were hesitant to fund a event regarding drugs. Another thing that was soon brought to my attention was that businesses did not see funding this event as profitable.

Knowing that additional guidance was needed, I decided to get in touch with Dave Teixeira, who we met during a presentation he gave at one of our social innovation classes. Dave Teixeira was very helpful and offered his experience from previous social projects that he headed such as Wresting with Hunger and co-ordinating the Pink Shirt Anti-Bullying Day. He provided me with a “to do list” and also additional advises and pointers on where and how to start looking for funding. Following his advice, I began all over again and drew out all the costs required to host an event like this. Having a list ready and an approximation of how much money we will be needing, I soon realized that if we were to charge people $20 a ticket, the costs could potentially be covered.

Costs based on $20 per ticket, one third capacity (120 people) and no sponsors and discounts

To estimate these costs, I assumed that we will have no discounts or donors. Also, the area we rent will have a capacity to hold 350 and the assumption is that there will only be 1/3 capacity. If this were to happen, we would have $2400 from the ticket sales and the graph shows how that will be divided up. As seen, there is a bit of of extra proceeds or misc. costs section. This will cover anything that might be extra or if less people show up. Another great pointer by Dave was that by having an estimate of costs ready, once we realize how much funding we can get for this event, we are able to add or cut things from the budget.

However, even if this we were able to cover the costs entirely through ticket sales, having sponsors would still be useful. Apart from reducing our costs, they can be used as another medium to attract people to this event. Also, as Dave pointed out in his e-mail, having a budget to present to potential sponsors is more effective as people may decide to donate things (eg. beverages, food, posters, etc…) rather than give money. In the up coming weeks, I will try to more accurately project the required funding and try to bring in a couple of sponsors to help make this event come to life.

Progress to Innovation Cultivation

A collaborative reflection on our progress and barriers from Ben, Matt, Nelson and Sunny

In an effort to improve and educate peoples views on drug prevention, drug use and harm reduction, our group has come up with the idea to host an “open” forum with a panel of experts, each carrying a different view and experience in this field. The difference in this event we are organizing compared to similar events is that attendants will get to participate in discussions. Not only that, they will get to work with each other to generate a solution related to this topic at the event and receive feedback from our guests. On top of that, attendants will be put into contact with people required to get their ideas to become reality.

In focusing on the one of the main barriers, funding, we have noticed that a lot of businesses that are not normally involved with drugs are very hesitant to participate. Although businesses see this extra exposure as “free” advertising and improving public relations, they still want something back for it. For example, the bank that we have contacted have mentioned that they are willing to provide cheaper financing or free business accounts but as for actual financial assistance, we would need to provide them how they would benefit from this. Fortunately, this event is relatively low in cost and most of the costs involved can be covered by the ticket sales. However, any additional source of funding still helps and we are in the process of looking for alternate sources of funding.

A second barrier that our group is facing is the ability to make this a sustainable event. Our current idea is based on using a website for people that went to the event or anyone else interested in this topic to go and discuss their ideas and have annual events based on the “hot topics” in the website. However, this is based heavily on how successful the website is and more importantly how successful this event will be. As we plan mainly to educate and connect people, there is no quantitative measurement we can go by apart from the attendance count. We can only improve effectiveness once there is a way to measure the effectiveness of our open forum.

However, one aspect of this project that has suprised our group is the willingness of experts to assist and participate in an event like this. Our group member Ben, was very successful in bringing in people from all areas in this topic. The enthusiasm from these experts as well as their advice and guidance has certainly been a great help in being one step closer to our final goal.

Funding our addiction to help addicts

During the past 9 weeks in our Social Innovation class, we have been exposed to a world littered with social problems. Even though these problems are prominently obvious, most of us has been fortunate enough to be sheltered by it. Although we may not be directly influenced by these problems, it will eventually affect us one way or another.

The problem we have choosen to tackle is the drug addiction issues in our DTES. Once a beautiful part to our city, it is now a dark corner that no one really mentions. However, we can not just ignore the fact that these people need help. Unfortunately, whatever the solution is to combat drug addiction or harm reduction, this crisis requires lots of funding. Ironically, there is great resistance in funding projects involved with assisting drug addicts. This resistance is caused by a general mind set that the addicts on the streets will only spend the money on more drugs. What donators don’t realize is that many of these projects such as safe injection sites help keep the dangerous needles off the streets by providing a safer environment for the addicts to do their drugs. Another benefit the general public would receive is if the drug users have a safer environment, the chance of them over dosing or sharing needles (hence spreading diseases) also decreases, which in return takes a lesser toll on our health care system.

Therefore, whatever our solution may be, we should be self sufficient financially. The public will only be willing to help these addicts once there is evidence that whatever we are doing is successful. Looking at other cities best practices in raising funds for social enterprises that does not recieve much funding. At this site, there is a compilation of other social enterprises and it gives a brief description of how they are funded. Most of these groups start up programs where it can help whoever it set out to help by having them contribute. For example, at the Clovernook Center for Blind and Disabled, the visually impaired members participate in creating Braille products which are then sold to fund the social enterprise so that it can hire more visually impaired people. Another example is Homeboy Industries, where it tries to reduce gang activity by giving a place for ex-members to start working again to have a chance to be integrated back into society. They run businesses of all sorts to give these people a chance when society has turned their back on them.

Regardless of how we intend to approach our solution, there will be lots of resistance due to this controversial topic, but like these other social enterprises, once proven to work, the general public will be less hesistant to participate.