Love, Urgency, Ownership, and Us: Building the Canadian Social Economy

What’s rising, and what it takes to build a people-first economy.

Over the past year, in conversation with social entrepreneurs, impact investors, and ecosystem builders, Purppl board member Thi Dao and I have seen four patterns consistently surface; themes that are shaping the future of the social economy.

These patterns emerged at gatherings like Connect Money Impact (including the 2025 CMI Kelowna and CMI Campbell River), which explored how capital can better serve community impact. They also show up in ongoing collaborations and community work.

Four patterns consistently rise to the top:

1. 1. Bigger, faster, smarter (with care).
   2. Build it. Own it. Share it.
   3. Relationships first, then everything else.
   4. People are the power, so lead with love.

1) Bigger, faster, smarter (with care).

We need social enterprises that match the scale and urgency of the problems they’re tackling. Which means we need bigger, stronger, wealthier organizations working on the toughest challenges in community. 

Rightfully so, some folks like to criticize scale; they say that change usually happens at a local, human pace, that it’s incremental. Yes, and… if we’re to make substantive progress on housing affordability, the opioid and mental health crisis, or respond and adapt rapidly to the climate emergency, it can’t and won’t be powered alone by under-resourced, small, organizations who are in constant scarcity. 

We must build social purpose organizations which are big enough, wealthy enough, and strong enough to implement the solutions that are working, again and again, without the SPOs worrying about where their next paycheque is coming from. 

Connective is a quiet multi-service charity that has scaled from $5M per year in revenue to $105M annually over about 10 years. They have diverse, government contracts to deliver essential services like housing, outreach, and employment services throughout British Columbia and the Yukon. Due to decisions made several decades ago, the organization owns real estate in Vancouver. They’ve leveraged those properties into multiple opportunities around the province and are now working on their capital stack to develop housing through a $400M portfolio to support their service delivery. 

We need social enterprises that can reach scale while ensuring that wealth and equity are built for employees, customers, users and beneficiaries (in other words, the community), rather than extracting value from them. 

Not every organization needs to scale, in fact, some of the most powerful change is deeply local, small, and steady. But some social enterprises need to grow strong enough, resourced enough, and stable enough to respond to urgent, complex challenges without being slowed by constant scarcity.

Patient urgency means building fast where we can, but taking the time to bring people along – especially those most impacted by the problems we’re solving. The “move fast and break things” mantra from Silicon Valley has left a lot of people behind. Let’s not do that. Let’s build trust and solidarity as we build impact.

2) Build it. Own it. Share it.

The social economy must expand ownership of assets, capital, and the means of production. That’s part of how we move these organizations and the people powering them out of constant scarcity. It sounds a bit Capitalist, eh? Yes, it does. 

Capitalism is very good at building wealth for a small number of people and companies; let’s enable that wealth building in organizations where the wealth, profit, and value accrues to the many, not the few. 

Instead of putting up barriers to wealth building for these organizations, let’s enable it and chase it. It sounds a bit crass, but I’d like nonprofits, coops, and social enterprises to be wealthy so they can be really effective partners at solving the most complex challenges. And, so they can build wealth and security for their employees, partners, and beneficiaries.

Said differently, we need the organizations delivering essential services like housing, health, energy, and food enabled to build wealth, profit, and value. Let’s make them wealthy and profitable while keeping the profit, wealth, and value in community – rather than that wealth being held privately or by a small number of executives and owners. 

Want to see how this works? Some of the best examples are Indigenous. 

Look at the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA). They have a multi-decades effort underway to restore ntytyix (salmon) to the Okanagan watershed, and it’s working. After the near extinction of salmon in the Okanagan watershed, ONA now has an active fisheries department that not only has a mandate to restore salmon but also an expanded economic component to this work that produces canned and smoked salmon (i.e., part of a sustainable revenue model). They also have a food fishery to harvest fish for distribution (without cost to member communities). Pauline Terbasket, a humble storyteller and ONA’s Executive Director, shared a short version of this story at CMI in Kelowna in 2023.

Look at Ntityix Development Corporation. At CMI in Kelowna, Mic Werstuik, CEO at Ntityix, shared details about the Westbank First Nation company’s diverse assets and services including commercial real estate, residential real estate, forestry, property management, and more. Yes, it’s a for-profit social enterprise, and yes they are profitable. Where does the profit go? To reinvest into more community-owned assets and Ntityix’s services, and to their shareholder, Westbank First Nation, to fund core community services that the Nation provides to its members. This centres the people as the beneficiary.

Look at the We Wai Kai First Nation. The nation’s Economic Development Director Jason Wilson shared at CMI in Campbell River that they are developing a project to turn 85% of their solid waste into usable materials; they have a Starbucks license; they own an engineering company; they operate campsites; and they are developing a top name-brand hotel. Like Ntityix, the benefit accrues to the members and community, rather than a few private shareholders. 

Back to point #1, let’s scale these up along with others like them. 

We must enable community organizations to build wealth. When nonprofits, social enterprises, coops, and community-owned companies build wealth and profit, they build wealth and health for the many, not the few. 

3) Relationships first, then everything else.

It’s important to name what quietly shapes progress. In a time where conservatives and liberals rarely come together, the shift to a more progressive and innovative system doesn’t start with dismantling or othering. It starts with relationship building. 

Kelly Terbasket, Managing Director at IndigenEYEZ, urged us in her opening remarks at CMI Kelowna to rebuild tradition and protocols so they serve people, rather than practicing performative activities. She brought in the teachings of the Four Food Chiefs, which have long taught the Syilx people that each of our experiences and perspectives are needed, and that “all are welcome.” 

These teachings centre the idea of making space for disagreement, discomfort, and divergent worldviews. Part of the teaching here is to call in to the change – versus call out and ostracize, other, or ignore. Being in a room with opposing perspectives isn’t a barrier, it is the work. It is foundational to making progress in the social economy. 

Change takes hold when we can be in relationship with people with diverse positions and perspectives in a system. Actively listening, collaborating, confronting, and working alongside many people in many parts of a system over many years is the primary behaviour that supports system change. Adam Kahane calls it “radical engagement” in his 2025 book Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems, which is part of a long lineage of relational philosophies of change – what Martin Buber called “I–Thou”, what Hannah Arendt described as “acting in concert”, and what Indigenous and liberation traditions frame as collective responsibility. 

4) People are the power, so lead with love.

In a quiet moment, sitting in a room of 150 impact leaders at CMI Campbell River, Brian Smith, Managing Director of Boann Social Impact and Founder of Persephone Brewing Company, turned to me and asked, “why am I here?” I responded quickly with something like, “for me, for Kristi [Fairholm Mader], for all the people and relationships which power the hard, long, slow change that’s needed.” 

It’s not one panel or event that changes the arc of deep-seated challenges like the climate emergency or inequitable, extractive Capitalism. What does change these tough issues? The relationships that span years, organizations, actions, roles, and even generations.  

Paul Lacerte, Co-Founder and Chief Purpose Officer at Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, put it plainly in his keynote: “Every moment is precious. Every person is precious. Love is the greatest medicine of all.” 

Brian continued this reflection in a keynote conversation with Kristi Fairholm-Mader at CMI Kelowna two weeks later. Expressing shared frustration, Brian and Kristi reflected, “Love has been edited out of our agreements. How do we put love into an investment agreement to ensure that if an organization fails, we actually surround the entrepreneur or leader with love. They’ve undoubtedly put tremendous effort into their organization, their dreams, and the closure of an organization is difficult. The agreements we have barely reflect the love and care that’s needed.”

Putting people at the centre of power shows up in the reality of slow system change. The power is in the people to build examples of it working, while embracing the complexity of barriers against wealth building in nonprofits. Emily Pagdin, the Chief Financial Officer at Connective, shared the sentiment in this way, “We need to lead a change in profit-making in nonprofits, and the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) will follow. We’ll have to show, by example, the power of nonprofits owning market rate housing to enable affordable and attainable housing.” 

We can’t expect the government, like the CRA, to lead the change by changing the rules. We’ll have to find the cracks in the system and build within the spaces. A collective demonstration of change, may then force a change in the rules.

The work is to notice those liminal spaces where “business as usual” falters, and experiment with new ways of organizing, operating, and financing – with love. 

Rooted in love, ready to rise.

Paul finished his teachings that day in Campbell River with a saying from the Carrier language ‘Nyun Sbe Hoonzoo’, which means “you are soo beautiful to me that my heart leaps up when I see you.” The room was moved, to say the least.

Maybe love is what unlocks our ability to build bigger, move faster, and embed wealth within the social economy. A just, regenerative future will surely follow. We’re here for it.

Let’s keep connecting money with impact with courage, humility, and love.