Member list

NameAffiliationLocationMission
Michael
Lenczner
Ajah / PoweredByDataMontréalPowered by Data was started by Ajah, a Montreal-based software company that builds tools for Canadian non-profits. They wanted to use their expertise in technology and open data to help the social sector as a whole. The initiative has since grown into a project of Tides Canada. They focus on systemic and policy solutions that benefit the sector as a whole, rather than specific technologies or applications. That’s why they work with key stakeholders, particularly in philanthropy and government, to open up data and increase the sector’s capacity to use information effectively. Their approach combines consulting, technical collaboration, research and advocacy to achieve those goals.
Rohit
Ramchandani
Antara Global Health Advisors

School of Public Health & Health Systems, University of Waterloo
TorontoAntara is a Canadian consultancy that provides technical expertise & evidence-based public health & management advice to organizations around the world, including fortune 500 companies, NGOs and governments.
Anil
Patel
AshokaTorontoAshoka identifies and supports the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, learns from the patterns in their innovations, and mobilizes a global community that embraces these new frameworks to build an “everyone a changemaker world.”
Nisa
Malli
Brookfield InstituteTorontoThe Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E) is an independent and nonpartisan policy institute, proudly housed within Ryerson University. We are dedicated to building a prosperous Canada where everyone has the opportunity to thrive due to an inclusive and resilient economy. BII+E generates far-sighted insights and stimulates new thinking to advance actionable innovation policy in Canada.
Tonya
Surman
Centre for Social InnovationTorontoMembers of the Centre for Social Innovation work across sectors to create a better world. They accelerate their success and amplify their impact through the power of coworking, community and collaboration. Together, they ar building a movement to put people and planet first.
Lee
Rose
CKXOttawaCKX is a social change agency. They embolden shift disturbers with opportunities for reflective practices, place-based learning and deep knowledge exchange to spark fundamental shifts in our society.
Gabe
Sawhney
Code for CanadaTorontoCode for Canada is a national nonprofit that connects government innovators with the tech and design community. Our programs enable governments to deliver better digital public services and empower communities to solve civic challenges using technology and design.
Alain
Meunier
CommunagirMontréalCommunagir places its expertise at the service of communities, as well as individuals, groups and organizations concerned with their development. They favor a collaborative approach where each intervention is built with the actors involved. They offer an objective perspective to illuminate complex situations and explore new solutions.
Helen
Yung
Culture of Cities CentreTorontoThe Culture of Cities Centre fosters international community among those working to uncover and cultivate culture in the city. The Centre engages an international public through book series, journals, research projects, salons, film series and conferences.The publications, workshops and special events are dedicated to uncovering new ways of representing, shaping and defining urban culture.
Supriya
Syal
Dulcimer LabsTorontoDulcimer Labs is a purpose driven company that uses behavioural science and evidence-based decision-making and to create social impact for public, private, and civil sector clients.
Ashley
Dryburgh
Edmonton Community FoundationEdmontonEdmonton Community Foundation (ECF) strengthens the community by connecting donors to charities and causes that are important to them.
Mark
Abbott
EngineeringChangeLabTorontoThe Engineering Change Lab is a collaborative platform for individuals and organizations from across the engineering community to share perspectives, deepen understanding, and take action to address systemic challenges holding back the profession’s full potential.
Nadia
Duguay
ExekoMontréalSince 2006, Exeko has been using creativity (art and philosophy) for the social inclusion of people who experience(d) or are at risk of exclusion. Exeki acknowledges above all everyone’s potential to think, analyze, act, create and be a stakeholder of society: they presume equality of intelligences. They use both practical approaches of intellectual and cultural mediation, and systemic approaches inspired from social innovation, as motors of social transformation, to act positively on society, individually and collectively: intellectual emancipation, prevention of exclusion (homelessness, crime, suicide, drug addiction), citizen and cultural participation, inter-recognition, identity reinforcement, etc.
Ashley
Good
Fail ForwardTorontoFail Forward – the world’s first failure consultancy – supports people and organizations to allow, acknowledge, and adapt to failure in pursuit of innovation.  
Donna
Dupont
Solferino AcademyInternationalThe Solferino Academy is a think tank and ‘do’ tank – that undertakes horizon scanning, trends analysis and futures exploration to help the Movement understand the future of vulnerability and risk and to develop strategies to enable change. They are working with both the Secretariat and National Societies in 190 countries to build an organizational structure and operating model that is relevant, agile and adaptive to these changes and is fit to meet the humanitarian needs of the future.
Vinod
Rajasekaran
Future of GoodOttawaIlluminating stories, innovations, and trends shaping social impact in Canada. A guide to changing the world of good for impact-focused people excited by a better tomorrow.
Cait
Goddard
GOOD TravelInternationalGOOD Travel promotes and facilitate travel that gives back to the local community, economy, and environment. They aim to educate, inform and share knowledge with travellers and businesses to encourage sustainable and responsible tourism.
Trevor
Deley
IBMOttawaIBM Advanced Studies(CAS) is a system of engagement for academic collaboration with IBM. They network IBMers with a community of students, researchers, educators, change makers and entrepreneurs to attract ideas, talent, partners and clients to IBM. Together, they explore technical and social challenges around emerging architectures that will define business and computing for the next quarter century.
Yancy
Craig
IndspireOttawaInspire is a national Indigenous-led registered charity that invests in the education of Indigenous people for the long term benefit of these individuals, their families and communities, and Canada. Their vision is to enrich Canada through Indigenous education and by inspiring achievement. In partnership with Indigenous, private and public sector stakeholders, Indspire educates, connects and invests in Indigenous people so they will achieve their highest potential.
Ajmal
Sataar
Inspire NunavutOttawaInspire Nunavut is an experiential social entrepreneurship training program designed specifically for youth living in Nunavut. Merging the driving principles of traditional business with the mechanics of social entrepreneurship, while also integrating Inuit culture and values, Inspire Nunavut provides youth in Nunavut with an opportunity to create new solutions in their communities via entrepreneurship. 
Natalie
Napier

Sarah
Schulman
InWithForwardVancouver, Edmonton, TorontoA social design organization that makes human services more human. System outcomes InWithForward wants to see: Raises staid expectations and lowest common denominators; Increases people’s’ capabilities, power, agency and control; Embraces loss, and resilience; and removes shame and stigma; Meaningfully activates informal resources and relationships; Mirrors continual growth versus stuckness & risk aversion
Jessica
Tomlin
Match Women’s International FundOttawaThe MATCH Fund supports small women’s organizations that have big ideas. MATCH is the cash for their creative breakthroughs, the microphone for their messages, and their partner on the path to equality. MATCH’s partners dismantle barriers, challenge perceptions, change systems, and transform the world for women and girls.
Jason
Pearman
Social R&D FellowshipOttawaThe Fellowship is an ongoing effort to seed a vibrant ecosystem of public good R&D across community, public, corporate and academic sectors.
Ian
Capstick
Center for Social Impact Strategy,
University of Pennsylvania
MontréalCenter for Social Impact Strategy supports changemakers with big ideas through online & in-person learning.
Lewis
Muirhead
NouLabMonctonNouLab helps the public and innovators act together to address our most pressing social, environmental, and economic challenges. By connecting change agents from across sectors, convening them around pressing issues, and facilitating their journey to deep change, NouLAB is making the change process smarter.  Their mission is to provide pathways in which we, together, explore ideas and test solutions to complex challenges. 
Jean-Noé
Landry
Open NorthMontréalFounded in 2011, OpenNorth is Canada’s leading not-for-profit organization specialized in open data, open government, community engagement, open smart cities and civic technology. They work with Canada’s largest, most innovative, and connected cities. Our network extends across Canada and globally through communities of practice and open government partners. As a steward of the International Open Data Charter, Open North operationalizes the Charter’s principles into government strategies and roadmaps. This work promotes the effective use of data as infrastructure facilitating sustained engagement between government, civil society, and the public.
Anne
White
Government Performance Lab, HarvardOttawaHarvard Kennedy School’s mission is to improve public policy and public leadership across the United States and around the world, so people can lead safer, freer, and more prosperous lives. By combining cutting-edge research, the teaching of outstanding students, and direct interaction with practitioners, they have an impact on solving public problems that no other institution can match.
David
Phipps
Research Impact CanadaTorontoResearch Impact Canada builds institutional capacity to help Canada’s researchers and students span boundaries, collaborate, and connect their work to new services, products, processes, systems, public policies, and innovations with social, economic, cultural, environmental, commercial, and scientific value.
Amy
Mapara
Red CrossOttawaThe Canadian Red Cross mission is to improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity in Canada and around the world.
Ben
Weinlick
Skills SocietyEdmontonSkills Society is one of the largest Disability Service organizations in Edmonton with long history of social innovation stewardship in multiple sectors.  Skills Society is also known for creating one of the early Non-profit Social Innovation Labs in Canada called the Action Lab.  Through their initiatives, Skills Society aims to test new ideas and challenge old assumptions — pioneering better ways to value and include people with disabilities within  community and contribute to the growing body of knowledge around Social Innovation Research and Development within Canada. 


Renuka
Kher
T LabInternationalT Lab, Tipping Point’s R+D team, tests new pathways out of poverty by prototyping ideas in partnership with non-profit organizations and the Bay Area communities they serve.

Lauren
Hunter
Talent CloudOttawaTalent Cloud is the Government of Canada’s experimental new hiring platform for project-based or “gig” employment, posting cool new jobs each week in digital, tech, and user experience design.
Brendan
Yorke
Teach for CanadaTorontoTeach for Canada works with First Nations education leaders, principals, teachers, and many others to recruit and select teachers who have the motivations, aptitude, and fit to be successful in a northern First Nation. Once selected, Teach for Canada provides three weeks of community-focused summer preparation and provide ongoing support during a teacher’s minimum two-year teaching commitment in the North.
Kathy
Manners
The Boldness Project Rural and Remote Access to JusticeWindsorWorking to change the experience of law and justice for people in rural and remote communities by creating an inclusive justice approach in their work and the work that their community does for people who have lived experience with poverty. They work in small communities with large catchment areas, in a province so large that our service areas are almost 2,000 kilometers apart.
Diane
Roussin
The Winnipeg Boldness ProjectWinnipegThe Winnipeg Boldness Project is an initiative that is working alongside the North End community to improve outcomes for young children in the Point Douglas area.
Jen
Recknagel
UHN OpenLabTorontoOpenLab is a design and innovation shop dedicated to finding creative solutions that transform the way health care is delivered and experienced.
Jean-Marie ChapeauCentraide du Grand MontréalMontréalCentraide du Grand Montréal raises money and invest it locally to break the cycle of poverty and social exclusion. They support a network of dynamic agencies and projects that bring people together. In Greater Montreal, one out of seven people receives support from an agency in Centraide’s network.

Nicole
Daw

Tracey
Martin
Vivo for Healthier GenerationsCalgaryVivo is on a mission to raise healthier generations in Calgary and beyond. They want Canadians of all ages to achieve their optimal health wherever they choose to live, work and play. Vivo is extending their reach beyond the walls to the broader community locally, nationally and internationally by charting a course to make bold shifts – shifts in policy, values, attitudes and behaviours about healthy living.

Lynne
Woolcott

Maureen
Fair
West Neighbourhood HouseTorontoWest Neighbourhood House enables less advantaged individuals, families and groups in the community to gain greater control over their lives and within their community. West Neighbourhood House will work in partnership with the community to promote personal and social change in order to achieve a safe, health and accepting society for all. To this end, West Neighbourhood House will work with our resources and the strengths of the community.
Marketa
Evans
Woodgreen Community ServicesTorontoWoodGreen is a founding United Way of Toronto member agency and is one of the largest social service agencies in Toronto. WoodGreen helps seniors live independently, internationally-trained professionals enter the job market, parents access childcare, children and youth access after-school programs, newcomers settle in to Canadian life, homeless and marginalized people get off the streets and job-seekers find meaningful employment and training. WoodGreen offers more than 75 innovative programs to some of Toronto’s most marginalized communities.

Up until now, the Social R&D Community was comprised of alumni of the Social R&D Practice Gathering.

We’re restructuring to open up to more practitioners and social mission organizations with dedicated R&D practices.

Get in touch if you want to know more.
Email Annelies Tjebbes at [email protected]

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