“Who’s going to do it?” Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, posed this question at the recent Philanthropic Foundations Canada conference in Calgary. “Who’s going to fund solutions to our most pressing social and environmental challenges?” It’s a good question. He asked it because of the stark realities of the economic downturn, of governments looking to foundations to support essential services, of foundations looking to the private sector to fund innovation, of the private sector scrambling to cope with the shifts in their financial forecasts. “So who’s going to provide the investments in critical social change?”

My answer is, we are. All of us. Individual Canadians. Evidence shows that in tough times Canadians will step up to the plate with sleeves rolled up and pocketbooks open. But today’s tough times call for especially creative measures if we are going to achieve lasting social change. We face unprecedented complex problems and at no other time in history have Canadians been more connected with each other and with the rest of the world. Therein lies the opportunity.

Small Change Fund, an initiative that will launch in December 2009, is an answer to Buchanan’s question – a solution that not only makes it easy for Canadians to share resources with each other, but also gives us the opportunity to invest in local solutions in a global world.  Small Change Fund is a contemporary approach to philanthropy that harnesses the culture and power of social networking. It’s a space online where we can connect with local leaders doing amazing things to better communities across Canada. It’s a deceptively modest and quietly powerful tool enabling investment in the most high-impact grassroots action across the country. Its potential lies in facilitating a philanthropy that is at once micro and global, grassroots and open.

It’s grassroots philanthropy. Small Change Fund helps Canadians put their money into the hands of people on the ground, people who are best able to figure out and fix the problems in their communities. Judy Rebick says in her new book Transforming Power that what works in realizing transformative change is bringing communities of people together to produce something new; building a movement from the bottom up; sharing experience, knowledge and wisdom; emphasizing co-operation and consensus over confrontation and political partisanship. “Meaningful response to the environmental crisis and social injustice requires substantial, sustainable change at every level, which can only come through building power from the grassroots, from the people most impacted.” Hear, hear.

It’s open philanthropy. Small Change Fund uses the power of the Internet and new media to break down the walls of old-world philanthropy and engage everyone at their own level of ability to share with others. Each contribution combines with others to have more of an impact that we could ever have alone. It’s “bottom-up” philanthropic activism made possible by all the amazing technological tools we have at our disposal. Small Change Fund is a place where those with some critical dollars for sharing can meet people with some creative ideas for helping to make the world a better place. We open up the philanthropic process to all Canadians so they can have a hand in solving the problems they care about most.

It’s micro-philanthropy. At Small Change Fund we believe that people can make change without long studies, thick reports, and big money. Modest investments can make a profound difference. A computer, a camera, agricultural training, legal advice, a water test kit – these things can change the world. Not by themselves but in the hands of committed, passionate people trying to transform their communities. In the words of one our veteran advisors, Mauro Vescera, “After 10 years of grant-making, it has been the small grassroots projects that have stood out as the most positive initiatives. Small projects that unite local residents and give voice to important issues in their communities are often overlooked yet they are critical to moving the environmental agenda forward.”

It’s global philanthropy. Small Change Fund is part of an international alliance of micro-funders. Like us, there are others across the globe from Siberia to the Philippines to Brazil using the power of micro-philanthropy to transform their communities. We are working with them to identify global priorities, like climate change and indigenous peoples’ rights, and figure out how best to translate those priorities into local action. Our alliance is a rich resource of vision, experience, and expertise driven by collaborative energy and a shared vision of a healthy planet.

“So who’s going to do it?” I am. You are.  We are going to do it together. “And how?” By engaging in the business of philanthropy differently. By believing that people know how to figure out and fix the problems in their communities, their cities, their countries. By believing that people can make change without long studies, thick reports, and big money. By believing people want to help each other. And by making that simple. We can start something big with small change at www.smallchangefund.org. Look for us in December 2009.

J/S: Hilary, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. We know our readers will be interested in hearing how Canada’s largest and most relevant foundations are faring through these tumultuous times. We’d like to start off by asking you how the global financial situation from last year affected the assets of Canadian foundations?

HP: There’s no question that Canadian foundation endowments took a hit in the last part of 2008 and early 2009. Experiences varied among our membership depending on the investment allocation formulas used, but endowment values generally went down anywhere from 15% to 20% on average.  Assets are starting to rebuild now, but it will take a while to replace lost value.

J/S: What has been the strategic response of your members to this? Has it affected the size of their grantmaking portfolio?  Have some encroached on their capital to stabilize their grantmaking efforts? Has there been any effect on multi-year commitments?

HP: We know that the response to the downturn has been at the forefront of our members’ preoccupations this year. So we decided to help by conducting two surveys, one in January and one in June of 2009, to gauge what was happening both to investments and to disbursements (grants or expenditures on charitable activities). The main conclusions from these surveys is that foundations have tried very hard to hold the line on their grants in 2009, and not to cut back, even though the investments returns have been reduced. By and large, foundations have accomplished this without going into capital unless they are recently established foundations that don’t have reserves. For them, it has been very difficult. But for most others, including some of the largest foundations in the country, the grants budget has not decreased significantly. What may have changed is strategy. There is more reluctance now to accept multi-year grant requests, or new requests. Foundations are trying to protect their current commitments without making new ones for a while longer.

J/S: We are hearing some anecdotal evidence that some foundations are broadening their non-financial contributions such as convening, organizational capacity development, and sometimes even program loans. Are your members reporting such changes to their strategic mix?

HP: Yes, I would say that there is a renewed commitment to providing assistance beyond the grant to make the best use of their resources. Many foundations were already doing it before the recession and are maintaining their efforts. Others are looking at it for the first time. There is a lot of interest in convening and getting charities and grantees together to support information sharing and perhaps brainstorming of solutions together. Some funders have taken the initiative of building more structured groups of charities and funders to collaborate on an ongoing basis.  Ideas are being floated around about sharing resources, working on projects with common goals and identifying greatest needs in the community together. One example is the effort being led by the Lyle Shantz Hallman Foundation in Kitchener which has really taken on a major role in convening local funders to think through the needs of Kitchener-Waterloo. I think this kind of activity could last beyond the recession.

J/S:  Maintaining a small operational costs to grants ratio has always been a tenet of Canadian foundations.  If grantmaking is being reduced, are you seeing a corresponding reduction in operating costs?

HP:  It’s true that Canadian foundations are very careful with their administrative costs. It is rare to see any foundation with a large staff or significant overhead. So there isn’t much to cut back from.  We have heard from our members that some of them are cutting back on travel and professional development as some of the only ways to reduce costs. I hope this is not a trend that lasts!

J/S: What about staffing? There was an article in the New York Times in the spring that indicated the major American foundations were undergoing significant layoffs. Are you seeing that here, or are most Canadian foundations recognizing that maintaining their own intellectual capital is an important longer term objective?

HP: No I don’t see layoffs happening. Again, staff size tends to be very small to begin with and many people who work in family foundations are unpaid.  But I think the commitment to people remains strong and there is reluctance to go to actual layoffs, although open positions may go unfilled. There is a commitment to continuity. But it may not be perceived as a commitment to foundations’ intellectual capital per se, but more to relationships with grantees and to community connections.

J/S:  There has been some optimism in the financial sector of permanent restructuring. Do you think there will be any lasting restructuring in the foundation world of a positive nature? What do you think legacy of this recession will be in the foundation world?

HP: I think restructuring is always a creative response to a crisis. That said, I don’t see much restructuring happening or even being necessary in the foundation community. Foundations are not created as small businesses but as organizations with a long-term view. Most boards are still strongly committed to the vision of a perpetual endowment, as were most of their donors or founders. And, unlike the United States, we have relatively few foundations that are explicitly committed to spending down endowment. Anywhere from 10% to 20% of foundations in the U.S. have such a commitment or are actively considering it. We don’t have data for the Canadian foundation community but anecdotally, this doesn’t seem to be a preferred strategy, certainly not for family foundations. So there is an instinct for preservation of things as they are (unless the crisis is truly dramatic).

On the other hand, for foundations that have experienced major reductions in capital or those who tend to be very strategic in nature, there may be more focus on strategic restructuring. One such foundation that has sharpened its focus recently is the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation of Toronto whose board and staff took the time to re-think their future.

J/S: Although this blog is intended for funders, do you have any words of wisdom for those seeking support from Foundations?

HP: My advice to grantseekers and would-be foundation partners is always ’do your research’. While it is sometimes not easy to find out what a foundation’s goals and preferences are, it is worth trying to investigate to make sure that there is a good match.  It is painful both for a charity and for foundations to see the waste of effort resulting from a scattershot approach to grant applications. The best approach is one that has been well prepared and where there is some dialogue. Some foundations such as the McConnell Foundation of Montreal requests a one-page statement as a preliminary step, to try to avoid time and effort wasting on the part of charities who write a long application only to have it refused because it is not in the foundation’s priorities. It’s not easy but it’s necessary to do the research!

J/S: And finally, where and when can our readers find PFC’s report?

HP:  The full PFC survey reports are available to members only; however, I can make the executive summary available to anyone who requests it. Your readers can just drop me a note at hpearson@pfc.ca and I’ll send one off to them. We have many other resources also available freely on our web site. I would also like to extend an invitation to your readers to our upcoming conference “Pulse of Philanthropy” in Calgary on October 28 to 30, 2009.  It’s going to be an inspiring few days, and also a chance for PFC to celebrate it’s tenth anniversary.

J/S: Hilary, thanks from both of us for this insight into the workings of Canadian foundations during these challenging times.  We look forward to more updates and thoughtful analysis from you in the future.

Other resources:

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) has some interesting reports on how US foundations are responding to the economic crisis.

This may be ’so 2008′, but if you are still wondering what the financial meltdown is all about, check out this clear and enlightening PBS documentary.

We defined replication as a program or project that duplicates the values, objectives, form, standards and outcomes of an existing program in a different location or context, and knowledge transfer as a project or program that uses and adapts the knowledge and ideas from the original program to achieve the same impact or outcome. We wanted to show when either model would work best, how to use them and the implications of each for evaluation. Clearly there is a role for replication which is more prescriptive, as there is for knowledge transfer, which is more interpretive. But our point to our client is that although it’s not impossible to have a hybrid, there is a danger in misaligning intent and action or in sending mixed messages to constituents. In this case, only a minor shift in thinking was required, but we have seen funders who want to encourage innovation and adaptation of best practices, but have funding guidelines that reward adherence to a particular form and process.

We think this chart might be helpful to those of you who are considering scaling-up a project and who might be unsure about the appropriate strategy. It will help you think through your objectives and the characteristics of the project you are looking to expand and then develop a strategy that will ensure you are aligned and consistent.

In a future blog, we will share a new logic model format we developed to support scale-ups using the knowledge transfer model. But let us know what you think of this chart and whether you can suggest improvements. And of course, feel free to use it however you wish.

Some resources we found helpful:

“Going to Scale: The Challenge of Replicating Social Programs” by Jeffrey Bradach in the Stanford Social Innovation Review

A Summary of Lessons from Applied Dissemination Grants, The J. W. McConnell Family  Foundation

“How can social innovations be sustained?  The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation

“Fielding Large-Scale Community Change Initiatives: Key Lessons from a Decade of Systems Change”. The Urban Seminar Series on Children’s Health and Safety, Harvard University

“Scaling Up – A Conceptual and operational Framework: A preliminary report to the MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Population and Reproductive Health” Richard Kohl and Lawrence Cooley (This will take you to the Tamarack web site, take some time to look around at their interesting work.)

Check out this blog by Social Edge on scale.  Oddly, you have to read it backwards, but it has a lot of good ideas.

“Stories do a number of important things. They can set a human context for the work we do, so that it is not simply about 1,000 exploited workers or 500 struggling farmers. A story can tell how the impact of exploitation on a woman can affect her children’s day at school, her relations with her community, her health. It can follow a farmer from sodden fields to a reluctant store buyer who doesn’t want his crop, back to the family home where the bad news permeates dinner hour and lasts until he goes back to the field the next day. Through stories we see the worker and the farmer as our neighbours, and we want to see something change to make their life better.”

This month’s issue of  the Canadian Bar Association’s magazine “The National” has an article on a trend I have heard little about before, how law firms are using competitive intelligence to grow their business. CI helps determine a clients’ needs by researching and analyzing data on emerging industries, prospective clients and their market environments. This helps clients, but also helps the law firm figure out where to invest its own business development efforts. It also adds a financial lens on existing and potential clients with a view to understanding “who are the ones that are keeping the lights on.” The use of CI in this context is primarily to build business.

But it got me wondering how this function relates to the foundation and corporate philanthropy work we do.  A  few things jumped out:

First,  that is pretty much exactly what we do with our clients. If they are already working in an area/issue and want to expand or change their program, we help them figure out what is going on in that area and identify some emerging trends and opportunities for them. Often, especially with our corporate clients, this work is not part of their core competency, so we will do a more extensive process that shows potential areas for them, with input from internal stakeholders such as the senior manager team and employees, and assessing how poential opportunities can best be aligned to their core business.

Secondly, it reminded me that even if the concept is a little counter-intuitive in the not-for-profit context, it can still be applied in intelligent ways. For example, when I was leading the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation we provided an outstanding amount of human and finanacial  support to women’s shelters across the country. But the biggest question we came bumping up against was “Why do women end up in a shelter and how do we stop this?’ As we explored this further, it became clear that activities at the prevention end of the continuum were a critical lever. So we identified a program called “The 4th R” (reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmatic, relationships) that seemed to be unlocking some of the “why” and”how“.  We were tempted to fund it but not before we put it through the same R and D process that a new service or product would be put through. The R and D team brought in a framework against which to test this idea. It asked all the critical components of the idea, what else was offered in the “marketplace” of youth violence prevention programs, what distinguished this program from others, and what success would look like. And most importantly, why invest in this program versus supporting and scaling up another that was already at work? That rigorous review was helpful in making an objective analysis to make sure the program was not duplicating other efforts or missing other more relevant opportunities. The exercise we went through is remarkably similar to the series of questions captured in this interesting blog by Hawes Consulting, “Answering the 5 difficult competitive intelligence questions”:

Third, it reminded me that we often see philanthropic strategies that work on a ‘fire, aim, ready” basis. A new idea gets jumped on very quickly without a lot of the upfront work that needs to go into the strategic questions, especially in this viral marketing environment.  This poses the danger of being both uncompetitive and unintelligent in terms of the idea and the program.  And most importantly, it misses the opportunity to do some really intelligent intelligence gathering about an issue before moving on it. At best, it is a charitable impulse (nothing wrong with that, but I am skeptical that lots of charitable activity in and of itself is a sustainable solution in the long run). At worse, it loses the opportunity to actually change the underlying circumstances or conditions that need to be changed to create long term solutions. So what are the 5 questions in determining a funder’s competitive intelligence?  These are adapted from the blog referred to above:

A. What does competitive intelligence mean in your context? What particular insights or strengths do you offer? This is the critical question. For corporate clients, we start by understanding their corporate environment, marketplace, customers and clients, and their employee passions.  That helps to find the “sweet spot” where their philanthropic interests can be aligned with core business, ensuring there will be synergy between the two.

B. Do you have a better idea about how to change or improve or make a significant contribution differently from what’s happening now? This is hopefully why thoughtful funders get into the game, to generate momentum and explore solutions on an issue.

C. How sure are you about the issue and your proposed approach? This is the point at which we take the idea on the road for market testing. Getting external feedback and perspectives is a good way to ensure the end product and proposed approach still meet the initial need identified.

D.  How do you really know this is going to work? Of course, in this business, you never really know if it is going to work. But look for sound indicators. With The 4th R, we relied on the evaluation of a pilot that showed the program had tangible impact compared to other schools in one school district where it was piloted over 5 years, with rigorous evaluation. This was pretty good evidence for providing support to expand the program nationally.

E. How quickly or slowly do you need to act?  Problems that have entrenched over many years can’t be resolved in weeks or even years. So what is an appropriate time frame, can some things be implemented right away while others, such as a policy piece wait until there is a proven track record or more detailed research available to support a particular position?

There are a whole new set of careers developing around Competitive Intelligence and I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of it in corporate Canada and then see some spill-over of the concept into the foundation sector.

For more information on Competitive Intelligence, go to The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

We probed a bit at the meeting, but later over coffee Sheherazade and I realized that what they needed was a simple tool they could use now and in the future to help them assess the risks of the options they were considering – a tool that was compatible with their overall corporate goals and risk strategy. We have found that without clarity on risk tolerance funders will either find themselves in hot water with a program or will, by default, be so cautious that their granting program does not make a significant impact.

The tool we developed  balances risks with opportunity to avoid over-caution; and although it was developed for a particular corporation, we thought it would be of interest (hopefully of use) to others working in the field. Note that this tool is designed for issue or program selection, not for individual granting decisions.  (We will be addressing grant decision tools in a future posting.)

So here it is, feel free to use it however you wish:  Risk Tool

I am not referring to the graduated grants we are used to, which start small but are intended to evolve into a larger grant, (a common capacity-building or risk management tool) or grants for small things such as conference attendance, or high-leverage grants such as micro-credit. But rather, small, focused curiosity-driven grants for the illusive ‘good idea’. For sure, almost all of us working in philanthropy have at one time or another developed an innovative grants stream. When Sheherazade and I were at Trillium we had a funding stream called ‘Really Good Ideas’. I would say we mostly got pretty good ideas, because it is hard for grant-seekers who are desperate for funding for their core programs to think about small experimental initiatives. And those with the really good ideas are often not connected to eligible organizations or don’t have the credentials to pass the review process. Also the solid, often iterative, review process that works for competitive grants can be death for the experimental grant requiring timely support and a great deal of trust and empowerment of the grant recipient. And yet foundations, particularly private foundations, with their capacity for flexibility and somewhat less requirement for public accountability are best placed to encourage and fund the experimental grant.

I was won over to curiosity as a grant driver when I was the CEO of the National Cancer Institute of Canada – discovery is the root of basic research after all. But research grantmaking isn’t a good model for small innovation, the panel review process can be very cumbersome and rigid (think word limits) and grants, although funded for a couple of years at a time, are generally for long-term work (I knew a scientist that had been studying the same yeast organisms for thirty years).

So I’ve been thinking about how to combine the curiosity of the research arena with the flexibility of the foundation sector, integrating what we might have learned over the past decades of trying to fund innovation when I came across an article by Dr BJ Fogg which really resonated. He’s talking about software development, but his notion of how innovation works in today’s networked world is relevant (and fascinating) to our work.  Think about this in your own context:

Today, the key to success is starting small and iterating, trying out many options until you get measurable success. This fast and nimble approach to innovation is relatively new. Even just a decade ago, creating a new product or service required hundreds – if not thousands – of hours, in addition to significant cost in material. This high cost meant that innovation teams needed to think long and hard about their ideas before implementing them. They would bring in experts, have lots of meetings, specify every detail of their design. That’s the old way of innovation. And many organisations, in industry and academia, still cling to this old method. If they don’t adapt soon, they will become dinosaurs, poorly-equipped for the emerging realities.

Today, innovation has a new rhythm, with the best teams launching early and iterating quickly. What drives this new method? The low cost of creation and distribution. In 
a handful of hours you can create a new website, a Facebook app, or a phone application. And you can share it quickly with the world. With no money down, you can test a new intervention using text messaging. Using new tools, the fastest way to learn what works in the marketplace isn’t by meeting and discussing but by implementing and launching. Many crummy trials beats deep thinking.

Hmm, many crummy trials beats deep thinking. What a thought! What does that mean for grantmaking? How can we use the notion of thinking clearly and iterating quickly to produce innovation in our fields of interest? What would we have to do differently?  Well, it seems to me that the key thing is the acceptance that the project that is funded is not the project that is completed.  Sort of a variation on the saying, “the river I stand in is not the river I stepped in.” Therefore, discovery grants will generally not fit into a particular funding program, in fact a good discovery grant may cut across many programs. I would think it would also require a hands-off approach on the part of the funder, enabling the grant recipient the autonomy to rapid-cycle the learning which, again, is more typical in research granting. But probably the biggest shift would be who we fund as social innovators may come from non-traditional directions and the grant recipient may develop unusual partnerships. All of this is as hard as it sounds, especially if this kind of experimental,discovery based grantmaking is running parallel to a more linear and rigorously monitored grants program.

In this regard, a great deal can be learned from the Toronto based Centre for Social Innovation,  (the ultimate iterative ‘really good idea’) whose mission is to catalyze social innovation.”We believe that society is facing unprecedented economic, environmental, social and cultural challenges. We also believe that new innovations are the key to turning these challenges into opportunities to improve our communities and our planet.” Spend a couple of hours perusing their website, or better yet if you are in the area take a tour – tomorrow.

Look also at Social Innovation Generation whose mission is to create a ‘culture of continuous social innovation.’  Great thinkers are involved with this group, including Tim Draimin, formerly CEO at Tides. (Good catch SiG!)

In the meantime, have any of you readers had experience with curiosity-driven grantmaking or know anyone who has? How was it done? How well did it work? How would you advise others?

Resources:

Read Dr. Fogg’s full article in the RSA Journal

Check out the Centre for Social Innovation

More on Social Investment Generation (SiG)

Get a brain massage by Ric Young from E.Y.E speaking on social innovation earlier this year. Hear about people who are ‘addicted to success, not problems’ and how they are changing the world.

And finally, if you ever go to Stockholm make your way to the Nobel Museum.  I spent a whole day there a while ago and then went back again. But if you can’t make it there, the website is the next best thing.  Talk about innovation!  Wander through interviews with some of the great minds of our time.

His thesis that we will turn back to local from global got me wondering about what this means for grantmakers. I thought of at least three themes out of his analysis:

1. Local communities will become a stronger anchor than ever before for ensuring there is a vibrant local economy that replaces the imported global economy we currently rely on. And local will need strengthened human connectivity as our ability to jet to far-away places to build community connections becomes more difficult and expensive. The quality of life in neighbourhoods will be a dominant factor in the more closely-knit communities we are going to experience. Funders who are working on neighbourhood development strategies are ahead of the coming curve as more and more of us come to realize the value of maintaining and building strong, vibrant and safe local communities. But it also raises the spectre of increasing neighbourhood striations related to income and class with the potential to increase protectionism and decrease broader integration and tolerance for diversity.
2. Small, micro-initiatives will be the way to strengthen community, one family and one neighbourhood at a time. As Julie mentioned in her post on GPS and planning (”Increasingly, effective funders are moving from categories of funding to a more comprehensive strategy that cuts across several different program areas to maximize impact and sustainability“) multi-input approaches will replace the siloed ways that we’ve developed for tackling issues. These will need to integrate social, economic, educational, cultural and recreational aspects that touch our lives.  Micro-credit and micro-enterprise, which we currently associate largely as “developing world” solutions, will soon grow stronger shoots in our own back yards. The Hamilton Foundation figured this out a while ago. They have an interesting set of interconnected initiatives focusing on Poverty Reduction, Neighborhood Focus and Environment Focus. Many of the grants are tiny, some just a few hundred dollars.  But if that is all a group needs to get a meeting off the ground, more power to them.  That is how the glue that bonds communities works, filling in a crack here or a gap there so the overall picture is held together more tightly. We are seeing more direct giving such as Kiva encourages globally. This trend is going local with the rise of micro-grantmaking. I am sure we will see more of this in the smaller world of the future. (Watch for a guest post in October by Ruth Richardson on The Small Change Fund, an exciting initiative she is working on in this new field.)
3. Funders and institutions will need to completely re-imagine how they respond to the changing landscape. Sure, re-vamping grants programs will make a difference. But what about the broader structural issues about how communities are supported? How do you integrate ways of supporting so that all efforts are aligned towards the same end goals, those of the community being strengthened? This has always been a bit of a puzzle to me and was crystallized in this wonderful quote by Peter MacLeod, recipient of the 2008 Public Policy Forum’s Young Leaders Award: “We are trying to run 21st-century software on 18th-century hardware”.  The problem, he says in an interview, is that all our democratic institutions, not just our electoral processes, are rooted in an era when people were illiterate, disconnected and immobile. Philanthropy is part of this dilemma in a world where people are much more literate (”literacy” now including social, cultural and emotional competence or intelligence in addition to the 3 Rs), connected (wired up, almost to the point of having implanted technology in our bodies) and mobile (both physically and virtually while glued to our computers).

Smaller world perhaps, but what an opportunity for philanthropy to help build stronger local pathways of the future.

More information:

Peter MacLeod journal MASS lbp: Reinventing Public Consultation

Interview with Peter MacLeod

We still use the technique when we start a new project. First we satisfy ourselves that we understand the context and expectations of the new challenge, but then we give ourselves time for non-linear, chaotic and serendipitous reflection that inevitably informs our direction. So we are always delighted to find places of inspiration – TED is one – and now another called Ask Nature. Holycrow, this is cool! The idea behind this site is based on the notion of biomimicry, that natural genius is all around, with so much to teach us. The site draws on “3.8 billion years of design brilliance… to connect innovative minds with life’s best ideas, and in the process, inspire technologies that create conditions conducive to life”. You  can find answers in nature to your most compelling questions. Try it out. Go into the site and complete the question: How would nature….. and see what comes up.

And speaking of TED, according to the Globe and Mail this morning, a TED-like conference is being planned in Toronto on September 10th.