Every Friday at 1pm EDT, L3 convenes an open discussion to source insights and ideas around social acquisitions and conversions of small businesses in Canada. This is a recap of last week's Huddle (April 9th).
Last week’s Friday Thursday Huddle allowed us to catch up with some stakeholders that have been following us since before our Toronto workshop, which gave us a chance to talk through the direction L3 has started to head since COVID-19 threw a wrench in our in-person delivery model.
We then got to discussing some of our real, on-the-ground concerns as community members and as economic and small business development professionals.
One Huddler raised the concern about the speed at which not only businesses but also non-profits, charities, and the individuals that run them are watching their savings disappear during the economic shutdown. In this environment, social finance and the forms it can take will become crucial for sustaining and reviving communities and businesses of all kinds.
The Huddle acknowledged and discussed that feeling of running out of time that so many business owners now have. Leaving markets to their own devices for smaller towns across Canada could mean the end for many of these local economies. Is there an opportunity, then, for a holding strategy, one Huddler asked, to sustain businesses until their cashflow returns? What would that look like? How would such a financial measure be structured?
There’s a real need, our Huddlers noted, for innovation in both the legal and the accounting spaces. The paperwork for rolling small businesses into larger financial structures would be prohibitively expensive right now, so there is a need for alternative solutions than what might be readily available at present.
Another major concern is for our small communities and the wealth that is distributed and accessible to them.
One Huddler made the case for continued and ongoing government intervention in finance supports to prioritize small, independent business creation once economic activity opens back up again. They mentioned the American SBA system as exemplary in their longstanding support of small businesses, a system that began after the Second World War and continues today.
Join this week's huddle!
Join the Zoom conversation at 1pm EDT this Friday April 17th : https://zoom.us/j/230593272.
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About Legacy Leadership Lab (L3)
L3 is an 18-month initiative by the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, funded by the Government of Canada’s Investment Readiness program. We are leading five Workshops from coast to coast to help build expert-driven solutions for Canada’s transitioning small business community. During these Workshops, the we will develop market interventions and prototypes that allow conventional and social finance players, business service providers, and community leaders to facilitate social purpose conversions of existing businesses in their own towns.
About Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR)
WISIR is a research institute at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development committed to generating trans- and inter-disciplinary knowledge about social innovations and the social innovation process (the dynamics of learning, adaptation and resilience). Our approach is to pursue collaborative research and projects that bridge University of Waterloo departments, involve researchers from around the world, and engage those beyond academia. We seek to mobilize this knowledge through a range of new curriculum offerings and training opportunities - both within and outside of a university setting.