ecoLIVING London

I was invited to do a talk a few weeks ago by The Centre for Environment and Sustainability at UWO. They were hosting a forum called ‘Local & Global Sustainability: Putting Theory into Practice’ and asked me to discuss social enterprise and the making of ecoLIVING London. It was a great afternoon and the conversations I had with audience members afterward got me thinking… if they found the inner workings of our organization interesting, so might the rest of you. So here goes.

ecoLIVING London is a nonprofit, community-based social enterprise.

A social enterprise is a mission driven organization that applies market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. The movement includes both non-profits that use business models to pursue their mission and for-profits whose primary purposes are social. Their aim – to accomplish targets that are social and/or environmental as well as financial – is often referred to as the triple bottom line. Rather than maximizing shareholder value, the primary aim of a social enterprise is to generate profit to further their social and/or environmental goals. - - - wikipedia.com

Why did we choose the social enterprise route?
When I originally came up with the idea for ecoLIVING London, the city had over 15 different groups working on environmental issues. However London, was very much behind other Canadian cities. There was lack of wide-spread community awareness (or interest) in environmental issues and events, so you would see the same faces at every gathering. Local green businesses would pop up with the best of intentions and then shut down because they couldn’t connect with a loyal client base. Londoners were being asked to “Go Green to Compete”, without being provided with practical resources in order to do so.

I started meeting with different community leaders to discuss how we could get ecoLIVING London off the ground and breathe life into these much needed services. They all felt that the mandate of the organization was such that the municipal government would be willing to support it financially, especially during the start-up phase. So on January 13th, 2009 I went before city council to ask for their support in creating an organization that would get Londoners more involved with successful existing programs and engaged in new initiatives. Determined to gather everyone behind this dream of making the city a more vibrant, sustainable community, I also invited Londoners to read the proposal and sign a letter of support. The community response was fantastic. However, we quickly learned that we were a little “green” in regards to how things worked at city hall, as our funding request was denied.

A Common Misconception
Many Londoners believe that essential nonprofit services are funded by the local government. This is true in many cases – but not in all. Each year council, along with city hall administrative staff, decide how and where to allocate your city resources (tax payer monies, federal funding etc). Annual funding for the nonprofit sector is provided to the organizations that are considered critical to the community (i.e. Boys & Girls Club gets $400,000/yr, Orchestra London gets $450,000/yr etc.). Unfortunately, there is not one environmental organization on that critical list. Instead of core funding (i.e. funding that can be applied toward yearly operating costs - wages etc.), environmental organizations can apply for project funding from related city departments. What this means is that a group can go to city hall with an idea, and if city staff decide it has value it will get some monetary support to cover basic costs associated with its implementation (i.e. design and printing of posters, banners, etc.). Doesn’t sound so bad, right? It’s not all bad. It actually works quite well for projects like the Waste Free Festivals initiative, as it is a part time project and most of the volunteers have income outside their community work. However, it is a system that does not work well when trying to create city-wide/long-term sustainable outcomes, as there is no money available to cover staff salaries or core operating costs. In the environmental sector, this meant that good people had been trying for years to do critical development work with little or no resources - often working for little or no income - which in turn was affecting the quality of our programs and our progress (you can’t build something great from a place of weakness).

A Self-Sustaining Organization
So there it was, I knew that there was a specific niche that needed to be filled in order for London to move toward a sustainable future and that it was imperative to create an organization that was sustainable in and of itself in order to fill that niche. It didn’t make sense to create another organization that would try and pull from the already scarce resources that were available, so I gathered the best thinkers I knew and together we designed an organization that was “business-like” - customer-driven and entrepreneurial. By offering products and services that the public and business community would deem valuable and pay for, we would be able to generate our own core revenue stream; which would allow us to maintain all of our free community services without being dependent on or restricted by grant funding in the long term. Our business model would ensure that we could be flexible, innovative and responsive, constantly developing new programs that would better meet the needs of our partners and the community in ways that helped fulfill our environmental mission.

Built on Partnerships
ecoLIVING London is built on partnerships - a broad term that encompasses everything from moral support to contractual relationships. Partners integrate their resources, skills, knowledge, and activities through ecoLIVING London, in order to generate efficiencies of scope and scale and create a more effective delivery vehicle than any one ‘green’ business or nonprofit organization could develop on its own.

Already we’ve been able to leverage connections within the community in order to:

- Obtain a $75,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation Grant
- Acquire over $40,000 in additional sponsorships and in kind contributions 
- Be featured in the MEDIA 9 times since we launched on July 2010
- Attract 3000+ people to our e-list database, 400 and growing on facebook and twitter, and 
- Generate over 21,000 unique hits on www.ecolivinglondon.org since launch 

ecoLIVING London combines the best qualities of the public sector, the private sector, and the traditional voluntary sector. We are social entrepreneurs and with your support we will help move the city forward, creating a safer healthier place for you and your family to live.

More info on our programs and services.

Tiffany Roschkow is the Founder and Executive Director of ecoLIVING London. She can be reached via email at tiffany [at] ecolivinglondon [dot] org">tiffany [at] ecolivinglondon [dot] org.