Canada’s biggest challenges—housing affordability, climate resilience, reconciliation, inclusive prosperity, and social cohesion—are complex and interconnected. They demand an approach to problem solving that goes beyond single-issue responses, fragmented pilots, or technological breakthroughs.
Social innovation creates the capacity for governments, markets, communities, and institutions to collaborate, experiment, learn, and align around shared outcomes.
SI Canada acts as a strategic connector of local innovation with national policy, investment, and implementation pathways.
How we
work
Collaborative problem-solving
Turning complex problems into opportunities for lasting change.
We use a multi-stakeholder process that brings together individuals and organizations who are impacted by the problem as well as those who can enable and implement the solutions. This often includes community members, governments, philanthropy, academia, entrepreneurs and businesses who have a vested interest in finding sustainable solutions.
We combine design thinking and systems thinking approaches to develop and identify solutions that address the root causes of complex challenges and create systemic change.
We follow a tailored process, including problem framing, research, ideation, prototyping & experimentation, and implementation. From ideation to scaling, we steward innovators in ways that generate sustainable solutions with lasting impact, and build innovation capacity in communities over time.
featured projects
System-level solutions
Bridging successful innovations with the policies, incentives, and capital flows they need to scale and endure.
We help communities, institutions, and partners turn shared aspirations into coordinated action. We specialize in bringing diverse stakeholders together around a common vision and measurable outcomes. Our expertise lies in connecting strategy, policy, programs, and partnerships so that efforts reinforce one another rather than compete for attention and resources.
Through facilitation, strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and systems-level analysis, SI Canada helps organizations build the trust, clarity, and structures needed to achieve lasting collective impact. We work across sectors to ensure that goals are understood, responsibilities are clear, and investments are directed toward mutually beneficial results.
featured projects
Innovator network & practice communities
Connection is innovation infrastructure.
We believe that relationships and networks between people are among the most essential — and most overlooked — forms of innovation infrastructure. That’s why we work to connect and champion innovators and changemakers across the country. Like the challenges we take on, our network cuts across geography, sector, and problem area.
We steward a range of practice communities where members come together to exchange ideas, build skills, and strengthen the relationships that collaborative work depends on.
CURRENT PRACTICE COMMUNITIES:
past PRACTICE COMMUNITIES:
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Learning & evaluation
Making system change tangible.
Traditional evaluation approaches can be linear, and often miss the most important drivers of change: trust, collaboration, learning, and systems influence. We help organizations design learning and evaluation approaches that capture both measurable outcomes and the relational dynamics that make lasting impact possible. From impact frameworks and learning systems to funder-ready reporting, we help organizations tell a more complete and credible story of change.
featured projects
Canadian Alliance for Transit-Connected Housing (CATCH)
Protecting and growing affordable housing near transit
Earth Tech
Strategic support for climate ventures that are reducing emissions and strengthening climate resilience
Transit Oriented Affordable Housing
The goal of the Hamilton Transit Oriented Affordable Housing (TOAH) lab was to identify and co-create social financing and funding solutions to maintain and develop transit oriented affordable housing that can be applied to municipalities across Canada.
Quebec Cleantech Investment Challenge
The Quebec Cleantech Investment Challenge, powered by HSBC, kicked off in fall 2022 with a goal to increase the flow of capital investment into Quebec-based cleantech ventures, while simultaneously preparing up-and-coming investors to invest in these innovative climate solutions.
Accelerate From Anywhere
A joint program of SI Canada and Foresight Canada, Accelerate from Anywhere helped Canadians tackle climate and water challenges through the power of entrepreneurship — offering access to mentors, advisors, training, and networks.
Adopting Common Measures
Adopting Common Measures was a national three-year project that aimed to support Social Purpose Organizations as they measure and track their impact towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopting Common Measures was led by the Centre for Social Innovation, in partnership with Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) and the Common Approach to Impact Measurement.
Impact Entrepreneurship 101
This program helped innovators learn the foundations of impact entrepreneurship and begin their journey, from identifying the right problem to turning their solutions into a sustainable business model.
Financialization and Housing
SI Canada partnered with Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and MaRS on a social innovation lab to understand how the ‘Financialization of Housing’ is impacting housing affordability in Canada, and to support the goal of every Canadian having a home they can afford that meets their needs by 2030.
Climate Ventures
Climate Ventures fast-tracked the success of innovators developing solutions to the climate crisis. In 2022, Climate Ventures evolved their activities in partnership with SI Canada and Foresight Canada. Rather than operate under the Climate Ventures brand, we collaboratively run our flagship programs Earth Tech and Accelerate from Anywhere, and launch new initiatives together.
WOSEN
CSI offered social enterprise training programs for women and gender non-binary entrepreneurs as part of the Women of Ontario Social Enterprise Network (WOSEN).
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Work with us to build transformational change.
We work with communities and across sectors to design and scale innovative solutions to complex problems. We offer tiered programming to meet you where you are on your innovation journey. Whatever stage you’re at — defining a challenge, testing a solution, or working to scale what’s already working — we’d love to explore what’s possible together.