Message from Bill Young

Dear friends of SCP,

Over the last 5 years, our success in finding high quality, loyal and productive community hires for our franchise clients has led us to ask ourselves two questions. First, "Why shouldn't our goal at SCP be to have every medium and large sized corporation implement a community hiring program as a fundamental part of their recruitment strategy for entry-level employees?"; and second, "What needs to change to make this happen?"

The answer to the first question is easy. This is our new aspiration. We are inspired by the possibility and the impact that would be created for individuals who face employment barriers if every company adopted a community hiring approach in their hiring practices. Our challenge over the next ten years is to make this aspiration a reality.

Read more about the Corporate Community Hiring initiative »

As always, we appreciate your support and interest and we would be very interested in any feedback you could provide us on how to make this newsletter better.

All the best,

Bill Young
President, Social Capital Partners

Investment Update

We are excited to announce the expansion of our franchise investment portfolio in the automotive sector with Mr. Lube Canada. Over the past 6 months, SCP has successfully implemented a community hiring program in over 20 Mr. Lube locations across Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.

Mr. Lube franchisees have displayed a strong commitment to SCP's mission, creating high expectations that this partnership will generate numerous job opportunities for people outside the competitive labour market. A special thanks to Brad Johansen, Brian Elcock, Jeevan Minhas, Michael LeSage and Jim Vincent for their commitment and support of this partnership.

We have also recently expanded our portfolio to the restaurant sector with an investment in Shoeless Joe's Restaurants. We believe that the hospitality industry and Shoeless Joe's will prove to be a great fit for our community hiring program and will provide numerous job opportunities for motivated job seekers who are working with our community agency partners. Again, a special thanks to Chris Sonnen and Shawn Saraga for their support, and to Adam Grant, Michael Brand and Launce Bagg, our first restaurant franchisees.

Read more about our investment portfolio. »

Corporate Hiring in the Spotlight: AG&R Profiled

Impakt Corp, a company that helps corporations align business and social outcomes approached SCP in the fall to profile our work with the Franchise Community Hiring Program, and talked to Bill about our Corporate Community Hiring Pilot with Canada's largest employers.

Watch the video to hear from Andrew Muliyil, an Active Green + Ross franchisee and Bill speak about SCP's evolution from working with social enterprises, franchises and the vision for corporate community hiring in Canada.

Click here to watch the video »

Building Our Team

We are very excited to announce the addition of three new members to the SCP team.

Danielle Olsen joined SCP last fall as Manager, Partnership Development, where she is managing the Franchise Community Hiring Program. Danielle's background includes a combination of recruitment, community-based employment service and program management with both the not-for-profit and private sectors.

Leeat Weinstock joined the team at the beginning of 2011 and is responsible for managing SCP's investment portfolio. Leeat's background includes a hybrid of experience in investment banking, strategy and business development consultancy with non-profit organizations. Leeat was most recently working in Tanzania with Grassroots Business Fund.

Judy Doidge recently joined SCP as Senior Manager, Partnership Development. In this role, Judy works with employers and employment services organizations to establish community hiring partnerships. Judy brings a vast range of knowledge and experience from both the private and public sectors, and was most recently in operations and account management within the staffing industry.

We also want to thank Karim Harji for all his contributions to SCP over the past 3 years. Karim has gone on to start Venture Deli, a company that grows and capitalizes businesses that matter to the world. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

Publication: A Fine Balance

What are reasonable profitability targets for a start up social enterprise with a mission to create employment for disadvantaged populations? How does external financing play a role in the execution of the social mission? And how does the social mission, as a key part of the business model, impact the ability to reach profitability targets?

This article showcases one of SCP's early investments and highlights key learnings about the inherent mission tensions embedded in these business models.

Read the entire article here (PDF) »