Introduction
Inspired by the dramatic economic growth that has resulted from technological innovation, social innovation promises to deliver social goods more effectively and find solutions to endemic problems. Governments, nonprofits, social enterprises, philanthropic funders, and businesses have all engaged in social innovation as a way to encourage creative solutions to difficult challenges and to generate social value, such as better health, well-being, community resilience, and inclusion. Unfortunately, social innovation has become a buzzword positioned incoherently at the center of normative debates and is stretched well beyond our ability to operationalize. This paper contributes to tackling this issue by developing conceptual boundaries, utilizing a practice-based approach that situates the term in its real-world contexts—in this case, its use by philanthropic funders. We ask: how are Canadian philanthropic foundations—in their role as champions of social innovation and among its biggest funders—practicing social innovation?
Social innovation’s rise in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors has been associated with a range of practices, from “social finance” to the application of “philanthrocapitalism.” Foundations and other institutional funders, which inhabit a powerful position both as funders and legitimacy-granters, often look for social innovation when funding nonprofits (Cukier & Gagnon, Reference Cukier and Gagnon2017) and have been at the forefront of defining, promoting, and legitimizing the concept internationally. Thus, the nonprofit sector has been affected by the emergence of new institutional forms under the banner of social innovation that blur the boundaries between nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors, such as social enterprises and social impact bonds (Aoyama, Reference Aoyama2016; Jenson, Reference Jenson, Nicholls, Simon and Gabriel2015; Nicholls & Murdock, Reference Nicholls and Murdock2012). The prevalence of social innovation activities in nonprofit and philanthropic spaces renders it an important topic to study, as recognized in the growing body of nonprofit and philanthropic research on the subject (e.g., Jaskyte et al., Reference Jaskyte, Amato and Sperber2018; Pasikowski & Zajda, Reference Pasikowski and Zajda2023; Sancino et al., Reference Sancino, Scognamiglio, Corvo, Imperiale and Pasi2024; Shier & Handy, Reference Shier and Handy2015; Svensson et al., Reference Svensson, Mahoney and Hambrick2020).
In this article, we focus on Canadian foundations, one of the most important and active philanthropic sectors in the world, with annual giving that is among the highest globally per capita, finding that they have significant problems with the meaning and use of social innovation; they often find the term vague and struggle to identify specific actions that it encompasses. Yet, fundamentally, they all view social innovation as the purposeful actualization of novelty in a social setting and have enacted discernible strategies and tools to encourage it. This article contributes to the literature by introducing social innovation tools and strategies for understanding the practice of social innovation. We identify fourteen social innovation tools used by Canadian philanthropic foundations. These coalesce around four ideal-type social innovation strategies: being a seed funder, promoting the social innovation “ecosystem,” leading social innovation, and providing the enabling conditions for social innovation. The four strategies identified in this study reflect different understandings about social innovation. For some, social innovation is primarily about helping new organizations. For others, it means ensuring the enabling conditions required for creativity, disseminating social innovation methods and skills, or advancing cross-sectoral collaboration. The social innovation strategies also reveal two strategic orientations toward social innovation, reflecting differences in how foundations see their roles. Most foundations acted as social innovation facilitators, and a smaller group sought to lead social innovation through orchestration.
Review of the social innovation literature
Social innovation is an established area of practice and research that materialized over the past two decades (Păunescu, Reference Păunescu2014; Tansey, Reference Tansey2011). Many governments have established social innovation policies (Tracey & Stott, Reference Tracey and Stott2017); businesses frequently describe their social responsibility activities as social innovation (Boggs Davidsen, Reference Boggs Davidsen2015; Dionisio & de Vargas, Reference Dionisio and de Vargas2020; Strandberg, Reference Strandberg2015); and nonprofit organizations, social enterprises, and philanthropic funders increasingly seek to be socially innovative in approaching their missions and in their tactics (Shier & Handy, Reference Shier and Handy2015, 2020; Westley & Antadze, Reference Westley and Antadze2010; Westley et al., Reference Westley, Antadze, Riddell, Robinson and Geobey2014; Wang & Soule, Reference Wang and Soule2016). Given the myriad public and private resources channeled into social innovation, it is important to understand what social innovation means, how it works, and its policy outcomes.
Within the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, social innovation’s rise since the mid-2000s is connected to the entrance of Silicon Valley mega-philanthropists and has served as a response to the philanthropic sector’s legitimacy challenges (McGoey, Reference McGoey2015). Social innovation has been associated with a range of philanthropic trends, from “social finance” to the application of “philanthrocapitalism,” including “venture” and “strategic” philanthropy, “effective altruism,” and program design, monitoring, and evaluation practices aimed at establishing the effectiveness of an initiative (e.g., experiments, developmental evaluation, and impact and outcomes measurement) (Eikenberry, Reference Eikenberry2007; Kasper & Marcoux, Reference Kasper and Marcoux2014; Salamon, Reference Salamon2014; Singer, Reference Singer2015). Social innovation has also been professionalized through university courses and programs (Stauch, Reference Stauch2016; Wright et al., Reference Wright, Rennick and Vorsteveld2016). Additionally, new financial mechanisms such as microfinance and Islamic finance have been developed to advance social goals (Calder, Reference Calder2019; Sanyal, Reference Sanyal2009).
At the same time, social innovation has emerged as a highly interdisciplinary field of research, comprising at least nine research traditions (Pue & Breznitz, Reference Pue and Breznitz2017). It is, however, quite fragmented: social innovation researchers tend to cite members of the same community, but intercommunity citation is less frequent. Although the considerable diversity within the study of social innovation is to be applauded, it has made it difficult to identify, apply, and test its theoretical propositions coherently. As a result, social innovation remains a big concept with weak boundaries.
At the heart of this problem is ongoing definitional contestation within social innovation research. Most researchers and practitioners agree that in its purest form, social innovation encompasses interventions that are both “new” and “good” (McGoey, Reference McGoey2015). The disagreement arises with respect to converting this vague idea into an operational term and the conceptual boundaries that result. One line of definitional debate uses the heuristic of “process” and “outcomes” definitions of social innovation (e.g., Mulgan, Reference Mulgan, Nicholls and Murdock2012 vs. Moulaert, Reference Moulaert, Moulaert, Swyngedouw, Martinelli and Gonzalez2010). In this debate, definitions of social innovation are described as either innovation that meets social needs (social outcomes) or innovation in social relations (social processes). Beyond these two camps, researchers disagree about the concept of the “good” that underpins social innovation (see, e.g., Pue & Breznitz, Reference Pue and Breznitz2017), how “new” and how “radical” something needs to be to count as social innovation (e.g., Avelino et al., Reference Avelino, Wittmayer, Pel, Weaver, Dumitru, Haxeltine, Kemp, Jørgensen, Bauler, Ruijsink and O’Riordan2019; Pue & Breznitz, Reference Pue and Breznitz2017; Westley & Antadze, Reference Westley and Antadze2010), whether social innovation is limited to a particular sector of society (e.g., Hämäläinen & Heiskala, Reference Hämäläinen and Heiskala2007), and whether social innovation is about specific social trends, such as hybridization (Aoyama, Reference Aoyama2016), neoliberalism (McGoey, Reference McGoey2015), or welfare state privatization (Sancino et al., Reference Sancino, Scognamiglio, Corvo, Imperiale and Pasi2024; Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Roscigno and Huffman2015).
Indeed, social innovation is positioned at the center of normative debates about economic and social paradigms. Some invoke the term with the aim of extending the principles of free market capitalism to traditionally noneconomic realms (e.g., Murray et al., Reference Murray, Caulier-Grice and Mulgan2010). Others present social innovation as a way to reform and rein in capitalism: from this perspective, social innovation is a critique of free market capitalism and the values that it espouses (Moulaert et al., Reference Moulaert, MacCallum, Mehmood and Hamdouch2013; Shaw & de Bruin, Reference Shaw and de Bruin2013). Social innovation has been presented as both a retrenchment and a reinvigoration of the public realm—a solidaristic transition away from neoliberalism (Alonso & Rodriguez, Reference Alonso and Rodriguez2011; El-Haddadeh & Weerakkody, Reference El-Haddadeh and Weerakkody2012; Grimm et al., Reference Grimm, Fox, Baines and Albertson2013; Zackland, Reference Zackland, Lamotte, Le Roy, Massit and Puissant2014) and a strengthening of neoliberalism by inserting economic concepts into the provision of public services (e.g., Mulgan, 2015). Philanthropic actors have contributed to and shaped these debates, for example through the conceptual work of Geoff Mulgan at the Young Foundation.
Obviously, one concept cannot possibly mean all of these things; social innovation has been stretched well beyond our ability to operationalize. At least 252 distinct definitions of social innovation have been proposed, espousing 30 different characteristics (Edwards-Schachter & Wallace, Reference Edwards-Schachter and Wallace2017; Pue & Breznitz, Reference Pue and Breznitz2017). It is not clear what actors are doing—or how or why—when they engage in social innovation. This prevents social innovation from being usefully deployed as an analytical concept. As such, developing conceptual boundaries should be a priority. Given the widespread use of “social innovation,” a practice-based approach offers an opportunity to do just that.
Social innovation as a practice
One can approach the study of a term in two ways: as a concept or as a practice. Researchers can treat a term as an analytical concept: to obtain analytical leverage on a given issue. This entails using the term “social innovation” to understand a part of the world better. This is the goal of most social innovation research, but the current lack of definitional clarity makes it difficult to use the term in this way. It is unclear what it would mean, exactly, to analyze, say, Black Lives Matter protests through a social innovation lens (other than the observation that it is “good” and “new,” which is not particularly helpful). From a deductive point of view, social innovation could mean almost anything: if “innovation” is sometimes criticized for its vagueness, the term “social” is even more vast—and it is unclear whether, as a modifier, “social” narrows or widens the definition of “innovation.”
Instead, we believe that progress in obtaining clarity on the term social innovation will be best achieved by treating it as a practice. Doing so can help clarify the boundaries of the term in ongoing usage, which may make it possible to apply social innovation as a concept in the future. Studying a term as a practice begins with the proposition that, to be understood, meaning needs to be put into context, and the milieu of a term’s use leads to particular meanings (Barinaga, Reference Barinaga2009; Rouse, Reference Rouse, Turner and Risjord2007). Analysis of this kind entails understanding the outward performance of social innovation in order to disentangle its meanings and purposes (Rouse, Reference Rouse, Turner and Risjord2007). Although some authors have made these kinds of comments in their work (Bonifacio, Reference Bonifacio2014; McGoey, Reference McGoey2015)—indeed, Domanski et al. (Reference Domanski, Howaldt and Kaletka2019) explicitly call for a practice approach to social innovation—very little empirical attention has been devoted to this type of social innovation research.
Practice theory positions practices as the central unit of analysis, rather than structures or agents. Whereas the theoretical foundations of practice theory have a long history linked to thinkers such as Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Marx (Bueger & Gadinger, Reference Bueger and Gadinger2018; Rouse, Reference Rouse, Turner and Risjord2007), more proximate progenitors of the “practice turns” in social science include Foucault (Reference Foucault1977), Giddens (Reference Giddens1984), Bourdieu and Nice (Reference Bourdieu and Nice1977), and Taylor (Reference Taylor1985). Because practice approaches deliberately destabilize the link between theory and empirical research by “empiricizing” theory (Schmidt, Reference Schmidt, Jonas, Littig and Wroblewski2017, p. 5), they are ideal for research that seeks to define contested concepts. The contributors to Best and Gheciu (Reference Best, Gheciu, Best and Gheciu2014) use practice theory to problematize the reconstitution of the public in global politics, and this study similarly captures the evolving meaning of social innovation through an analysis of its practice within philanthropic foundations.
Research using a practice approach “starts by paying attention to what actors do and say, and how these activities are embedded in broader contexts” (Bueger & Gadinger, Reference Bueger and Gadinger2018, p. 2). Practice theory presents an ontology that views the social as a field of “interwoven practices centrally organized around shared practical understandings” (Schatzki Reference Schatzki, Schatzki, Cetina and Savigny2001, p. 12). On the basis of this ontology, practice approaches are analyses that develop an account of a field of practices or that study a topic within a field (Schatzki, Reference Schatzki, Schatzki, Cetina and Savigny2001). A wide range of research methods is associated with practice theory (Miettinen et al., Reference Miettinen, Samra-Fredericks and Yanow2009). However, in all cases, methodologically, the study of practices requires attention to “sense-making” and “situated-ness” (Adler & Pouliot, Reference Adler, Pouliot, Adler and Pouliot2011, p. 9), as practices do not have stable meanings outside a particular social context (Spaargaren et al., Reference Spaargaren, Lamers, Weenink, Spaargaren, Weenink and Lamers2016). Taking a practice approach requires an object of study—in this case, social innovation—to be viewed simultaneously as a subject, which means considering its social reproduction and transformation through the material and ideational actions of those within a given sphere of life (Bourdieu & Nice, Reference Bourdieu and Nice1977; Giddens, Reference Giddens1984; Schatzki et al., Reference Schatzki, Cetina and von Savigny2001)—in this case, Canadian philanthropic foundations.
Research design and methods
This study explores the practice of social innovation among Canadian foundations, meaning: how is the term understood? Why is it supported (or opposed)? And how is it performed in this field? In a practice approach, especially one that pertains to the conceptualization of new domains and patterns of behavior, ideally we should be able to study the main actors in a field that use a term and, in doing so, imbue it with meaning. Thankfully, in the case of social innovation, one set of such actors can be clearly identified: philanthropic foundations. Philanthropic foundations have been at the forefront of defining, promoting, and legitimizing social innovation around the world. They have been the most devoted financial supporters (Krauz-Lahav & Kemp, 2020); invested significant resources in making social innovation a field of academic study and created applied training programs (Aspen Institute, n.d.; Stauch, Reference Stauch2016; Wright et al., Reference Wright, Rennick and Vorsteveld2016); lobbied for the creation of social innovation policies (Cahill & Spitz, Reference Cahill and Spitz2017); and contributed to defining both the concept and the actions associated with practicing social innovation (Cahill & Spitz, Reference Cahill and Spitz2017; Westley et al., Reference Westley, Laban, Rose, McGowan, Robinson, Tjornbo and Tovey2015).
Canada offers an interesting case. It has a large and vibrant philanthropic community. On a per capita basis, Canada has one of the biggest nonprofit sectors in the Global North (Hall et al., Reference Hall, Barr, Easwaramoorthy, Sokolowski and Salamon2005). Canada is also among the 10 most generous countries, according to the World Giving Index, which measures donation and volunteering behavior (CAF, 2019), and has significant variation in foundations in terms of type (community, family, corporate, and government), size, and geographic distribution. It is home to more than 10,000 philanthropic foundations, which hold approximately CAD $69.7 billion in assets and disburse $6.7 billion annually in grants to qualified donees (Elson et al., Reference Elson, Lefèvre and Fontan2020). Further, some Canadian foundations have been enthusiastic supporters of social innovation (Cahill & Spitz, Reference Cahill and Spitz2017).
Canada is seen as a leader in social innovation, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Social Innovation Index comparing the social innovation capacity of 45 countries (EIU, 2016). Canada is also an interesting case because it balances Anglophone approaches to social innovation—which are associated in particular with the United States and the United Kingdom—with other approaches that prevail in continental Europe and Asia (EIU, 2016). As a country, Canada stands somewhere in the middle: it is generally categorized as a liberal welfare regime, yet it is less commodified and has less inequality than other liberal welfare regimes, especially the United States (OECD, 2019; Scruggs & Allan, Reference Scruggs and Allan2006). But, unlike many other countries with comparable levels of social protection, Canada is an immigration-based society with multiple racial, linguistic, and regional cleavages (Fearon, Reference Fearon2003; IOM, 2019). Furthermore, few studies exist on Canadian foundations, and, therefore, they are a ripe subject of research.
We conducted interviews only at large foundations, mostly those in Philanthropic Foundations Canada’s list of the largest 150 foundations or among the largest community foundations (2014). Our rationale was based on the expectation that large foundations are more likely to have a professional staff charged with developing strategies and procedures about concepts such as social innovation. Foundations with staff are more likely to offer expertise on granting strategies, measuring success, and the role of foundations in Canadian society.
We employed multiple archival and open-ended interview strategies in our study. First, we reviewed the global scholarly and practitioner literature on social innovation to develop an understanding of the concept, its uses, and debates. To bridge the gap between social innovation theory and practice, we then conducted a first wave of semi-structured interviews with actors involved in devising and implementing foundation strategy: program staff, executive staff, and board members. Interviews covered topics that pertain to how each foundation understands social innovation and associated concepts; what the interviewers believe to be the utility of social innovation as a concept; and how it has acted, if at all, to encourage social innovation. Although some foundations had a position and strategy on social innovation, it was equally important to understand activities by foundations that did not identify as “doing” social innovation. We also delved into the mission of each foundation, especially how the mission is understood and operationalized in foundation policy; the theory of change underlying the mission; and how evaluation is conducted. Where attempts to measure effectiveness or impact had been performed, we explored them. Finally, we discussed the connections between social innovation and mission, impact, and effectiveness. In doing so, we paid attention to lessons learned and obstacles. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed in combination with archival data to triangulate the findings and, where possible, understand concretely how actions related to social innovation translated to changes in grant giving over time. We applied an interpretivist sense-making approach to qualitative analysis, as is common for practice theory studies.
Our first wave of interviews, the in-depth case studies, occurred between June and August 2016. In this stage, we interviewed 27 staff and board members of 7 foundations that our background research suggested would be active in social innovation, either as a premeditated strategy or a de facto outcome of their granting activities. Importantly, background research suggested that each foundation approached social innovation differently. We analyzed the data from this first set of interviews—qualitatively, through the identification of key themes—to develop interim findings between August and November 2016 and then conducted a second wave of interviews to test and elaborate on them, to validate the findings, and strengthen representativeness, between November and December 2016. In all, 38 interviews were conducted with representatives of 18 foundations (Table 1).
Participating foundations
Table 1. Long description
The table is divided into Phase 1 and Phase 2.
Phase 1 includes:
* J. Armand Bombardier Foundation: Private, family; Valcourt, Quebec; $177 million.
* MasterCard Foundation: Private, corporate; Toronto, Ontario; $39.6 billion.
* J.W. McConnell Family Foundation: Private, family; Montreal, Quebec; $652 million.
* Metcalf Foundation: Private, family; Toronto, Ontario; $188 million.
* Maytree: Private, family; Toronto, Ontario; $1 million.
* Laidlaw Foundation: Private; Toronto, Ontario; $71 million.
* Vancouver Foundation: Public, community; Vancouver, British Columbia; $1.6 billion.
Phase 2 includes:
* Muttart Foundation: Private; Edmonton, Alberta; $35.5 million.
* Toronto Community Foundation: Public, community; Toronto, Ontario; $759 million.
* Ivey Foundation: Private; Toronto, Ontario; $100 million.
* Inspirit Foundation: Public; Toronto, Ontario; $35 million.
* Ontario Trillium Foundation: Government; Toronto, Ontario; Not available.
* Edmonton Community Foundation: Public, community; Edmonton, Alberta; $692 million.
* Lawson Foundation: Private, family; Toronto, Ontario; $129 million.
* Walter and Duncan Gordon Charitable Foundation: Private, family; Toronto, Ontario; $74 million.
* Donner Canadian Foundation: Private, family; Toronto, Ontario; $153 million.
* Suncor Energy Foundation: Private, corporate; Calgary, Alberta; $22 million.
* Coast Conservation Endowment Fund: Public; Vancouver, British Columbia; $161 million.
Source: Canada Revenue Agency Charities Listing, most recent available.
The foundations included in this study were all headquartered in the four most populous Canadian provinces, but they operate across all regions of Canada. Some were among the oldest foundations in Canada, while others had been established within the past decade. Importantly, the foundations in this study span different organizational types and cover diverse issue areas, from health to education, research, arts and culture, children’s issues, religion, community economic development, Indigenous well-being, international development, poverty reduction, and environmental protection. Some foundations had very specific missions, whereas others were generalists.
There are several limitations to bear in mind when interpreting these results. First, all practice-based approaches are context-specific and represent a point in time. The data collected here are from 2016; it is possible that the philanthropic foundations studied have adjusted their approaches to social innovation since that time. Similarly, the practice of social innovation may differ in other contexts, including location and actor type.
Findings
How foundations view social innovation
The foundations that participated in this study described significant confusion about the meaning and use of social innovation. They often stated that the term is vague and struggled to identify specific actions it prescribes. Even among leading foundations, most practitioners did not have a clear and consistent understanding of social innovation. For instance, one foundation executive said: “I have trouble with it because I think it’s a catch-all. I think people use it—it’s a conflated term. Everything fits in under it, and it can make you sound like you’re at the progressive edge of things without necessarily doing anything that’s innovative at all.” The articulation of “social innovation” in interviews suggested uncertainty about how the term should be understood. “Social innovation” was often used to describe broad changes in philanthropic practices: for example, emphasizing social or policy change. In other cases, “social innovation” meant that charities and foundations are being more vocal about what they do. Other usages included the identification of exit strategies, an emphasis on not creating dependence, and the changing relationship of funders to fundees—such as the development of an “iterative, ongoing conversation with our grantees.”
Foundation staff were attuned to the question of when social innovation is useful and under what circumstances. For example, they noted that social innovation is not a cure-all: “Social innovation should not be a hammer looking for a nail.” Likewise, foundation staff expressed a keen understanding that projects that are “very simple” are often important and worth funding, even if “they don’t reinvent the way of doing things.” Furthermore, some interview participants were concerned that terms like “social innovation” are inaccessible and might prevent foundations from funding deserving organizations. One staff member remarked: “Very often we’ll hear, ‘Oh, social innovation, it’s the new buzzword. It’s a way for grant-makers to say no to us.’” Despite these hesitations about the term, it was clear that foundations want to promote characteristics such as “risk-taking,” “experimentation,” and “impact,” which they associated with social innovation.
When foundations invoked the concept of social innovation, we found they were drawing on an understanding that included five constitutive elements: novelty, an agent, purposefulness, adoption, and value creation. Novelty is a relative concept, defined with regard to the perception of actors in that context (Heiskala, Reference Heiskala, Hämäläinen and Heiskala2007; Neumeier, Reference Neumeier2012), which signifies the introduction of originality through invention, recombination, or transplantation of an existing idea to a new context (Schumpeter, Reference Schumpeter1934). Foundations spoke about different kinds of novelty, including technological, informational, policy, and social (intersubjective) novelty. Agents introduce new elements into existing structures (DiMaggio Reference DiMaggio and Zucker1988). The foundations in this study viewed a range of actors as being the agents of social innovation—from creative individuals to nonprofits, social enterprises, and the foundations themselves. Purposefulness means that innovation is intentional: it is driven by deliberate, goal-oriented action (Cajaiba-Santana, Reference Cajaiba-Santana2014). Innovation is thus instrumentalized novelty, meaning it is undertaken in order to serve an identified end (Grimm et al., Reference Grimm, Fox, Baines and Albertson2013). Adoption refers to implementation: the actualization of an idea (Pue & Breznitz, Reference Pue and Breznitz2017). The foundations in this study identified a range of different scales and systems, from physical implementation to the inculcation of social norms and enactment of public policy. Finally, innovation creates value, however defined, for someone. Thus, as practiced in this case, social innovation is the purposeful actualization of novelty in a social setting, which means that it is a process encompassing the development and adoption of creative strategies that reconfigure existing practices in order to actualize a given collective goal.
This definition identifies the building blocks of innovation and their relationship as part of a process, providing a broad yet coherent basis on which diverse areas of social innovation research can build. It is a process definition that avoids the challenges associated with defining social innovation by its outcomes and is not a normative definition in the sense that, although the aim of the actor is a given collective goal, the researcher does not have to agree with the “goodness” of said goal to treat it as social innovation (Pue & Breznitz, Reference Pue and Breznitz2017).
The foundations in this study have enacted strategies and tools to encourage social innovation. Although all four social innovation strategies identified here draw on a view of social innovation as the purposeful actualization of novelty, each strategy assumes different competencies and tools inherent in supporting social innovation. In the next section, we introduce social innovation strategies and tools and how we observed their usage in the context of Canadian philanthropic foundations’ behavior. We also identify four ideal-type social innovation strategies: being a seed funder, promoting a social innovation ecosystem, fostering enabling conditions for social innovation, and leading social innovation.
Four social innovation strategies
Foundations develop and refine strategies as a regular long-term planning activity. A strategy is “a stream of decisions that guides an organization’s alignment with its environment and shapes its internal policies and procedures” (Graddy and Morgan Reference Graddy and Morgan2006, p. 610). Strategies are premised on positionality—that is, they encapsulate an understanding of how organizations view themselves and their role in a broader regime. Where a foundation decides that this will include social innovation, it may develop a social innovation strategy (SIS). A SIS refers to decisions about the foundation’s goal(s) in acting on social innovation and the role that it seeks to play in reference to the broader social innovation environment, including identification of social innovation agents, adoption scales/systems, and types of novelty. Our research identified four SISs: (1) being a seed funder; (2) fostering enabling conditions for social innovation; (3) promoting the social innovation ecosystem; and (4) leading social innovation.
The foundation that has developed a SIS can then connect it to the tactics in its repertoire. Supporting a SIS are a series of social innovation tools (hereby: tools), which are smaller, concrete actions that can be thought of as the tactics in a foundation’s repertoire (Ennis, Reference Ennis1987; Tilly, Reference Tilly1978) in order to implement a SIS, or as devices for accomplishing an objective connected to social innovation. This study identifies 14 social innovation tools, most of which will be recognizable as existing concepts in the philanthropic and nonprofit literature, and that the foundations studied here associate with the practice of social innovation, such as social enterprise (e.g., Turpin & Shier, 2024), social entrepreneurship (e.g., Dees, Reference Dees2008), venture philanthropy (e.g., Gordon, Reference Gordon2014), social innovation labs (e.g., Westley et al., Reference Westley, Laban, Rose, McGowan, Robinson, Tjornbo and Tovey2015), and developmental evaluation (e.g., Antadze & Westley, Reference Antadze and Westley2012).
The four SIS identified here are inductively developed ideal types that recognize agreement among the tools and a strategic orientation. While the strategic orientation and tools broadly track with qualitative analysis of the mission, theory of change, and activities of the foundation, fitting them together into a specific SIS is a task of analysis undertaken by the authors. Broadly speaking, foundations adopted one of two strategic orientations toward social innovation: leadership or facilitation. Foundations most commonly have acted as facilitators for other innovative actors, whether these are individuals, charities, or even businesses. Foundations see several ways to facilitate social innovation: by being seed funders; by fostering the enabling conditions of social innovation; and by promoting the social innovation ecosystem. However, foundations have also acted as social innovators themselves by using their unique assets to lead social innovation.
Interviews revealed that most foundations used multiple tools, often simultaneously and in combination with one another. However, foundations typically did not articulate a clear SIS, nor did they have a sense of how to connect their overall strategy to the tools that they undertook. Most commonly, foundations had an activity that they viewed as their organization’s social innovation program or grant, while they would point to other activities that they identified as innovative. This haphazard use of tools is partially due to the confusion about the meaning and utility of social innovation. It also suggests the absence of tools to support foundation planning on social innovation at a strategic level.
Seed funder
Foundations have used a range of early financing and capacity support, with the view that nascent groups need the most help to innovate. This first SIS, the “seed funder” strategy, is rooted in the notion that new or small organizations need support, because social innovation is easier for bigger, established organizations. In some instances, this approach to social innovation fit with the foundation’s traditional granting priorities, because the foundation had always prioritized granting to grassroots or small organizations. For instance:
The family’s [funding foundation] lens was, we will put the money where it’s most difficult to access money. In other words, our best contribution can be to little organizations or new initiatives where our little contribution could make a difference. We’re not interested in hospitals or opera houses or universities.
Having this institutional history was often helpful for foundations seeking to encourage social innovation through early-stage supports, because they had existing relationships to draw upon. “We have a good relationship with the grassroots,” one staff member offered as an explanation for why her foundation had decided to take this approach to social innovation. The strategy of being there early and acting as a seed funder is associated with four tools: early financing to new charities and social enterprises; capacity-building to new charities and social enterprises; financing for scale for new charities and social enterprises; and capacity-building for scale for new charities and social enterprises (Table 2).
Seed funder social innovation tools
Table 2. Long description
The table consists of four columns: Tool, Logic, Examples, and Resource.
Row 1:
- Tool: Providing early financing to new charities and social enterprises.
- Logic: A barrier to social innovation is the difficulty new organizations have in accessing finance to develop or test an idea.
- Examples: Vancouver Foundation Field of Interest F O I Grants (Develop/Test).
- Resource: Financial support.
Row 2:
- Tool: Providing capacity-building support to new charities and social enterprises in generating or implementing a new idea.
- Logic: Social innovation attempts may fail because new organizations lack the skills to fully implement an idea.
- Examples: Vancouver Foundation F O I Develop Cohort; McConnell Foundation’s Innoweave Coaching; Metcalf Foundation Creative Strategies Incubator.
- Resource: Programming.
Row 3:
- Tool: Providing financing to new charities and social enterprises so they can achieve scale.
- Logic: New ideas may fail to achieve impact because they are unable to grow due to lack of financing.
- Examples: Edmonton Community Foundation Social Enterprise Fund; Vancouver Foundation F O I Grow Grants; some MasterCard Foundation Financial Inclusion stream grants; McConnell Foundation Social Innovation Fund Re-tooling for Growth.
- Resource: Financial support.
Row 4:
- Tool: Providing capacity-building support to new charities and social enterprises so they can achieve scale.
- Logic: New ideas may fail to achieve impact because they are unable to grow due to lack of capacity.
- Examples: Social Entrepreneurs Ireland’s Impact Program; Innoweave scaling for impact modules.
- Resource: Programming.
Source: Author interviews.
Fostering enabling conditions for social innovation
The second SIS seeks to provide enabling conditions that are ancillary to social innovation—such as funding and business planning capacity—but that support individuals and organizations that want to do social innovation. Foundations adopting this SIS described it as “enabling grassroots innovation” and “fostering individual leadership and partnership.” One participant described the approach thusly:
it’s giving thoughtful people or organizations the time and the space and the resources to come at things in a new way and then creating the circumstances to support them in achieving what the new strategy or approach or thinking might be.
Financial support was given particular emphasis as an enabling condition of innovation:
…charitable organizations that do a lot of good in our province and in our country would have relative ease in getting money for programs […] but what they don’t have is access to funds to enhance the [approach to] dealing with the need that that charity is addressing.
Five tools are associated with the strategy of fostering the enabling conditions of social innovation: funding entrepreneurial individuals, training entrepreneurial individuals, capacity-building for new charities and social enterprises, social innovation challenges, and funding established organizations to try new approaches. While the tools used under this SIS target different actors and use different levers, they all begin from a strategic orientation of facilitating social innovation, with the notion that doing so is about providing the enabling conditions for organizations to be innovative (Table 3).
Enabling conditions social innovation tools
Table 3. Long description
The table consists of four columns: Tool, Logic, Examples, and Resource.
* Row 1: Tool is Funding entrepreneurial individuals. Logic states creative individuals need resources and space. Examples include Metcalf Foundation Innovation Fellowship and Anzisha Prize. Resource is Financial support.
* Row 2: Tool is Training entrepreneurial individuals. Logic states creative individuals need training. Examples include Gordon Foundation Jane Glassco Northern Fellowship and MasterCard Foundation Youth Livelihoods programming. Resource is Programming.
* Row 3: Tool is Providing capacity-building support to new charities and social enterprises. Logic suggests organizations may fail without skills to implement ideas. Examples include Vancouver Foundation F O I Develop Cohort and McConnell Foundation Innoweave Coaching. Resource is Programming.
* Row 4: Tool is Administering social innovation challenges. Logic states foundations can lead by directing funds to pervasive challenges. Example is MasterCard Foundation Innovation Competition. Resource is Financial support.
* Row 5: Tool is Funding established organizations to try new approaches. Logic notes nonprofits lack financing for new things. Examples include Donner Canadian Foundation grant and Laidlaw Foundation Youth Sector Innovation grant. Resource is Financial support.
Source: Author interviews.
Promoting the social innovation ecosystem
The next SIS entails acting indirectly to promote aspects of the social innovation ecosystem, by which participants meant the network of institutions, organizations, professionals, and methodologies viewed as necessary to do social innovation. Social innovation, in this view, entails “a suite of approaches that if taken cumulatively and selectively, we feel can have a dramatic impact in the fields that we are working in.” Some examples noted in the interviews include developmental evaluation, social labs, impact investing, and outcomes measurement. Large- and mid-size foundations included in our study adopted this approach, albeit through the use of different tools. Often, an animating impulse for this strategy is the desire to make social innovation more accessible: acting as “transmitters” in the “democratization” of social innovation by “help[ing] the nonprofit sector to be able to access and use innovation tools.” Three tools are associated with the strategy of promoting the social innovation ecosystem: training for social innovation methodologies, funding social research and development (R&D), and incubating new initiatives (Table 4).
Promoting the ecosystem social innovation tools
Table 4. Long description
The table consists of four columns: Tool, Logic, Examples, and Resource(s).
Row 1:
- Tool: Providing training in social innovation methodologies.
- Logic: Nonprofits lack the tools to do social innovation effectively and social innovation needs to be made accessible.
- Examples: Innoweave; Philagora; Social Innovation Generation (SiG); RECODE.
- Resource(s): Programming.
Row 2:
- Tool: Funding research, including social R & D.
- Logic: Research can inform foundation strategic initiatives.
- Examples: Ivey Foundation support for the Ecofiscal Commission; Muttart Foundation early childhood and nonprofit sector research; MasterCard Foundation Next Generation Initiative; Toronto Community Foundation Vital Signs report; McConnell Foundation support for SiG.
- Resource(s): Programming, financial support, reputation.
Row 3:
- Tool: Incubating ideas and later spinning them out.
- Logic: Foundations have the capacity to absorb greater risk, which allows them to experiment with new ideas directly.
- Examples: Edmonton Community Foundation and the Edmonton Community Development Corporation; Maytree Foundation and Roots of Empathy, Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (T R I E C), DiverseCity OnBoard.
- Resource(s): Programming, followed by financial support.
Source: Author interviews.
All three of these tools begin from the premise that facilitating social innovation can best be done by contributing to the broader ecosystem, but aim to achieve it in different ways.
Leading social innovation
In the final SIS, a foundation orchestrates change across multiple stakeholder groups. Here the foundation takes the lead in directing a particular vision of social change, often with an ambitious scope and long time horizon. This strategy is linked to beliefs about the niche that foundations occupy. As one foundation executive director explained: “Philanthropy can take the long view and look at sustained commitments to improving human condition and societies.” Another participant noted:
we have the unique position to be able to bring people together. When a foundation asks, a lot of people respond. […] And so we use our convening power in a significant way to break down silos, to foster new kinds of conversation.
Foundations applying this strategy thought about social innovation as “systemic change,” “social transformation,” or “changing the rules of the game.”
This strategy takes considerable staff capacity and issue-area knowledge and works best when foundations have greater resources or more specific missions, requiring deep and sustained investment. “If you want to go big, what you need is long-term investment and patience and a horizon that’s huge.” At least four tools are associated with the strategy of leading systemic change: strategic (or venture) philanthropy to achieve a desired social change (e.g., Gordon, Reference Gordon2014), incubating new initiatives, convening multi-stakeholder discussions, and cohorts for communities of practice (Table 5).
Leading social innovation tools
Table 5. Long description
The table consists of four columns: Tool, Logic, Examples, and Resource(s).
* Row 1: The tool is identifying a desired social change and disbursing grants. The logic is that foundations coordinate social change efforts among various players. Examples include Metcalf Resilient Neighborhood Economies, Maytree Foundation’s work on refugees and poverty, and Coast Fund. Resources are programming, financial support, and reputation.
* Row 2: The tool is incubating ideas and later spinning them out. The logic is that foundations can absorb greater risk to experiment directly. Examples include Edmonton Community Foundation and the Edmonton Community Development Corporation, and Maytree Foundation with Roots of Empathy, T R I E C, and DiverseCity OnBoard. Resources are programming followed by financial support.
* Row 3: The tool is convening multi-stakeholder discussions. The logic is that foundations are viewed as legitimate and can bring uncommon partners to the table. Examples include Energy Futures Lab (Suncor Energy Foundation and others) and Ivey Foundation. Resources are reputation and programming.
* Row 4: The tool is strengthening communities of practice through cohorts. The logic is that innovation occurs when practitioners give dedicated thought to an issue. Examples include Lawson Foundation cohort, McConnell Foundation social innovation learning program, Metcalf Foundation Creative Strategies Incubator, and Vancouver Foundation learning labs. Resource is programming.
Source: Author interviews.
The strategic orientation of this SIS differs from the first three presented. Rather than viewing itself as an organization with tools to facilitate social innovation by others, this SIS begins from the premise that the foundation should take a lead role in doing social innovation. The understanding of social innovation that is taken in this SIS is generally at a larger scale—disruptive, rather than incremental—and focused on “systemic” innovation, affecting policy or institutions.
Conclusions
As a result of fragmentation and ongoing definitional contestation, social innovation is a weak analytical concept. As conceptual boundaries appear unlikely to be determined deductively, this article studies the term “social innovation” as it is practiced in real-world contexts. We applied this approach through a study of Canadian philanthropic foundations, in which we observed 14 social innovation tools coalescing around four social innovation strategies: being a seed funder, fostering enabling conditions, promoting the social innovation ecosystem, and leading social innovation. Across all four strategies, foundations see social innovation as the purposeful realization of novelty in a social setting: a process that encompasses the development and adoption of creative strategies to reconfigure existing practices to achieve a given collective goal.
The four social innovation strategies identified in this study reflect different understandings of the necessary conditions for social innovation to occur. For some foundations, social innovation is primarily about helping new organizations by being a seed funder. For others, it means ensuring that organizations and individuals have the enabling conditions required to be creative. A third vision sees social innovation as a sort of infrastructure—a set of skills and tools—that can be disseminated. Finally, for some, social innovation is about cross-sectoral collaboration. In many instances, participating foundations mentioned multiple understandings of social innovation, applying a mix of social innovation tools. The finding that these four strategic views of innovation shape the actions of foundations could help to bring clarity to the contested nature of this concept and is a promising basis for future empirical research on the practice of social innovation in philanthropy and beyond. The social innovation strategies also imply differences in how philanthropic foundations see their role in society, suggesting a rich venue for future study. We observed two strategic orientations toward social innovation: leadership and facilitation. Whereas three of the social innovation strategies facilitated social innovation by others, in the final strategy—leading social innovation—the foundation itself is the innovation agent. The last of them suggests a view of philanthropy in line with the normative justification expressed in Reich (Reference Reich2018).
The social innovation strategies and tools identified in this study provide a basis for understanding what social innovation is. This study also reveals the presence of complementarity between some social innovation tools. Further social innovation research could usefully build on these findings by, for example, examining the benefits and drawbacks of each tool, as well as best practices for implementing them. This could yield helpful information for philanthropy and nonprofits. For example, certain types and sizes of foundations may be better suited to particular social innovation tools and strategies: smaller foundations might find the strategy of being a seed funder more feasible, whereas successfully embarking on a strategy of leading social innovation may require greater resources.
This study cannot, of course, speak to how social innovation is understood in all contexts. However, there is reason to believe that similar strategies and tools have been employed elsewhere. This framework could thus be useful for guiding philanthropic foundations seeking to align their social innovation activities with their missions, as it provides guidance on existing strategies and complementary tools, as well as more limited insights on the characteristics that might suit a foundation to one social innovation strategy over another. Through further study, our framework could potentially be adapted for other kinds of organizations that support social innovation, in particular how nonprofit organizations and grassroots activists practice social innovation in their activities.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Lupina Foundation for making this research possible, as well as Amos Zehavi, Susan Phillips, Joseph Wong, Steven Samford, and Darius Ornston for their helpful feedback on early versions of this article.
Funding statement
This study was supported by the Lupina Foundation via a graduate student research fellowship for Kristen Pue. The foundation had no direct involvement in the study nor in the development of research outputs.
Competing interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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