Canada’s social impact sector is driven to deliver social and environmental benefits and increase wellbeing. Comprising a blend of charities, nonprofits, foundations, public sector and for-profit entities, the sector dedicates countless hours and spends billions of dollars per year to improve outcomes. 

Despite this investment, too few social and environmental change efforts are seeing sufficient gains: from youth homelessness and food insecurity in cities, to economic reconciliation and the transition to a low-carbon economy. The COVID-19 crisis is only amplifying the systemic issues that were already in place, exposing the sector to heightened demands and new operating conditions. To respond, governments, organizations and individual practitioners must devise new ways to tackle the root causes of the problems we face.

This report summarizes the results of a Mitacs sponsored study by the Social R&D Fellowship and McGill University to generate new evidence towards growing capacity for research and development (R&D) within social purpose organizations.