Gena Rotstein's blog

Earlier this month the charitable sector has once again been under scrutiny... First with the CBC Marketplace Report - Canadian Cancer Society Spends more on Fundraising than on Research then the CTV report on charity CEO compensation.  What these two stories have in common is perceived lack of trasparency around how money is being raised, spent, and social issues addressed.

Yup, you read that correctly, I am exploring an ideation space. I'm calling this space My Tickle Trunk.  Thank you Canadian children's show icon - Mr. Dressup! Read more »

I sat down with Mr. Hotchkiss 3 years ago and interviewed him about his philanthropy.  I am re-posting the blog post here today in memory of an extraordinary man who was a committed member of Calgary's community as well as an integral part of Canada's fabric. Read more »

For the past few days I have been in the Ottawa area attending the Imagine Canada/Volunteer Canada forum on Business & Community.  During this time I have had the opportunity to meet with social change agents in the non-profit sector and their funders (corporate and government).  While the conversations were interesting the needs of these organizations are great, there was a distinct gap in the dialogue.  I feel that missing from the table were Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (who make up approximately 80% of Canada's business market-place) and For-Profit Social Enterprises (there was representation from non-profit social enterprieses).

I recently tweeted some research that we had done by UnCommon Innovation on the state the financial services sector.  The focus on the study was on how advisors are talking with their clients about charitable giving.  What came out loud and clear is that advisors are looking for tools and resources to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with their clients about philanthropy.  These tools and resources can come from a number of places, the most knowledgeable place would be the charitable sector itself.

I had a conversation the other day with Michele F Gartner from the Trico Foundation about the charitable sector marketplace.  She informed me that the Latin root for PROFIT means PROGRESS and that by putting the word "non" in front of Profit we are, by default, setting up organizations for failure as it implies non-progress.  Interesting tidbit I thought, so of course I had to explore this further.  Google is amazing!

My father is a pharmacist by profession, but a "mad scientist" by hobby.  When I was a little girl our father-daughter bonding consisted of kitchen science, plant picking and bug dissecting.  You can imagine, much to his dismay when I didn’t do well in math or science, thereby not leading to a profession in the medical world.  But what these father-daughter moments did do was provide me with a healthy sense of curiosity and critical thought. Read more »

I have been watching the ripple effects of the allegations of misuse of funds by Three Cups of Tea author and charity founder, Greg Mortensen.  Mr. Mortensen has been accused of spending donor dollars to promote his book, and more importantly that what he says he is promoting is not what is happening on the ground.

What do you give a couple who has everything?  In the case of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the answer is a donation to charity.

It has been a busy few weeks - tax season means people are starting to look at their overall wealth plans and laying out their charitable giving plan.  On the upside of this busy-ness is the fact that it looks like philanthropic activities are going up.