Building a Resilient and Responsive Pillar. What You Need to Know!

At Pillar we often talk about organizational resilience and how our ability to adapt, pivot and sustain change can help strengthen our capacity to create positive impact in our community.   

We have reorganized to help us to respond to a growing network with increasingly diverse needs. For instance, the network expressed a need for more information on public policy and government relations given our new economic reality.  We’ve responded through a series of policy conversations, resources and working alongside our partners Ontario Nonprofit Network, Imagine Canada, London Community Foundation, United Way London & Middlesex.  We are also growing our learning and development programs to help meet the needs of our network including the new Social Six program, helping young people prepare for new and
emerging employment models such as social enterprise and social innovation.

Our growth is focused on putting resources in place to help us strengthen existing partnerships while also seeking out new opportunities to collaborate with others in our ecosystem.  Women of Ontario Social Enterprise Network (WOSEN) is a perfect example of how our growth is being supported to do systems work with our partners Centre for Social Innovation, NORDIK Institute, and Okwaho Equal Source. WOSEN aims to broaden and diversify the entrepreneurial ecosystem for women, through inclusive design and Indigenous knowledge and practice.

And lastly, we are entering a new phase in our growth at Innovation Works.  Over the last three years we have seen the power of building connections and how the impact of being in proximity to each other, both physically and through partnerships, can be transformative. Because Innovation Works is thriving, we have added a focus on our building through a new role - Innovation Works Coordinator.

Part of our commitment to building a resilient and responsive organization is making room for staff to explore what they feel most  passionately about. We are proud to have worked with so many volunteers and staff who want to make a difference in the world and have inspired us to do the same.  Thank you for celebrating with us their contributions as some move on to continue this work in other communities.