00:12 JAMES GAMAGE, HOST:
Welcome to Responsible Disruption. I'm yourhost, James Gamage, and today we're honored to have Karen Ramchuk, thePresident and CEO of Women in Need Society, WINS. Joining us to shed light onthe dynamic landscape of social enterprises. Karen is a dedicated executivewith a proven track record of achieving results and leading teams for success,currently serving as the President and CEO of WINS. Karen overseas a teamassisting over 25,000 individuals annually through barrier free communityprograms empowering women from diverse backgrounds to thrive. She also says asan advisor at Bow Valley College and Advocates for gender equality globally,Karen's commitment to community advancement and transformative change is trulyinspired. Karen, we're thrilled to have you join us today. Welcome.
01:00 KAREN RAMCHUK, GUEST:
Thank you, James. Thanks for having me onthe show.
01:03 JAMES: Great. So let's begin at thebeginning, so to speak can you just start by sharing your story of how youbecame the President and CEO of WINS and what was your background and whatattracted you to the role.
01:19 KAREN: "I sure can. It's actually one of myfavorite stories. I worked corporate retail for my whole career for over 20years. If I was all about corporate retail and a large for-profit company, andit was time for me to begin something new in my career. I was actuallyapproached by the Board of Directors of WINS to apply for the role of ExecutiveDirector at the time, and I was excited to learn about WINS through that role.I started to investigate social enterprise because WINS ran a social enterprise,and it was something that I hadn't really had experience in or reallyunderstood fully. So I started to understand and evaluate social enterprise.WINS, as a registered charity, they post their financial statements on ourwebsite. So I started to go through those financial statements, and I startedto be able to use my retailer brain to look at that. Then I went and I actuallywalked the stores and I built the business plan that I actually sent to theboard of WINS because I saw something very valuable in what they were doing. Isaw lots of ways to improve the operations of the social enterprise. So I sentthat presentation to the board, and that's actually how I started in the roleat WINS."
02:57 JAMES: That's exciting. That's cool.I love that path. So obviously the subject of today's episode is about socialenterprise, and w is WINS is a proud social enterprise. And I did a little bitof research and digging for some definitions about what social enterprise is,and Investopedia has a definition which is a social enterprise or socialbusiness is defined as a business but specific social objectives that serve itsprimary purpose. Social enterprises seek to maximise profits while maximisingbenefits to society and the environment. And the profits are principally usedto fund social programs. And there was another definition which are found withsocial enterprises or businesses that sell goods and services, embed a social,cultural or environmental purpose into the business and reinvest the majorityof profits into their social mission. So those are like dictionary definitionsor definitions. I'm sure you've got your own definition of what the socialenterprise is in the context of WINS. What is that?
04:02 KAREN: So, James, what I'd say is WINSisn't a social enterprise. WINS is a charity that runs a social enterprise. Sofirst and foremost, WINS is a registered and we do very charitable work out WINSin in our programming for women and their families. But we run a socialenterprise that actually funds the work that we do. So it's quite a differenttwist, a lot of social enterprise run their business and then do good with theproceeds. WINS is actually a charity and we use a business to fund our charity.
04:33 JAMES: Yeah. OK. Yeah.
04:45 KAREN: Yeah, I don't know if thatmakes sense.
04:48 JAMES: No, no, no, that makes eminentsense and you know, as we sort of journey through this, a lot of our listenersare from the social sector and that is one application of social enterprise inthe social sector. So it's valuable to hear that so how does the operation ofyour social enterprise differ from a traditional business? Is it just thatpurpose is to fund the charitable work you do?
05:26 KAREN: Yeah. Actually, yes. We run our socialenterprise exactly as we'd run any business. And then we take the proceeds andinstead of generating profit with the proceeds, we generate a social return onthe proceeds. So we take the money we earn and we run our business as lean aswe can. We try to do everything on a shoestring budget so that we have moremoney left to put into those community programs so we can help as many peopleas we possibly can.
06:07 JAMES: OK, so when you, as Presidentand CEO, looks after both the social enterprise and the charitable endeavours.Do you have to keep them separate? Is it just like a flow of funds or, youknow, would the team at WINS not almost, you know, not recognise the differencebetween people on either side of that?
06:27 KAREN: So it's very interesting and Isometimes say I almost need to have a dual personality at WINS because some ofour team are strong business people. Some of our team have only worked in thesocial sector and are very much into community service. And so when we bringthem together, it can be very interesting. And you have a lot of differentperspectives gathered at the table when you bring the team together. But we dorun it as one organization. And if you look at our values, one of our values isdiversity. And when we talk about diversity, we really are talking aboutdifferent backgrounds and different perspectives bringing us together so thatwe can learn from each other and present a stronger forward thinking approachso that diversity makes us stronger. Actually, there are times where there area bit of different perspectives, but we agree because our mission and visionare so important around helping women and their families. We really agree thatwe need to work strongly with teamwork and leadership and be united even whenour perspectives vary.
07:54 JAMES: Yeah. And that that's great. Imean it, I'm such an advocate of diversity in teams just to sort of drive thatdifferent thinking and I love the fact that it's almost architected into thebusiness or into the organization...
08:10 KAREN: And James, I just want to add something.That's a really cool fact about WINS: over half of our employee population atWINS—we have 150 employees—and over half of them are people that were helpedthrough our Community Services, our Community Program. And I'm not just talkingabout the frontline staff that work in the stores and at our 30,000 square footdonation center. Even people who work on the senior leadership at WINS havebeen helped by WINS in the past at some point.
08:46 JAMES: That's a great start, and it's so important,isn't it, that the social element of an organization isn't just a lipstick onthe organization, it's embodied within what the organization does. And I lovethat in the mission and the delivery of WINS. So obviously, you have acharitable arm and the social enterprise. And without getting into thetechnical, financial, or legal details, there are limits, aren't there, to theamount that a charitable organization can earn from their social enterprise? Isthat the case with WINS, or do those rules not apply because of your structureor your charitable objects? How does that operate in your circumstances?"
09:40 KAREN: Yeah. So at WINS, because weare a charity running a social enterprise, and the funds from that socialenterprise actually fund our charitable work, we don't have an issue with that.With the CRA, there are certain businesses that charities can run, so we fallinto that under CRA. So we are a charity with the social enterprise arm. A lotof the goal of a charity is to be able to use its funding—the donor dollars—allinto funding those community programs. We are exactly the same as other charitiesin that way; we just have a third stream of revenue, which is our largeststream of revenue, through our social enterprise. Integral Org, if you know whothey are, they're located in Calgary here, and they have on their website abook that defines the different legal structures for charities that are runningbusinesses. WINS is actually one of the examples in their training, in theirbrochure about that, in their book about that.
10:55 JAMES: OK, that's cool. We'll attachthat as well. It strikes me we've talked about the charitable arm of yourorganization, we haven't really talked about what that does and the programsthat you run with the money that you earn from donations and from the socialenterprise. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
11:15 KAREN: I absolutely can, and I'm very excited to dothat. A lot of people don't understand the charitable work that WINS does. Alot of people think of us first and foremost as a thrift store, and that's justnot true. We're first and foremost a women's organization that is here forwomen and their families to thrive. So we kind of have a philosophy around theway we help people. It's about helping people with dignity and respect. Webelieve before a woman and her family can move forward, their basic needs haveto be met. We know that without knowing how she's going to feed her family orhave shoes on her children's feet, a woman cannot move forward. She's stuck inthe mindset of those basic needs. So we run a Basic Needs Program, which is notonly for people that come to WINS for help. We partner with more than 100agencies across the city on that program where they refer people to WINS fortheir basic needs. So it's a large, robust program in the city. Last year, wegave away over $1,000,000 worth of product to Calgarians living in poverty tohelp them bridge the gap through affordability. Our first step is those basicneeds, and then we also do referrals out to support basic needs as well. So wemight do a food bank referral. We might do a referral out to the Fair EntryProgram with the City of Calgary. We might know other ways for them to get helpwith poverty alleviation. So we concentrate first on basic needs, then we moveinto goal management.
Our teams sit and we start to set goals with our program participants.We start with whatever goal is important to them, and we help them to build theconfidence and the resilience to go out and achieve their goals step by step.So whether their goal is something small—we had a lady once who was intimidatedby the grocery stores, so her goal was to be able to go to the grocery store tobuy food for her family. We've had other people whose goals are to go back toschool and become a doctor, so we've been able to help people to achieve theirgoals. Sometimes the goal is 'I want to be a better parent.' So whatever theirgoals are, we help them to achieve those goals.
And then as well as that goal management, we also do group programming.We know how important it is for a woman to not feel alone in her circumstances.So we do group programming for parenting, for women, for youth. We do someEnglish as a Second Language work, we do some financial literacy work. So we doall of these in groups so that there is great learning, confidence building,and that social connection to other people that are in the same circumstance.
And then once we do that, and once they're ready, if they're ready, WINSalso offers employment services. So we do job search, resume writing, mockinterview practice. But then we also find out if people are interested incareers in retail or warehousing. We have an employment service called RetailReady which teaches retail, and at our donation center, we run a program calledWarehouse Ready. These help people to get the confidence to move into careersin retail and warehousing with some practice by working in our socialenterprise. We're really proud of our success rate: 60-67% of participants whocome through our employment services have full-time jobs within 90 days offinishing the program.
15:41 JAMES: That's a wonderful story and awonderful example of the social purpose driving the mission of the organisationand you know clearly you folks do wonderful work for women in this city. Sothank you on behalf of the whole city for that.
15:57 KAREN: Thank you, James.
15:59 JAMES: So I'm intrigued about theevolution of WINS. Has clearly the very strong social purpose, but has thesocial enterprise been part of the organization since the start Or was thatsomething that was layered on to help funding that very worthy work in thecommunity?
16:18 KAREN: So it was a woman who escapeddomestic violence in the middle of the night, and she arrived at an emergencyshelter in Calgary with her two kids and they got out of the situation withnothing but the clothes on their backs and in the morning she went and talkedto the shelter. By the way James, this was 32 years ago. Yeah. So she went andasked the shelter if they had any clue...
16:43 JAMES: Yeah. I was gonna ask thatactually, yeah.
16:50 KAREN: For her and her sons in themorning, and they said we don't have anything on hand and they sent her downthe street to a church where they had garbage bags full of clothing in theirbasement. So she went down there and she had to rifle through the bags and someof them were musty smelling and some of them people had mistaken and sent theirgarbage instead of clothing to the church. So it wasn't very dignified orrespectful for her. And so she actually formed a coalition with the five womenemergency shelters in Calgary at the time to say there is a better way to dothis work. So her vision was to start a thrift store with the donations fromthe shelters so that any woman who was in the shelter never found herselfhaving to go and rummage through garbage to find basic needs, work basic needsfor her family. So she started this social enterprise 32 years ago and thathost Home program was the basis of what she was doing. It was all about thefree goods for women and their families and WINS has grown since then.
18:05 JAMES: That's a wonderful story.Hearing what you were saying about the origination or the start of WINS andactually hearing about the programming and the retail program that you talkedabout that often, your customers, or the women actually graduate through. I'mthinking about the employees of win. So you know, if you go to a thrift store,you see a very diverse group working in a thrift store. But tell me about someof the other people that come to WINS and their background. And do they have inthe social enterprise space, do they have for profit experience, retailingexperience or how does that work? Do they come from other nonprofits?
18:48 KAREN: Yeah. So our leadership teamand our social enterprise are all from the retail industry. They have most ofthem have worked retail for again maybe 20 plus years, so they are experts intheir fields and they've been able to bring their retail skills to WINS andapply them to help us to generate more profits so that we can help more people.So they truly are retail experts and they work at WINS because the same reasonI work at WINS, it's about doing good for our community. We're blessed in our businesssupport team, so for business supports, it's finance, HR, IT and admin. We havepeople that have worked in both the for profit world and the not-for-profitworld. So we have a great blend in our leadership team there of people thathave worked on both sides and in our programming team we're blessed again topull out true people that have served community for numerous years to come tosupport our programs.
20:00 JAMES: That's excellent. And youspoke to some of the diversity earlier. It feels that though that's a realstrength of the organisation, which is great to hear so also tell me about yourboard. What are their backgrounds? You know, where do they come from? And howdo you recruit them?
20:15 KAREN: Yeah. So we have a board of12. We also have three community members and we will be looking to grow ourcommunity members. Our board comes from all walks of life. We have some peopleon our board that have lived experience through some of the things that ourpeople that we serve have experienced, so we have that good lived experience onthe board. We want diverse minds. We want people on our board with diversebackgrounds. We have a retailer on our board, a Senior Vice president of amajor retail companies on our board, we have a lawyer on our board. We have anaccountant on our board. And we even have, if you can imagine, truly a rocketscientist on our board. So we have and we really go out and look for peoplewith diverse mindsets. And we do have a couple people from the charitablesector on our board as well.
21:18 JAMES: OK, that's great. And now?
21:19 KAREN: And when it comes torecruiting James, we actually have a full recruitment process. We post the adsout there, we do a lot of word of mouth as well when we're recruiting for boardmember. And the board actually goes through a full recruitment process everyyear for both board members and community members.
21:40 JAMES: That's great. So you knowyou've painted a very positive picture of wonderfully positioned and runorganization. You must have some difficulties though in operating a socialenterprise sometimes. You know, what are some of the challenges that you facein operating a social enterprise within your organization?
21:56 KAREN: Yeah. The hardest challenge isthat diversity and mindset, and it takes a lot to manage that, to get it to bea strength as opposed to a point of conflict. That was, that's one of thehardest things. And I think right now we're at a point where it's workingbeautifully together, but that wasn't always the case. There was times wherethere was really a lot of conflict in different perspectives and people justnot being able to understand where the other person was coming from. So thatwas a barrier for us. But right now we've got it going very well.
22:44 JAMES: I'm going to probe a littlebit. So how do you overcome challenges like that? You know, diversity is yourstrength, but it also, you know that diversity around the table and sometimesmean that people come from different angles on the same problem and issue. Sohow do you manage that as the CEO and President?
23:04 KAREN: We have a culture here ofbeing when we have a conflict, we approach the conversation with true honestyand clarity, but always with kindness. So if we have a difference of opinions,the two people honestly sit together and they just speak honestly from theheart at each other, and it can hurt. Sometimes people don't understand eachother. But it's done with kindness and done with respect. So at the end of theday, when they leave the conversation, they might never, they might not come toa conclusion together, but they'll come to an understanding of each other'sopinions and be able to walk away from the conversation and be all right.
23:51 JAMES: That's great. Good. Sothinking about, you know we've talked about WINS, its establishment and youknow how you operate the organisation currently. Are there any sort of excitingnew initiatives, what's the future hold for WINS?
24:06 KAREN: James, another thing I want tosay though, before we go there, something else that's really hard for WINS isreally getting Calgarians to understand what WINS is. It's actually probablyour hardest thing to overcome. A lot of people because our stores are out therein community and they're in busy locations. They see the stores, theyunderstand thrifting. It's a great thing, but they don't understand the wholepicture of WINS. That's probably our hardest challenge to overcome. More thanjust the diversity of the backgrounds of the people, it's really havingCalgarians understand what we do.
24:49 JAMES: Absolutely. Absolutely. And,you know, we went through that in this conversation at the start, really for mespeaking that you were a social enterprise as opposed to an organisation thatoperates a social enterprise. So, thank you for doing that.
25:02 KAREN: And actually James, also ifyou think of it more, we are also a charity. So we're looking for cashdonations the same as every other charity is as well. And sometimes the socialenterprise impedes that.
25:19 JAMES: Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Soyeah, back to that sort of future question. And what what's exciting on thehorizon for, for you and for WINS?
25:19 KAREN: So what's exciting when Ithink of the future at WINS is actually the opportunity to scale theorganization in order to do more social good. In 2024, we're going to beopening 2 new locations. And when I say locations, people may think they'rejust thrift stores. But each of them have community programs attached to them,so we'll be opening these two locations. It'll be a store and a program center.It'll be retail training. It will be an opportunity for Calgarians to buildcommunity within their local community through WINS, so we're very excited towelcome these two new locations and these two communities to the WINS family.
26:16 JAMES: And can you give us anindication of where they are?
26:20 KAREN: I sure can. One is inGlenbrook, so we run a community resource hub in Lincoln Park today, so thislocation in Glenbrook is going to host the store and the retail trainingprogram and host the home program. But the actual community programming willhappen in the Lincoln Park Community resource hub. There are about 5 minutesapart from each other. And then the second location will be in the community ofManchester where we will be opening a large store with a full mezzanine thatwill be community services. And at that location you'll be able to access all WINS,help and support through that location.
27:12 JAMES: That's great news. So I'm surelisteners in those areas will be able to taste the WINS magic at some stage during this year. Sothat's exciting because more stores need ultimately more programming and moregood in the community. So which is obviously your mission.
27:27 KAREN: Yes.
27:29 JAMES: Is there anything else you'dlike us to know about the value of the social enterprise to WINS and themission of the organisation?
27:40 KAREN: I would say, James, that rightnow there's never been a more important time for social enterprise, not onlyjust in Calgary but across our country and maybe even more broad than ourcountry. Philanthropy is changing, giving is down, government funding has beenchanging. So I think the answer rests with social enterprise. I think socialenterprise is a part of our social solution going forward in order to helppeople that are struggling.
28:15 JAMES: Yeah, yeah, I can. I can seethat. And you know anyone who understands the social sector and understandsthat pressure on funding and the potential of social enterprise to fill thatgap. So that's great.
28:30 KAREN: And James, I have to say, Iprobably would not be running WINS if it wasn't for that social enterprise.Really have found my purpose running WINS using the retail skills I learnedfrom a large corporation where it was about generating profit to be able to comeinto this organization, use my skills to generate revenue to help people.That's my purpose. That's why I exist.
28:59 JAMES: Yeah. And that revenue withsustainability and value to the community is just invaluable. So that's great. Sowe we've come to the end now, but before we close out. I just want leave youwith the last question. You know I always do this. Is there anything that Ihaven't covered? Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wouldthink it would be valuable to tell the listeners?
29:28 KAREN: The biggest message I'd liketo get across is that WINS exist because of Calgarians and we exist forCalgarians. We're about Calgarians supporting one another. When you shop at WINS,when you donate cash or product to WINS, if you volunteer at WINS, if you workat WINS, we are simply the way to help other Calgarians. So I'm very proud ofthat and I think that's a message that needs to really be amplified across ourcity. We just exist to help Calgarians and it's through the generosity ofCalgarians that we can do that work.
30:16 JAMES: I love that. I love that.That's a great way of finishing things off. We exist to help Calgarian. So Karen,thank you so much. That's been very interesting for our listeners and it's alsoa really inspiring story of what is an incredibly well run organization here inCalgary. So thank you for your time in the last 30 minutes or so. If you wantlisteners, if you want to learn a little bit more about WINS and support theirmission, you can visit their website on WINSYYC.ca. So thank you very muchagain, Karen and to our listeners. Stay tuned for more thought provokingconversations on Responsible Disruption. And remember, together we can create ameaningful change in our community. Thank you.
[Outro music]
That's all for today's episode of ResponsibleDisruption. Thank you for tuning in and we hope you found the conversationvaluable. If you did, don't forget to follow, rate, and share wherever you getyour podcast. To stay up to date on future episodes and show notes, visit our websiteat thesocialimpactlab.com or follow us on social and until next time, keep ondesigning a better world.
