The Australian Centre for Social Innovation has announced their latest project, Solved, which has been launched by South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill. Solved is a nationwide search for social solutions that are working. Maybe you noticed a scheme to help local kids eat a healthy breakfast in Broome, and someone in Newcastle is searching for a way to do just that. By sharing what works, we hope social solutions can help more people across Australia.

If anyone spots a solution, or has a brilliant idea, simply add it to the solved map to be in the running to win $5000 prize pack for the best social solution that is uploaded to the website. Anyone who enters can be in the running to win a $500 donation to a social solution of their choice.

Add your favourite social solution to www.solved.org.au and they could win up to $5000 in funding to keep doing good!

(Registration at bottom of page)

One of the key issues many of the Social Entrepreneurs we meet in WA are having is obtaining a clear understanding of what makes them investment ready and the needs of Philanthropists when investing in Social Enterprises, Social Ventures and Social Projects. Access to this early stage advice and feedback on your social enterprise can mean saving you time, effort and resources.

Philanthropist Office Hours provide both traditional Philanthropists and Venture Philanthropists the opportunity to provide this early stage feedback and advice to Social Entrepreneurs and Change Makers. It also introduces them to a range of startup social enterprises in Western Australia that are geared for high social impact.

For Social Entrepreneurs it provides insight and feedback on their project and allows them to bounce ideas off experienced people who have been investing in Social Projects, Ventures and Enterprises. This feedback will provide a solid platform for the Entrepreneur to move their project forward.

The format of Philanthropist Office Hours is -

• 10 minutes for the Entrepreneur to ask questions and test assumptions
• 10 minutes for the Philanthropist to provide feedback and ask questions of their own
• 10 minutes to discuss options, potential and future directions

Some of Western Australia’s leading Philanthropists have registered (as well as many who do not promote their giving publicly) and are willing to provide their time, expertise and knowledge to providing that crucial guidance and feedback to Social Entrepreneurs. We will be conducting the office hours out of the Hub Perth once completed in November but will start the program in early October.

So to join the conversation we have started using twitter…innovative isn’t it. I think I probably need to sell twitter a bit here but right now the rest of the site needs to be completed.

One great (recent) case study is from the Social Innovation Bar Camp that was just held in Sydney. You can actually track the whole conversation around this event (before, during and after) through the hashtag #sidsyd which adds a rich meta context to the event that is usually impossible to capture.

I will talk more about this in coming weeks but for now you can follow updates about the event as well as social innovation in general @SiiWA and on the hashtag #SiiWA