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As it celebrates its 10th anniversary, the Pond-Deshpande Centre (PDC) at the University of New Brunswick is completing its transition to a new business model, which allows it to maintain its focus on pressing social issues.

Created at UNB, the PDC acts as a catalyst to advance innovation and entrepreneurship by inspiring and engaging youth, promoting entrepreneurship as a solution to many of the region’s challenges and therefore helping provide opportunities for meaningful work.

The PDC was founded with a $5 million donation from entrepreneurs Gerry Pond and Gururaj and Jaishree Deshpande with the aim of finding solutions to complex social issues. Another $5 million was raised from the Government of New Brunswick, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and groups such as Montreal’s McConnell Foundation.

But now it is time for PDC to be revenue-driven, and Executive Director Karina LeBlanc says the future looks bright because the pandemic has highlighted the importance of bringing together disparate opinions to find solutions to difficult problems.

The PDC staff have been acting as consultants in areas such as immigration, housing, and food security. They have recently been helping governments work out how to help professionalize early childhood educators to improve outcomes for children. Now, they are keen to build on the momentum.

“The pandemic has shown how we need more diversity of opinion, more cross-collaboration,” LeBlanc said in an interview. “We are a piece of the puzzle.”

“At the PDC, we work in ‘patient innovation’. It takes a long time to see outcomes. People are nervous about change.”

“’Patient innovation is about being able to deal with human nature and behaviour and facilitate dialogue to the point where we can disarm each other so we don’t keep fighting our corners. It is also expensive. It takes a lot of money and time to have patience for sustainable change.”

One area PDC is looking at is the non-profit sector. The PDC is currently redeveloping the B4Change accelerator which ran for six years for social ventures, the group is now adapting it with a focus on non-profits.

“We’ve done lot of reflection on accelerators and their impact,” LeBlanc said. “They are hard models to run sustainably. We need to help non-profits be more sustainable and measure their impact.”

Success of B4Change

The previous success of B4Change will help boost the new model of working with non-profits.

“Over the six years, we funded 220 companies/ideas with seed money between $5,000 and $15,000,” LeBlanc said, adding that many of those ventures are among the most successful young ventures in the region.

“Resson, Hotspot, Simptek, Jaza Energy, SomaDetect are some of the more recognizable companies the accelerator and start-up funding have helped get started.”

LeBlanc expects PDC’s growth to be aided by its links with the international Deshpande network.

“We have centres at Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Lowell, USA, in Kingston, Ontario, and in Hubli, India,” she said.

“They have different variables and business models. MIT is commercializing technology out of engineering. Lowell is developing social entrepreneurship at the community level. Hubli is dealing with complex issues of food security, clean water and healthcare on a massive scale. Kingston is an accelerator model, commercializing student ideas. They are sector agnostic but have the same entrepreneurial DNA.”

Gerry Pond, PDC co-founder and Mariner chairman, explained that PDC was born after he exited his investments in New Brunswick start-ups Radian6, social-media-monitoring company and Q1 Labs, a security intelligence company and wanted to put his money to good use.

“I was very interested in community areas where the private sector had not played a strong enough role, such as reducing poverty,” Pond said. “I thought this would be a great way to add to that knowledge base to see if business could be more effective in policy and other areas.”

UNB was already in talks with its alum Deshpande, a serial technology entrepreneur who had built entrepreneurship centres in India, his home country. Pond agreed to be the local partner.

“I was trying to find a partner that would have knowledge of social enterprise. I learned quite a bit about social enterprise from him [Desphande],” Pond said.

Making money through consultation

The original plan had been to sustain PDC by enticing other individuals to make donations, but Pond said most successful businesspeople don’t understand the possibilities of social entrepreneurship. So, a few years ago, the Centre began making money through consultancy.

Like Pond and Deshpande, LeBlanc has been with the centre since the beginning and she is passionate about the possibilities of the new model.

She said the pandemic has “made all of us pay the price for not proactively allowing systems to ebb, flow and flex for our needs as a society.

“Most people have environmental diseases, caused by eating, drinking, smoking, sedentary lifestyles. Many relate to our mental health – many are addiction-related. Mental health is a major issue we don’t invest in nearly enough.  The opportunities are endless and pressing in this sector and our team is chomping at the bit to get going.”

She elaborates there is a lot of benefit in bringing together many perspectives to map systems, find where there are opportunities for innovation, and research best practices.

“We are practised at getting all the players at the table, to bringing entrepreneurship into the public sector, and helping break down barriers of risk aversion and always doing things the same way. We are bringing lean startup methodology into the public sector.”

LeBlanc said that being 100 percent revenue-driven is not a common model for organizations working in social innovation, but the organization should be able to scale if it works.

The current state of our world has heightened awareness of social issues and it has also forced digital progress. The PDC is one of many groups to put its programming online.

“We no longer have geographic boundaries to our services. We could have a government in Europe say, ‘We have a sticky issue, could you help us understand and map it?’

“We have a bilingual staff; the possibilities are endless,” she said. “We just have to focus and understand what is the right way to grow strategically. The pandemic has solidified our belief that there’s a need for the work we do.”

Along with all the hard work ahead, the team is looking forward to a party. The PDC’s 10-year anniversary occurred last October but the organization delayed the celebration until the coming June because of COVID.

“We will have a celebratory event,” LeBlanc said. “We wanted to do it in person. You can totally do it online, but we are looking forward to being together.”

LeBlanc’s passion stems from the fact her own involvement with PDC has been life-changing.

“The biggest thing for me has been the realization that our entire social-economic model is built from the lens of a very few people who have a very homogenous way of looking at the world. That doesn’t serve everyone.”

 About the University of New Brunswick

The University of New Brunswick is Canada's oldest English-language university. Founded in 1785, the multi-campus institution has a rich history and a dynamic focus on innovation, experiential learning and entrepreneurship. UNB has more than 10,500 students from over 100 countries enrolled in degree-credit courses on its campuses, online and at partner institutions around the world, as well as thousands of continuing education learners. As a comprehensive university, UNB is home to substantial research expertise in many disciplines. Its faculty and staff have collaborated extensively with public and private sector leaders to advance research and foster innovation.