About us

ClearlySo Canada is the first international affiliate of U.K. based clearlyso.com, the global marketplace and hub for social business, enterprise and investment.  ClearlySo.ca was launched in March of 2010 as a member driven community that celebrates, profiles, connects, and advocates for entrepreneurs who are using commercial ventures to address social and environmental issues and opportunities.  

The organizations represented on clearlyso.ca include charities operating related businesses, not-for profit organizations, social venture networks and hubs, and social purpose businesses.  They span all industry sectors and range in stage of development from early stage entrepreneurial ventures to established, multi-million dollar professionally managed enterprises.  What they share is a common commitment to incorporating social, environmental and ethical objectives into the fabric of their day to day commercial activities.  ClearlySo is dedicated to helping these enterprises succeed and maximize the value they create here in Canada and throughout the world.

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CEO Rod Schwartz on ClearlySo

More about ClearlySo

ClearlySo answers the practical needs of social businesses and enterprises. We introduce them to investors, product & service vendors - and each other.  We are:

• A visibility platform: Helping social businesses and enterprises raise their profile among peers, potential investors, the public and government

• A marketplace: Enabling social businesses and enterprises to trade with each other & access investment capital

• An information centre for anyone who is or wants to get involved in the social business and investment sector, helping them acquire and share expertise

• A meeting place giving social businesses and enterprises exposure to each other, key product and service providers and socially-minded investors

We are continually developing the site, regularly adding new features and content in reaction to feedback from interviews with users of the site.  Please let us know your thoughts.

ClearlySo.com's History

ClearlySo grew out of Catalyst Fund Management & Research (Catalyst), a UK-based venture capital, advisory and research firm with 10 years’ experience of writing about, understanding, advising and investing in social businesses and enterprises.

Catalyst had, over the years, collected a great deal of information and knowledge it felt could be of use to social businesses and enterprises, but it was all kept internally. The original brief for ClearlySo was, therefore, to ‘do something’ with all this information, and to make it accessible to people that would find it useful.  Catalyst had no business model in mind but felt, “if we built it they would come” (from the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams”), and come they did. 

Since its original launch (under the name socialinvestments.com) in March 2008, the site and its traffic has grown hugely in size and sophistication.  Since then, we have secured investment to support our activities as well as some terrific advisors and have established strong international partnerships like ClealrySo Canada. Lastly, we developed a business model based partly upon membership fees—low enough to represent excellent value for the social businesses & enterprises and the vendors who serve them, but enough to make ClearlySo sustainable.

What does the name mean?

ClearlySo:  We first came up with ‘Clearly’ as a name for the site and the business, to represent our principles of honesty, transparency and pragmatism.  Quickly discovering that the web domain clearly.com had been taken by a laser and cataract company in Alabama, we moved on to the idea of adding the suffix ‘So’ for social, and because it sounded emphatic and authoritative.  It also enabled us to use the name flexibly for our different constituencies, as in: ClearlySocial  Enterprise or ClearlySocial Investment. 

We hope that, together, the two words portray the idea of a clear and obvious way ahead for business.