Writing & Listening
Essays, field notes, and conversation on experience, capacity, and brand for Canadian institutions.
The Public Goods on Substack
This publication focuses on the experiences Canadian institutions provide and their capacity to deliver, so they can do more.
It works through three areas built and tested in practice. Experience Economics asks what an institution produces for the people it serves, and what the gaps cost. Capacity Economics asks what an institution can do with what it has, what trade-offs it makes, and what would close the gap between capacity and obligation. Branded Economics asks how brand value can be predicted and defended on the same terms as any other investment.
A strong Canada has robust institutions that answer the needs of its people, the means to tell its own stories, and an active reckoning with its past in service of a better present for Indigenous people and settlers alike. This publication writes from that conviction.
Most posts draw from real work in Canadian healthcare and public services, with regular pieces on culture and reconciliation as part of the same project. Free to read, written for people who run, fund, or shape institutions and who want sharper tools for thinking about what they deliver and what they can.
Posts
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Go to The Public Goods on Substack →Field notes
Observations from active work. Client names, identifiable details, and specific numbers are never shared without permission.
Healthcare
Capacity at the edges: notes from northern Canada
A care model that works has effects that ripple across the system. Most of the ripples land somewhere other than the clinic.
Read →Foundation & Fundraising
The giving system was the story
A charitable foundation had strong donor relationships and a clear mission. What it didn't have was a giving experience that matched either.
Read →For-profit medicine
The money was already in the practice
A private clinic came in asking about marketing spend. The economics pointed somewhere else.
Read →The Public Goods Podcast
Conversations on experience, capacity, and brand — with practitioners, leaders, and researchers working on the same problems. Coming soon.