Call for Emergency Sector Support | Input into Grants to Non-qualified Donees
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Too Essential to Fail: Join the Immediate Call for Emergency Sector Support
Nonprofits employ nearly 300,000 Albertans, the majority of whom are women, and together contribute $5.5 billion to the economy every year. They provide food and basic needs, settlement and senior supports, sports and recreation, arts and culture, entrepreneurship, environmental health – and more. They are proven, established partners in the delivery of essential services.
CCVO's latest report Too Essential To Fail, illustrates the current state of Alberta nonprofits. While other industries have recovered, nonprofits are juggling heightened demand for services with increasingly complex client needs and decreasing revenues. After trying to do more with less for the past three years, Alberta nonprofits are in crisis.
The Nonprofit Vote's Too Essential to Fail campaign asks the government for an urgent, one-time top-up of $30 million in immediate relief to protect programs and services in Alberta. The $30 million in emergency funds would be used to provide short-term relief from inflation and ease recruitment and retention issues at nonprofit organizations across the province. Click below to send a letter in support of immediate relief.
Policy Highlights
Share Your Input: Registered Charities Making Grants to Non-Qualified Donees
The Income Tax Act was amended in 2022 to allow for charities to make grants to non-qualified donees (grantees). The Canada Revenue Agency has released draft guidance for making grants to non-qualified donees and are currently looking for feedback. The draft guidance aims to balance the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) role of overseeing the use of tax-assisted resources with the charitable sector’s need for accountability tools that are reasonable and flexible. Feedback can be submitted until January 31, 2023. Read the draft guidance and submit feedback here.
2023 Federal Government Budget Consultations
The federal government is accepting feedback to help decide the direction of the 2023 budget. Organizations can fill out a five minute online survey and submit letters or reports in support of ideas and spending priorities. If organizations submitted letters or reports for the House of Commons Finance Commitee’s consultation that took place this Fall, they can resubmit the same document. The deadline for submissions is February 10. Fill out the survey and find out more information here.
Reindexation of Social Assistance Incomes
The School of Public Policy
In January, Alberta’s government increased benefits by 6% and committed to indexing supports to inflation. This is good news and good public policy. There are, however, two other issues the government needs to consider. The first is a 6% increase in benefits is not sufficient to recover the purchasing power lost during the past nearly 3 years when inflation was high and social assistance was not indexed. As well as reindexing, the government of Alberta, and indeed most other provincial governments, needs to increase social assistance incomes to make up for this lost purchasing power.
The second issue is the choice of index. A flawed but easy choice is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI is designed to measure changes in the cost of living for the “average household.” Statistics Canada estimates this average household spends 30% and 16% of its budget on housing and food, respectively. Our research shows that for a single person reliant on income support those allocations shift to 51% and 38%, respectively, and are even higher in large cities. Read the whole Social Policy Trends piece here.
Learning Opportunities
Learning Opportunities
EDI in the Workplace: Inclusive Holidays Planning
Jan 31 | Online
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Design Thinking for More Equitable Futures: A Panel Discussion
Feb 1 | Online
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Practical Ways of Overcoming Your Reluctance to Fundraise
Feb 1 | Online
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Ask Me Anything About Social Enterprise
Feb 8 | Online
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The Future of Fundraising Impact and Engagement
Feb 2 | Online
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Preparing for your Audit
Feb 8 | Online
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Building a Culture of Resilience and Positive Workplace Mental Health
Feb 16 | Online
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Success in Community Action
Feb 27-Apr 24 | Online
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Funding & Grants
Calgary Foundation Community Grants
Calgary Foundation's Community Grants program aims to strengthen the charitable sector and engage citizens. The proposed initiative must significantly benefit Calgary and area communities, which includes Calgary, Banff National Park, Canmore, Rocky View County, the Municipal Districts of Big Horn, Foothills, Kananaskis and Wheatland, and the surrounding First Nations of Treaty 7 territory. The Community Grants program can only accept applications from registered charities and other qualified donees. Equity-deserving groups that are not a registered charity can apply in partnership with a registered charity.
Eligible activities include:
New and Expanded Programming: Costs associated with the development, delivery, or evaluation of new programs or expansion of existing programs.
Existing Programming: (Only for organizations with an operating budget less than $8M) Costs associated with the delivery of current or ongoing programming.
Capacity Building: Costs associated with strengthening the organization’s ability to deliver on its charitable mission.
There is no maximum grant amount. Historically, the average grant request is between $70,000 $90,000. Applications are due February 15. Find out more information and apply here.
Co-op Community Spaces Grant
The Co-op Community Spaces Program was established to improve community health and well-being by building places for Western Canadians to come together, build social connections and enable community development. Projects can apply for between $25,000 and $150,000 in capital funding in three categories:
Recreation: Providing enhanced recreation spaces in the community.
Environmental conservation: Preservation of natural spaces in the community.
Urban agriculture: Small-scale community agriculture initiatives in both rural and urban spaces.
Projects must be a capital project, be completed within two years and provide an opportunity for permanent signage. Registered charities, registered nonprofit organizations and community service co-operatives are eligible to apply. Applications are open from February 1- March 1. Find out more information here.
Astrazeneca Grants and Investments
Astrazeneca focuses their support on projects and initiatives that:
Improve healthcare in local communities;
Promote science education and skills among young people;
Support Chronic Disease Prevention programs for adolescents;
These focus areas include activities that are aimed at:
increasing public understanding of a disease
promoting health and wellbeing, including support for preventative medicine and public health initiatives;
supporting innovative programs aimed at preventing and managing chronic disease;
addressing unmet health needs in under-served and un-served populations;
supporting the health of communities in which our employees live and work;
supporting health-related research conducted by non-profit organizations as part of a wider community support initiative and directed toward the public good; and
encouraging science education among young people.
Find out more information here. Please note: organizations receiving funding from the United Way are not eligible for funding.
Applied Data science lab
The Applied Data Science Lab for Economic Development gives Alberta organizations access to data science expertise. Over a period of two to six months, your organization will be paired with a team of aspiring data scientists to tackle your data problem. You will then be provided with a development plan and the tools and resources to continue your data-driven project.
The Lab offers two programs; the breadth program which focuses on the “discovery” to “experiment” phase of your Data Science evolution pathway, and the depth program which takes a deeper dive into the discovery, experiment, and implement stages of your data science journey.
Deadline for “early consideration” is February 10, 2023, with the deadline for the "general application" is February 28, 2023. Learn more and apply here.
Adopting common MEasures
Adopting Common Measures is a national project that aims to support Social Purpose Organizations as they measure and track their impact towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Participants in the program will get:
One-on-one sessions to help kickstart their organization's impact conversation
Facilitated workshops on the Common Foundation Approach to Impact Measurement
Access to a Community of Practice with similar organizations who want to know more about the benefits of tracking their impact and aligning their goals with the SDGs
This is an 8 session program sessions with sessions every 2 weeks lasting 1.5 hour each from Feb 1, 2023 to May 10, 2023. Learn more here.
Blogs & More
New pathway to partnership opens with CRA draft guidance on qualifying disbursements
Tim Harper, The Philanthropist Journal
The challenge facing the country’s philanthropic sector is clear: Given the opportunity to flow more money into non-profit organizations, including many smaller organizations doing grassroots work with marginalized Canadians, will it take it? Will a sector that has been notoriously risk-averse begin shedding that attitude, or will it look at these organizations and continue to see risk?
The stakes are immense. Liban Abokor, co-founder of the Foundation for Black Communities, told a Philanthropic Foundations Canada webinar on January 10 that hopes in the non-qualified-donee community are immense. “There are millions of Canadians who would be so well-served if we started funding non-qualified donees,” Read more here→
Artificial Intelligence Can Help Nonprofits Reach More Donors, but Fundraisers Can’t Ignore Potential Pitfalls
Daniel Hadley, The Chronicle of Philanthropy
To create the opening for this piece, I instructed the new text-generating artificial-intelligence system ChatGPT to “write a short, touching anecdote about watching a colleague who takes time to write thoughtful notes to donors to our university.”
This was a fun exercise, but it was also eye-opening. It demonstrated to me the potential of language applications such as ChatGPT to change philanthropy in significant ways. Donor communications, proposal writing, giving profiles, donation reporting, press releases — and on the other end, philanthropic funding decisions — will, for better or worse, increasingly be influenced by A.I. Read more here→
Predictions For the Future of Social Sector Data
Chantal Forster, Shahar Brukner, Ann Mei Chang, Elizabeth Kane, and Woodrow Rosenbaum
A panel of social sector data leaders give an overview of the current data ecosystems and discuss the following questions
Is social sector data a type of public good?
How does the social sector fund (or charge for) data infrastructure as a public good?
What is an appropriate role for private enterprise in this infrastructure?
How do we hold all participants in the data ecosystem accountable?