Nonprofit News: Social Impact Tech Summit, Stats Canada Quarterly Update
The Social Impact Tech Summit
This week, The Centre for Social Impact Technology is hosting The Social Impact Tech Summit. The event features interactive discussion, panels, and presentations to shape the priorities of our social impact tech ecosystem. Whatever your perspective, you’ll find connections and opportunities to highlight local needs in Cross-Sector Partnerships, Social Finance, Sector Advocacy, Education, and more. Attend in-person in Calgary on November 3, online on November 4, or both.
Day one, in-person at C-Space, will be about beginning with the local context of social impact technological development in our own backyard with panel discussions with community partners and attendees. Day two opens up virtual conversations of global impact, inviting perspectives and collaborations from across the spectrum of social impact technologies and the communities that they affect with national and global partners. Learn more and register here.
Policy Highlights
Core Funding: Making Government Funding Work for Canadian Communities
Imagine Canada
Many of the needs of organizations in the nonprofit and charitable sector are ineligible to be covered by project funding from the federal government. As a result, generating revenue to cover these core expenses remains a major challenge for many organizations. While these costs are not necessarily direct program costs, they are essential to providing quality programs and services to communities and upholding good governance standards, employment, and financial management. Imagine Canada has released a brief outlining the importance of core funding. Recommendations from this brief include:
Reallocate 30% of all project-based funding that is destined for charities and nonprofits to core funding; Reallocated funds should have a longer, multi-year term, to offer organizations stability.
Improve project-based funding as recommended in the 2019 Senate Report. These recommendations will streamline reporting requirements, reform project length, and ensure full coverage of associated administrative costs.
Apply an equity lens to the provision of core funding to address historical inequities.
Read the full brief here.
Statistics Canada Quarterly Update
Statistics Canada recently released data from the 2nd quarter of 2022. During this time the real GDP of nonprofits increased by 1%, the fifth consecutive quarterly increase. There was also a 0.9% increase in employment in the nonprofit sector. Business, professional associations and unions had the biggest growth in employment at 3.1% followed by social services at 2.3%. See the full breakdown here.
New Report from the National Advisory Council on Poverty
The National Advisory Council on Poverty has released its 2022 report on the progress of Opportunity for All – Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy. This year the Council sought out deep conversations on a wide range of issues. This included the reality of inadequate benefits that are hard to access; a shredded social safety net; troubling transitions through systems; underpaid employment and challenges with system navigation. These conversations stressed the need for affordable and accessible child care, housing and food; secure work, a living wage, adequate benefits, and access to mental health services.
The 5 main recommendations of the National Advisory Council on Poverty's Transforming our Systems report include:
Poverty reduction with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people.
Establish an income floor above the official Poverty Line.
Reduce Poverty by at least 50% by 2030 by populations made most marginal
Early intervention and prevention of child and youth poverty
Increase awareness of, access to and availability of government benefits and supports
Additional Recommendations include:
the Government of Canada increase incidence of tax filing through automatic tax filing for Canadians with low income
the Government of Canada put people with lived expertise of poverty at the center of design, implementations and evaluation of its policies, programs and services.
Read the full report here.
Learning Opportunities
Rules of Advocacy and Lobbying with Sean Moore of Advocacy School
Nov 8 | online
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Allyship: What Type of Ally Are You?
Nov 8 | online
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Ask Me Anything About Social Enterprise
Nov 9 | online
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Money Management on Demand
Nov 9| online
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Transcultural Communications
Nov 16 | online
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Identifying Board Dysfunction
Nov 16 | online
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Partnership Brokers Modules 2 & 3
Nov 14-16 | in person
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High Performance Measurement for Social Change
Nov 16| online
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Email Marketing 101: The Fundamentals of Email Marketing
Nov 17 | online
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Grantmaker AMA: What Funders Want You To Know
Nov 17 | online
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University of Calgary Microplacements
The Explore Micro-Placement program allows employers to give students much-needed work-integrated learning and career exploration opportunities, but with added flexibility. Microplacements are short-term projects or job shadowing opportunities that can provide organizations with temporary help and give students work-integrated learning and career exploration options.
Micro-placements can be offered as a job shadow (4-8 hours) or project work (30-40 hours)
Micro-placements can be set up for onsite or online work, or a combination of both
You choose how you structure your placement — the 4-8 hour job shadow can be completed within a week, while the 30-40 hour projects can be dispersed between one to eight weeks
Micro-placements can be paid or unpaid
Placements cannot be combined with an existing co-op role or source of funding
Potential project possibilities include: research, user testing, special projects support, business development, communications and marketing, data analysis, and more. Read more about microplacements here.
Funding & Grants
Sony CREATE ACTION Grant
CREATE ACTION grants support organizations in Canada and the United States serving their local communities in STEAM/academic enrichment, workforce development or nonprofit services for underserved and under-represented groups. One grant will be awarded each month through March 2023. Grantees will receive a $50,000 USD grant to continue and expand the organization's work, $50,000 USD in Sony electronics products to support their mission, and a Sony-produced short film telling the organization's story.
Federally incorporated nonprofit organizations in Canada (excluding Quebec) that have received no more than $500,000 USD in annual donations per year for 2020 and 2021 are eligible to participate. The remaining application deadlines for this year are November 30 and December 31, 2022. Find out more and apply here.
Strategic Reinvention Initiative
LIFT is seeking to qualify SPOs (not-for-profits, charities, or social enterprises) that serve newcomers to Canada by providing programs or services that lead to employment or self-employment, or that prepare employers to be more inclusive and set up for success.
LIFT will form a collaborative partnership with SPOs and will work with the SPOs in key capacity domains – Strategic Reinvention, Impact Measurement, Revenue Diversification, and Communicating Impact - to expand the organizations’ reach and grow their impact to deliver meaningful change in the lives of newcomers. The deadline for application is November 9 2022. Find out more information and apply here.
Blogs & More
8 Shifts in The Grants Landscape That Fundraisers Need to Know About
Malia Rogers and the Grant Connect team
There's some good news in the philanthropic sector: things are changing for the better. From historic policy moves to transformative changes in grantmaking practices, these eight shifts could lead to increased returns on your organization’s grant-seeking efforts – and to a more equitable and accessible funding landscape for the future. Read more→
How to Create Equitable Digital Learning Experiences From Classroom to Boardroom
Julie Johnson for Techsoup
This video shares three ways that organizations can create accessible, universally designed and trauma aware learning experiences online and in person. These valuable frameworks can increase the overall goals of learners, enhance organizational outcomes for teams, and yield higher positive end-user experiences. Watch the video→
Hybrid? Remote? What Jobseekers Want is a Clear Workplace Culture.
Emily Schmidt for Challenge Factory, republished on Charity Village
When preparing for interviews, many people practice answers to common interview questions, including what are your strengths, weaknesses, and goals for the future. The question that many don't prepare for—or expect to be asked!—was whether they needed to work in person or in a hybrid setting. In this post, the author discusses how when organizations are clear in what they can offer, they can attract better-suited applicants.
Read More→