Ontarians rely on nonprofit community care every day. Yet, there is a rapidly intensifying human resource crisis in nonprofits delivering care. Wage disparity between community care jobs in nonprofits and those in the public and private sectors is driving the HR crisis and hurting the communities we serve. This means longer wait times, gaps in services, and intense pressure on our organizations to take on more with less. 

Wage equality would mean nonprofits can continue to provide quality and accessible care for communities, meet increased needs, and address gaps in services by alleviating worker shortages. We need to remove this significant barrier in recruiting and retaining workers in the nonprofit sector.

In our new paper, we have outlined eight solutions to make wage parity a reality.

Four solutions with the government:

1. Phase in wage parity with annual instalments for similar groups of frontline workers across municipalities, hospitals, schools, and community settings to achieve equal pay for equal work in four years.
2. Redesign funding agreements with an equal pay for equal work principle so funding for nonprofit services is on par with that of municipalities, school boards, and hospitals and there is a set wage floor. In conjunction with the first recommendation, this can ensure there is no wage compression in organizations.
3. Support the sector in building a comprehensive labour force strategy (as exists for skilled trades) that bridges all aspects of care, for a resilient nonprofit workforce. The strategy should include pathways into the sector, promotion of care work, and access to training.
4. Prioritize nonprofit providers and the provision of community-based care as the priority for care service expansion. Ensure public funding is kept in care, not profits for shareholders.

Four solutions for nonprofits:

1. Convene across subsectors to share information and align on minimum standards for wages and administrative costs for when funding opportunities and contracts arise.
2. Work with the government to develop a comprehensive labour force strategy.
3. Collaborate with workers, unions, and employers of all sizes in the sector to make clear to the public and families the cost of NOT supporting community care workers.
4. Ally with families to help them advocate for loved ones’ care needs and demand better from the government.

Nonprofits have a critical role to play in making wage parity a reality. By advocating to the government, together with families and communities, we can better support and keep talented workers in our sector and focus on our missions and communities.

Learn more about wage disparity in community care and the ways in which nonprofits and the government can take action in our new paper.

Guest biography: Dr. Vidya Shah is an educator, scholar and activist committed to equity and racial justice in the service of liberatory education. She is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University and her research explores anti-racist and decolonizing approaches to leadership in schools, communities, and school districts. She also explores educational barriers to the success and well-being of Black, Indigenous, and racialized students. Dr. Shah teaches in the Master of Leadership and Community Engagement, as well as undergraduate and graduate level courses in education. She has worked in the Model Schools for Inner Cities Program in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and was an elementary classroom teacher in the TDSB. Dr. Shah is committed to bridging the gaps between communities, classrooms, school districts and the academy, to re/imagine emancipatory possibilities for schooling.

Resources: Ž„Ìę

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Guest biography: Shanese Indoowaaboo Steele is an Afro-Indigenous, Fat Femme living between Edopikaang (North York) and Decatur il, both traditional territories of the Anishinaabe (Mississaugek and Potawatomi) People. With roots in the Caribbean (Trinidad/Carriacou) and MĂ©tis and Nibisiing Nations, Shanese works to bridge the gap between Black and Indigenous Peoples within Turtle Island through writing, education work and facilitation.

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Guest biographies: Noah is a Black person of trans experience with a passion for creating dialogue and space for Black queer and trans communities to exist as their fullest selves. Noah received his bachelor’s in Social Work from Carleton University in 2014 and has worked with various Black and 2SLGBTQ+ organizations in 91ÊÓÆ” including Jaku Konbit, Kindspace, the Centretown Community Health Centre, the LGBT Youthline, Rexdale Pride, and Family Services Ottawa’s Around The Rainbow program. He is currently the Program Manager with The EnchantĂ© Network, where he gets to use his vast experience to support 2SLGBTQI+ organizations and groups across the country”

Roland Jones is Saulteaux–Cree, originally from Regina, Saskatchewan (Treaty No. 1 & 4) and is currently living on Algonquin Territory in Ottawa. They are a Two Spirit, Non-Binary and Queer multimedia artist, educator and full-spectrum doula in decolonizing our approach to gender, sexuality and sexual health. They are currently the Two Spirit Coordinator at The EnchantĂ© Network.

Resource: Driving Transformational Change:

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This work is part of the current iteration of ONN’s decent work project, to build racial justice and Truth and Reconciliation into our decent work movement-building, using an intersectional lens.

During this time, I have been engaging with various settler-led, Black-led and Indigenous-led organizations, leaders and nonprofit workers. As I started to dream up learnings to share with the nonprofit sector, specifically about the realities of Black workers and leaders within the sector, I first leaned into research that showed the links between , and ways that nonprofits need to rethink their management styles. Then I had the desire to elaborate on learnings from the Networking space for Black, Indigenous, and racialized people held at Nonprofit Driven 2021 and the podcast episode of Digging In with ONN on anti-Black racism and solutions for change with Rudayna Bahubeshi. 

But the question on a yellow post-it on my desk gnawed at me: “What does wellness look and feel like in the workplace for Black workers within the nonprofit sector?” Truthfully, it’s one question among many that will be central to the current iteration of decent work that ONN will be working on and exploring with Black-led organizations. 

Photo credit: Samya Lugoma, Congolese artist living and loving on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe Territory.

As part of this, I want to invite the sector to think about supporting Black workers’ wellness by acknowledging Black fatigue and rethinking practices of rest to include a higher level of flexibility. 

The time to acknowledge Black Fatigue is now

is a term coined by She describes the impacts of anti-Black racism causing “extreme exhaustion that is linked to the mental and physical maladies that are passed from generation to generation”. Winter’s description of the intergenerational impacts of navigating an anti-Black world provides a stark reality that needs to be acknowledged in the context of wellness in the workplace. Advancing Decent Work for Black workers in the sector means addressing on our well-being. No small feat. I encourage the sector to re-examine complicity in practices that contribute to Black fatigue. And since it’s Black History Month, we can start today, right now, by rethinking practices that are harmful and contribute to Black fatigue. 

Many Black workers within the sector are working double shifts in an effort to support Black History Month programming for their respective organizations. Earlier this month, I moderated a panel hosted by the where every panelist, who are Black 2SLGBTQ+ sector leaders, spoke of the volume of events, educational  and speaking engagement requests alongside the additional unpaid labour that comes with fulfilling those requests. The experiences shared on the panel are not unique. A recent report, (2022), by Race to Lead, an initiative of the Building Movement Project, speaks to the unique challenges faced by nonprofit executives of colour. For frontline workers and changemakers that do not hold leadership titles, fatigue is also a reality.  

Addressing and acknowledging Black fatigue is a critical, if not essential, component of integrating Black wellness and rest into the nonprofit sector. The invitation to lean into rest must be met with sustainable practices for Black workers, which include employee benefit packages that are culturally relevant and tackling anti-Black racism in the workplace. 

Centering Black wellness and reimagining HR practices

In a conversation with Danait Mehreteab, the National Learning Community Facilitator at , she spoke of moving beyond the narrative of rest and self care as tools and to center Black wellness within the nonprofit sector. We are often juggling multiple realities of home and work-life, so there isn’t really a break. “What would it look like if nonprofits offered the flexibility of time in deliverables at work?”, she asks. If anything, the pandemic has taught us that 9-5 work schedules need to be re-examined. Many nonprofit organizations in the sector have been exploring flexibility through moving to a and Adopting various models may take time and may vary depending on organizational focus, but possibilities to rethink HR practices exist. The implementation of flexibility is not new; in the summer of 2020, nonprofitsto counteract the ongoing resurgence of anti-Black racism and state violence being witnessed in the media and across North America. 

Though I can relate to the fatigue and feel it too, I do find joy in celebrating Black History Month at various roundtables, conferences, panels, workshops, lunch and learns, and more. I’m also excited to learn from sector leaders at the upcoming hosted by Future of Good and the Foundation for Black Communities.

While the nonprofit sector may not have the perfect models to address Black fatigue, there is an urgent need to acknowledge it and take action to support Black workers. In the words of Tricia Hersey, the founder of , “Black people have been born into systems and cultures that have centered messaging that we are not worthy unless we produce. We must lean into practices of rest as a form of resistance systems of domination. We deserve rest.” 

And on that note, I’m wishing you all a Happy Black Rest Month!

ONN has been thinking through how to support the sector through the HR crisis. What can help immediately and isn’t another toolkit? While the issues are not new, something feels different about this moment in time. Perhaps it’s the pandemic, the exponential increase in the cost of living, fatigue of serving communities with limited resources and increased demand, or that we might actually be at a point where parts of the sector might collapse. 

I keep circling back to the fact that the real solution to combat the HR crisis is also going to take a long time to achieve. We need to address the devaluation of nonprofit work, which is rooted in gendered and racialized notions of which work is valuable. It results in low wages and benefits, no wage parity for the same jobs across sectors, antiquated funding agreements, lack of long-term labour force strategy and workforce development, and constraining employment standards and regulations. Bill 124 is at the crux of all these issues. 

Bill 124 is one of the root causes of the nonprofit HR crisis

Aside from the broader public sector, like hospitals, schools, universities, applies to community-governed nonprofits that received $1 million or more in funding from the 91ÊÓÆ” government in fiscal 2018/2019. The Bill came into effect for union employees with any collective bargaining negotiated after June 5, 2019 and for non-union employees on January 1, 2022. Both groups are subject to wage controls for three years. Alongside health care workers, nonprofit workers in shelters, food banks, mental health and addictions, employment and training, and immigrant services are also impacted by the bill’s wage restraints. While the legislation mainly applies to larger nonprofits, and mostly in social services, it affects a large percentage of the nonprofit workforce. The reality is that Ontarians and the economy rely on many of the workers that fall under Bill 124.

With legislation like this on the books, how do we recruit and retain folks in stressful and high-risk jobs that are already low-paid and devalued? It’s not just workers in health care that are leaving in droves because wages are not keeping pace with the 2022 world, but also community-based nonprofit workers whose organizations fall under Bill 124. 

Here are the five ways Bill 124 acts as a barrier for nonprofits to recruit and retain staff: 

1. Uses overall budgets for wage controls: Bill 124 extends beyond provincially funded programs to cover an entire organization’s workforce, even when provincial funding may constitute a small fraction of an organization’s revenue. It interferes with the ability of community nonprofits to manage their own budgets and recruit and retain workers as best as they can within their organizational budgets. 
2. Enforces wage restraint on top of eroding funding levels: Bill 124 restrains compensation in provincially funded nonprofits that in many cases have already been subject to funding flatlines in the last five to ten years, despite growing demand for services. These flat-lined budgets mean nonprofit workers have already been subject to indirect wage restraint of up to 1.5 per cent per year over the past decade – a desperate game of catch-up. Inflation this year has started off at 4.7 per cent and so a 1 per cent wage freeze will mean a drop in real salaries for front-line workers. 
3. Creates an unfair playing field for talent recruitment: Many nonprofits compete for talent with for-profit service providers, who are explicitly exempt from Bill 124 wage restraint measures, despite operating in many of the same industries as nonprofits and getting funding from the exact same government program (long-term care, home care, child care, employment and training services, etc.). As such, Bill 124 sets up an unfair playing field for recruitment and retention in these areas.
4. Does not example wage increases required by other legislation: Nonprofits have existing obligations to comply with other laws. Nothing in the Act explicitly exempts increases that are required for compliance with the Human Rights Code, the Employment Standards Act, or the Pay Equity Act. Being compliant with Bill 124 can mean not being compliant with other legislation that is set up to reduce labour inequities. 
5. Freezes wages for low-wage workers in a women-majority sector: Bill 124 essentially freezes the wages of front-line care workers – of whom almost 80 per cent are women. The lowest-paid workers in the nonprofit sector should not be subject to arbitrary wage controls, most of whom are women performing valuable care work, newcomers, Indigenous, Black, other racialized women, and women with disabilities.

Bill 124 hurts Ontarians

Just as Ontarians across the province rely on health care workers, they also rely on workers in home care agencies, long-term care homes, child care centers, shelters, addictions and mental health programs, employment and training supports, youth programming, and immigrant services. These nonprofits in turn rely on a strong and robust labour force. But the labour force is crumbling and Bill 124 is one of the reasons why. 

There is a concrete solution: the 91ÊÓÆ” government must repeal Bill 124. Communities can’t wait.

Advocate with us

• Join and support cross-sectoral calls to repeal Bill 124
• Amplify the impact of Bill 124 on Ontarians in your sectors, communities, and on social media
• Talk to your local

A rapidly intensifying human resource crisis in nonprofits, compounded by the pandemic, is threatening the sector’s impact. 

Over the past few months ONN has been hearing from its network that workers are leaving the sector in droves and staff vacancies have reached a breaking point. It appears that our sector may be facing at least one of the following phenomena across its industries: the great resignation (there are enough people to work but they do not want to work in the jobs available) and/or a labour shortage (there are not enough people to work in the available jobs). 

While the HR crisis is a cross-sectoral issue, it is manifesting differently across subsectors. Urgency of need in communities (e.g., waiting lists, unmet needs, rising community demands) is also putting pressure on the need for more staff and volunteers.

What we are hearing

Supporting data

• found that 4 out of 5 homelessness service providers said their mental health has declined during the pandemic 
• Our survey found that 64% of nonprofits did not receive funding from federal supports 
• in 2021 highlighted that 44% is the average decline in revenue for charities 
• found that the top obstacles for nonprofits across Canada: cost of insurance (48.6%), government regulations (37%) recruiting skilled employees (37.6%), retaining skilled employees (33.5%), labour force shortage (32.6%) (Statistics Canada 2021). Also that the top recruitment and retention plans of nonprofits were to increase wages for current employees (61.8%), provide paid time to engage in PD (40.3%),  but only 8.4% are planning to increase benefits (Statistics Canada 2021)

Layered causes for the HR crisis

Nonprofits have always faced human resource challenges and barriers to providing decent work in the sector. However, this moment is different as the HR situation is rapidly deteriorating to a crisis point. 

• The sector and its workers have been on the frontlines of a global pandemic
• Ongoing systemic racism
• Cost of living is increasing rapidly
• There is limited care infrastructure to offload unpaid carework in the home, which particularly impacts women who make up a majority of the sector’s labour force
• People are reconsidering – whether by choice or force – what type of work they want to do and the role work plays in their lives 
• Demand for nonprofit services is growing
• Earned-income revenues are down
• Government funding has not kept up with increases in population as well as the cost of program delivery for the past twenty years. 

The sector is facing this crisis when it is actually more important than ever for nonprofits to recruit and retain the best people to carry out our sector’s community oriented missions and work on the most complex social problems of our time.

Call to action

Share with us what you are hearing and seeing. Email: pamela@theonn.ca.

Nonprofit funders, including governmental, non-governmental, and donors, have an important role to play in supporting nonprofit and charities to provide decent work – they can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

1. You spent formative years of your early career working in foundations and in the philanthropic community broadly. How did these early work experiences frame your understanding of decent work in the sector?

My career still feels ‘early!’ I have benefited from a few formative work experiences connected to the philanthropic sector—from small but mighty nonprofits, to corporate philanthropy, to start-up organizations. 

At the beginning of my career, I worked at a children’s charity. I loved the work we did. There was a culture of work that I learned while there that was rooted in a shared commitment for the work but also included the expectation of long hours, event attendance and organizing on evenings and weekends. In one of the roles I held I was on call 24/7 should a family need to reach the organization. What became entrenched in me was a pattern and style of work that I learned to view as ‘normal’. It’s only recently that I’ve really begun to realize how this has followed me, and how it is not healthy. 

After the children’s charity, I worked in corporate philanthropy at PwC. I spent the first few months in awe of the systems in place—a tech support team, a travel advisory system, a fitness allowance, etc. I was consistently surprised and delighted as to how the firm supported employees. That said, the culture of long hours was deeply entrenched there too. 

There is a perception the public has of nonprofits: that we must be extremely savvy with expenditures and therefore never invest money in ourselves—our team, equipment, space, etc. You hear it in the comments centred around ‘overhead’ or ‘operating expenses’. And yet, it’s the team members at non-profits who are doing and enabling the work that is so critical to community and social infrastructure. This is a tension we need to address. 

Now, here at Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), I know that the patterns I learned early continue to be part of how I operate. More clearly said, I know that I perpetuate unsustainable work practices. I’m working on shifting this pattern—both for me, but also so my team witnesses a better example and balance. Admittedly,  I still work long hours because I love my job, but now I am careful to balance that with lieu time, holidays, etc.

The sector needs leaders to flip the orthodoxy of overworked, underpaid, not taking care of yourself bravado. The focus and language of decent work has helped me to personally recognize that it’s not just about what I value in concept and practice, but how I demonstrate it for others.

2. Why should the community foundation network care about advancing decent work, and specifically advancing decent work for women workers?

Data demonstrates that gender inequality is the that exists in the world. A place where gender inequality shows itself consistently is . With this knowledge, we have the opportunity and responsibility to change this trajectory, and the work experience for all. There is tremendous urgency related to this need to change. I think about people who have jobs that have long or complex commutes, those who make minimum wage, those who have their personal safety threatened in public because of where they work, and those who lost a job because of COVID-19. Within philanthropy, we have a tremendous opportunity to take action when it comes to decent work and how it intersects with gender equality. Unfortunately, there are some who do not embed decent work in a manner that reflects the urgency of the situation. Many funders, in the current context, operate in an environment where time is unlimited. Time is a currency of power. When we take time, without acknowledging that power and privilege allow us to do so, we are not shifting or sharing power. We are monopolizing it. This endless time and lack of urgency creates a culture of questioning legitimate data, going on learning journeys, reflecting and consulting. We take our time to be strategic, write thought papers, host generative discussions, and in the end mostly move incrementally. Community foundations in Canada have 100 years of experience that demonstrate how this approach is not creating the systemic change we are seeking. Taking a look in the mirror and changing how we work, embedding decent work practices, is a shift we can collectively make now. 

Decent work is a gender equity and racial justice issue

3. As a gender equity champion, you have stated how complex social issues intersect, that climate change is about gender equity and racial justice, for example. What do you take away from the following message “women’s economic justice means investing in women-majority sectors”? 

In principle, I agree. However, in Canada we often hold the belief and posture that we have it good, especially when it comes to gender equality. But if you look at the data—and listen to women and gender-diverse people—then you will know that is not entirely true.

As funders, as humans, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that all women have access to safe, fair and flexible employment—whether re-entering the workforce, returning to the office, or getting started in their career.

When we use an intersectional analysis, we’re able to better understand where the experiences of many differ from what the common belief tends to be. For example, we know that a woman living in a rural community, with unstable employment, without access to transportation, will have a different experience obtaining food security for their family than a woman living in an urban setting with access to public transit and who is in a stable economic situation. Looking at economic justice and gender, we can see how Black, Indigenous and women of colour have been negatively impacted the greatest during the pandemic. The care sector, hospitality and service sectors, have all taken the greatest job losses and often have the most precarious employment, for a majority BIPOC-women demographic.

This is why the advocacy of organizations like the 91ÊÓÆ” Nonprofit Network matters so significantly.  To use ONN’s language, by funding women-led and women-serving organizations, we can deliver double the impact. We can support decent work for women-identifying staff at those nonprofits and support the programming that serves women, girls, Two-Spirit people and gender-diverse people. 

However, we can also go back to the framing of this question and draw attention to sectors that are not women-majority. I believe it’s equally important to ensure that we are in which women are part of the sectors that are . For example, where wealth comes from, who is making the investment decisions—this also needs to shift. The predominantly male demographic of angel investors, mostly invests in male entrepreneurs. Women need access to capital and to have agency to decide how it is (re)distributed, as well as be the recipients of it. The whole system requires a flip.

Community foundations as grantmakers

4. We’ve heard loud and clear from the sector that they can’t implement decent work alone, they are only going to get so far and so need the support of funders, like community foundations. Community foundations play a variety of roles – they are employers, grant-makers, as well as leaders in their communities. However, with great responsibility, comes great power. What would you say the community foundations network has done really well to advance decent work, and what can it do better?

Over the last year, one of the themes that has become an integral part of our conversations at CFC is that of language. Personally, I have become quite interested in how language evolves, and how much language, and the nuance of it, matters. At CFC, we’ve been leaning into deep thinking about what language infers: what actions it signals, who it includes, what urgency it conveys, what it leaves unsaid. 

So, I want to comment on the language the sector uses— how the sector positions itself. This is one area of improvement. If we take the example of student workplace internships, we see that for-profit organizations promote student placements with descriptive language such as “Designed for students to have countless opportunities to learn, grow, and work with purpose across multiple environments and technologies”.  Or, ”Develop new skills, establish contacts in your field of study and boost your career possibilities”. Whereas nonprofit workplace internship language often centres more words that infer scarcity. For example, “a placement explicitly designed to boost the capacity of the not-for-profit organization.”

The nonprofit sector is not lesser than. The nonprofit sector is run by professionals.  I’m hopeful community foundations in their broad reach, will support decent work practices internally and throughout their network, such as grantees. For example, there are some community foundations who use Vital Signs to understand what a living wage is in their community. They then take it a step farther and ask their grant recipients if they are paying their employees a living wage—and if they are not, the community foundation provides funding to do so. So, they are requiring that organizations step up, and do so in an enabling way. This is a great model and I’m hopeful more community foundations lean into practices such as this. 

Here at CFC, we’re also requiring adaptations by community foundations when participating in specific programs. As an example, through the program, we require participating community foundations to live the values of the initiative from the inside out, by committing to their own institutional change. This comes to life through implementing gender lens investing practices, reviewing their governance and HR policies and practices, and conducting equity audits of their programming. The first cohort of participants is stepping up and doing incredible work in their community and in their own institution. 

5. CFC was a signatory to a joint statement early in the pandemic that called for increased funding and flexibility. How do you think this message resonated and do you think it should be a short-term pandemic response or a longer-term solution? How do you think this more flexible approach might contribute to funding decent work practices?

Evidence from the community foundation network shows that it did resonate. Most community foundations were able to pivot to crisis funding that was much more flexible. The longer-term solution is trust-based philanthropy. Beyond single events, we need to embed the values we purport to have into our processes and policies. We witnessed a lot of leaning into trust and during the pandemic—in particular at its onset. There’s also been a shift to more inclusive grantmaking practices, for example, . The optimist in me believes we’re in a moment of transformation. The conversations people are having about experiments, pilot programs, unrestricted granting, multi-year funding, operational funding, donor education—they are all good signs. The path forward is brightly lit.

But we also know that the process can catch us up and slow us down. The world has fundamentally changed, our communities have changed. Our practices must change too—and at a pace that is aligned with the urgency in community. Personally, I’d like to see community foundations lean into the principles in the statement further—the pandemic has proven that we have the ability to shift quickly and to change our practices based on what the community needs. We now have the opportunity to make permanent the practices that shift power, decolonize philanthropy, and embed equity. 

Community foundations as an employer

6. As CEO, how do you walk the talk? What do you struggle with related to developing a culture of decent work? What are you most proud of?

My hope is that both CFC and I are continuously interacting and making decisions about the team and our workplace with the best interests of the organization and its people at the centre. I very much believe that CFC’s strength comes from the amazing people who are part of our team. Despite the obvious challenges, our team has been strong over the last year and a half. I’m proud to work alongside this crew of incredible humans who not only do good work, but who show up for one another, for their friends and families, for our network, and for communities. This last year and a half the CFC team, more than ever before, brought their whole hearts into CFC—from kitchen tables, living room couches, balconies, and basement offices. We celebrated with one another: successes in programs, babies, and moves across the country. We held space for one another on tough days: when a loved one was lost, a heart was broken, or the fatigue of the continued pandemic has felt too heavy. We’ve shared Netflix recommendations and passwords, where to buy toilet paper, workouts, books that bring us joy, zoom dance parties, vaccine location appointments, virtual coffee, pizza and even ice cream. Our team has also held true to our purpose in many ways; these last 18 months they have stood up for, and held CFC to account, for the future we are all working toward—one that is equal, just and sustainable. I’m personally grateful to each of them for showing up as they do—with questions, ideas, insights and opportunities. It’s clear to me that at CFC, our greatest super power has always been our staff team. 

My hope is that we are creating a workplace where each team member is supported with kindness on the days that are bright as well as on those days that have darkness. And I think it’s important to be open about the days and moments that are hard. Personally, I struggle with the concept of ‘it’s ok to not be ok’. I feel a tension with it because in one way, I wholeheartedly agree. I want our team and network to know this, believe it, and live it. I want them to know that I will support them, champion them, or simply listen to them, on the days when they are not ok. Where the tension exists is how this concept relates to me: how I approach the days when I’m not ok. And in truth, I know I don’t approach them as well. I don’t model the idea that it’s ok to not be ok—I don’t give myself the grace to feel it. In part, because if one crack begins, I’m uncertain how many more will follow. This year, it has often felt like I’ve simply been moving the glue to different cracks as they emerge. I know this is a space for me to improve, to become better at being gentle with myself. 

Community foundations as community leaders

7. Collaboration is the key to movement building as well as systems change. How can funders and grantees work together to ensure we build a stronger movement for decent work, gender equality and racial justice in our sector? How can your network lead the way for other funders?

My experience is that we (the collective nonprofit) are most comfortable with conversations and actions that can be categorized (broadly) as ‘optimization’. Optimization is the act of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource. There are moments where this can be good. What we’ve been thinking about at CFC is this: what if instead of striving for optimization, we aspire for transformation? Transformation is the act or process of changing completely. This is relevant to the work of philanthropy, and in how we do this work—especially to the work cultures and environments we are fostering. 

In philanthropy, I think we often speak about shifts or changes as if they are transformation
 but really, we’re playing it safe with changes that are about optimization. There was about COVID-19, which stated: “It is easier to keep adding exceptions and justifications to a belief—than to admit that a challenger has a better explanation.” I believe this also has relevance for the solutions and methodologies we utilize in philanthropy. That often it’s easier to keep jiggling or modifying an existing “solution” than to admit that there are better solutions being offered by others. This is part of our conversations internally—about the work we are doing as well as the organization we are today and will be in the future. Saying it is easy, putting it into practice is a radical act. I believe that we’re up for it. 

Part of this is also being clear when we’ve gotten it wrong. As one example, The Nonprofit Coalition launched with the leadership of a number of organizations that work nationally, many of whom represent the reality of a white-led sector. We should not have participated in a process itself that perpetuated some of the very issues we are hoping to address through our work. This was a mistake and led to our own reflections, as an organization and for myself as a leader, to take steps to change how and where we show up, and only agreeing to participate in and build coalitions, consortiums and collaboratives where diverse leaders are present in all activities and decision making. While the Coalition acknowledged the lack of diversity, at CFC we believed it was important to do and say more. We took steps to acknowledge our mistake publicly in order to be transparent about our mistake, and to also encourage others to hold us accountable.