Inventory of Effective Practices in Financing and Resourcing
of Voluntary Sector Organizations in Canada
Ontario: Overview
The last decade has been a time of change
in funding and resourcing practice for the sector. The Working
Group on Financing of the Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI) launched
a process to identify and document case studies of organizations
illustrating financing/resourcing "best practices" - that is ways
of resourcing that "enhance the ability of the organization to
meet its mandate efficiently and effectively". These ten case
studies, illustrating the resourcing practices of ten Ontario
organizations, form the Ontario section of a national inventory
of resourcing "best practices". The purpose of the inventory is
to help organizations and funders to learn about resourcing practices
emerging in voluntary organizations across Canada.
Ontario has experienced dramatic changes
in the funding environment for not-for-profit organizations over
the last ten years. In addition to the cut backs at the federal
level, municipalities have been amalgamated to reduce their numbers
and the "who does what" map of provincial-municipal relationship
has been dramatically re-organized. The Ontario government has
pursued an ongoing course of funding cut-backs, effectively re-shaping
the landscape in which the not-for-profit sector operates. In
response, many, if not most, organizations in the Ontario have
repositioned their funding relationships with government and corporate
sectors, and many are also exploring more entrepreneurial forms
of resourcing.
There are a number of larger conversations
underway in the charitable sector that have shaped the development
of resourcing practices in these case-study organizations. These
conversations include: the withdrawal or reduction of funds from
government sources and the shift from core to project funding;
pressure to incorporate business concepts into financial practices1;
a focus on outcome measurement2;
the ability to take an entrepreneurial approach3;
and the vigilance required to prevent "mission drift" - a shift
in the intention of the work in exchange for resourcing4.
Research Method
In order to locate resourcing practices
that could provide insight for others, sixteen key informants
were interviewed, and less formal conversations were held with
another sixteen people who work in sector organizations, in universities,
or who are funders or consultants. In search of something more
specific on which to base the selection of case studies than the
very broad VSI definition, a rudimentary framework of resourcing
practices was reviewed with key informants and they were asked
to identify "best practice" organizations, and to help to refine
the framework of possible practice.
In working toward a framework from which
to select "best practice" organizations, it quickly became clear
that there is little well developed language to talk about resourcing
practices, particularly across the diversity of sports and recreation,
culture, environmental and social service organizations. While
the key informants and practitioners were eager to talk about
what they have discovered about resourcing practices and models
over the last five years of financial repositioning, they were
less certain about how to articulate and name them. The exception
is in the area of fundraising practice in the traditional sense
of obtaining gifts from donors, bequests, direct mail campaigns,
lotteries and so on. While many of the case study organizations
have active fundraising programs, these stories were not pursued
because there is ample literature in this area.
Naming resourcing practice began to resemble
looking through a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting patterns.
Yet together, even these ten stories begin to create a picture
that emerges as more than a sum of its parts. The framework below
evolved as a list of "generic" resourcing practice that guided
the locating of the case-study organizations and framing their
stories. Each practice represents an ability to mobilize resources,
including time, money, or in-kind resources, and each opens into
a myriad of possible resourcing strategies.
| Core
resourcing |
the ability
to finance the operational core of an organization including
administrative and resource seeking functions |
| Partnership
resourcing |
the ability
to obtain resources through joint ventures of mutual benefit |
| Project
grantsmanship |
the ability
to obtain project funds that support the strategic direction
of the organization |
| Owner
operator of the for-profit venture |
the ability
to generate revenue over costs on a venture that draws from
core program capacity |
| Event
driven revenues |
the ability
to generate one-time or repeat resourcing from an event |
| Membership
resourcing |
the ability
to draw resources from membership |
| Project
as product |
an entrepreneurial
approach to marketing expertise gained from service or positioning
within a sector |
| Cost
recovery practice |
the ability
to recover costs of program as fees for service or user fees |
| Cost
avoidance practice |
the ability
to structure resourcing models to avoid paying specific costs
or to reduce costs |
| Fundraising |
the ability
to generate gifts, donations and sponsorships |
| Sister
investment corporations |
the ability
to create a second organization with added capacity for fund
generation or investment |
Guided by the emerging framework, organizations
were sought with activities that met the VSI's broad definition
of a "best practice", were thriving, and that a key informant
suggested exemplified one or more resourcing practices. In addition,
organizations were selected for diversity of location across the
province, size, sector and approach to the work they do. While
the ten case studies cannot represent the range of practice within
the sector, nor locate the best of the "best practices" in Ontario,
they do tell diverse stories of successful practice. Although
a case-study may point to a particular resourcing practice, or
combination of practices, each of these case-study organizations
has also developed a unique constellation of practices that create
a resourcing model.
Introduction to case studies
Two of the smaller of the ten case studies
organizations, the Niagara Symphony and the Owen Sound Satellites
Gymnastics Club, tell stories of repositioning following financial
crisis. Two others, EcoSuperior Environmental Programs and the
Consumers Council of Canada, have their genesis in the loss of
government funding to provincial or national organizations. Their
resourcing models are a deliberate repositioning of their work
and resourcing practice to more entrepreneurial models, to enable
the work to continue. Three others, the Heart and Stroke Foundation,
Evergreen and the Niagara Symphony, share a common focus on offering
a high degree of practical thought to a particular aspect of corporate
sponsorship, partnership and alignment at the national and community
levels.
The Newmarket Soccer Club case study
demonstrates how participatory organizing practice yields a high
degree of the most traditional resource of the sector, volunteer
time. Voluntary participation in the Club also creates access
to both financial resources and savings, through cost avoidance
practices. The Catholic Family Counseling Centre and the Ontario
Federation of Indian Friendship Centres are organizations with
long histories and rich cultures. They have built highly successful
models by considering core funding quite differently, while sharing
a well-developed entrepreneurial way of thinking, deeply embedded
in organizational culture. The Federation's model includes a small
amount of core funding used to leverage substantial program resourcing.
The Centre's model is based on leveraging a wide diversity of
funding streams to resource their core. These two organizations
and a third, 1 Community Place, describe three alternative routes
to property ownership as a cost avoidance practice.
Each of the ten organizations has accomplished
impressive increases in revenues within the last five years, in
the period marked by the heaviest government cut backs. All believe
they have found or are close to developing a stable resourcing
model, that will ensure their future.
Several of the case-studies make reference
to funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. This agency has
received $100 million per year since 1999 to grant to the not-for-profit
and charitable sector from lottery revenues through the Ontario
Gaming Commission. The Foundation makes about fifteen hundred
grants a year, making it difficult to find organizations in Ontario
which have not benefited from its granting program. Most of the
organizations documented have received Trillium funds. Four have
used a Trillium grant specifically to assist them in launching
a resourcing model to achieve financial independence and sustainability.
Please
click here to link to the Ontario case studies.
Attributes of Organizations that
develop resourcing success
While organizations in Ontario are more
or less aware of the larger conversations shaping resourcing in
the sector, no organization has been free of their impact. The
case study organizations have, by definition, achieved some success
in dealing with a loss of government funding, incorporating business
practices, thinking entrepreneurially and demonstrating value
in their work using logic-based models of outcome and measure.
However, many other organizations in the province experience these
exercises as a new tyranny and have fallen to despair and loss
of belief that their work is possible in current economic and
political realities. If projects like this one are to help not-for-profit
organizations to imagine themselves as successful, they must do
more than just present the success stories, which to many will
appear unattainable. They must begin to make method, to point
the way to concrete "how to's" of achieving financial sustainability.
As the framework of resourcing practices
was important to be able to see across field of case-study choices,
so four clusters of organizational attributes have emerged that
have contributed to the success of the case-study organizations.
Each organization has developed a resourcing model where there
is a high degree of congruence with its governance structure,
and the kind of work it is built to do. That is, there is a good
"fit" between how revenues/resources are generated, who is on
the board, and the role they play, and the work the resourcing
is sought to support. In the strongest organizations, these three
elements are deeply embedded in an organizational culture that
links and supports all three elements in a particular synergy.
The second attribute these organizations
share is that they have each become very specific about the niche
that they have chosen to occupy in the range of work of their
sector. They are focused and very clear about what their work
is, the outcomes they work toward, and more importantly what their
work is not. This clarity more readily permits organizations to
locate a convergence of interest between their mission and a source
of resourcing. The phrase win/win was often used to describe these
arrangements of mutual value.
Thirdly, the boards of these organizations
have undertaken the project of developing a model of resource
sustainability. They have focused thought and resources on long-term
planning, coupled with a genuine belief that the organization
has a long-term future, and have set out a specific goal of achieving
financial independence. Finally, the governance practice of each
of the organizations includes oversight on the mission in relation
to resourcing practice. This function includes building elements
of organizational culture that support resourcing decisions that
are congruent with mission, and in some cases, creating "firewalls",
structural or practical checks and balances that protect the organization
from undertaking activity in exchange for resourcing that compromises
its mission.
Finally, the overarching impression left
after talking with people in these organizations, writing their
stories, checking the facts and negotiating language is of their
vibrancy. They are determined, they are thinking hard, they are
imagining and they are struggling. These are organizations that
do not stay the same for very long. Their stories are of some
project under development, some new vision grown out of the last,
a picture painted of what is newly possible and not yet within
reach. It is heartening to think that what they have learned,
it may be possible for their stories to teach.
Nov. 30, 2002
Marilyn Struthers
143 Pickering St.
Toronto
M4E 3J5
416-691-4209
marilyns@ca.inter.net
- Supporting Organizational
Infrastructure in the Voluntary Sector: A background paper prepared
for the VSI Secretariat, Lynn Eakin, Lynn Eakin and Associates,
May 2002.
- Helping Canadian Help
Canadians: Improving Governance & Accountability in the Voluntary
Sector, Discussion Paper from the Panel on Accountability &
Governance in the Voluntary Sector, May 1998
- Charities Doing Commercial
Ventures: Societal and Organizational Implications, Brenda Zimmerman
& Raymond Dart, The Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Canadian
Policy Research Network Inc., 1998; Enterprising Nonprofits:
A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs, J.G.Dees, J. Emerson & P.
Economy, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2001
- Enterprising Nonprofits:
A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs, J.G.Dees, J. Emerson & P.
Economy, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2001
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