Caught in the Middle: What Small, Non-profit Organizations Need to Survive and Flourish

6. Summary

The research for the discussion paper and the feedback from small organizations and agencies confirms that we need to know much more about the small groups working at the community level. Although they are the largest part of the voluntary sector, we know little about their successes and struggles or the changing environment in which they work. And small organizations, collectively, do not receive a proportional share of the resources available within the voluntary sector. One focus group participant remarked that "if small organizations and agencies comprise more than half the voluntary sector, we should get at least fifty percent of the attention and the funding." Instead, with the vast body of research on the voluntary sector, there is no scholarly work on the definition of small (or medium or large) and very little research on the impact of size. In order to nurture community groups, we must know about their role, their successes, their vulnerabilities, their struggles, and their needs.

This paper provides a working definition of organizations and agencies that includes the service-providing agencies' differential incomes reflecting fixed costs for which organizations are not necessarily responsible. Although the original discussion paper¹² used $80,000 as a benchmark of small, it became apparent in the focus groups that such organizations generally had no staff and therefore needed less money to do their work, making the figure too high. In comparison, for agencies with infrastructure costs such as staff, rent, phone, lights, heat and supplies, the $80,000 benchmark was too low.

The differences between organizations and agencies emerged in what each grouping considered accomplishments and what they identified as their greatest worries and problems. For organizations, the major successes were: the information and support, the civic pride, the cooperation with other groups, and the public education on local issues. Although agency representatives identified some of the same accomplishments, the slant was on specific services and the flexibility, good management, community spirit, and grassroots knowledge of the community and its needs. The top problems for organizations were volunteers, grants, government policies (downloading, advocacy, and the changing social structure), fund-raising, and marketing. For agencies, the issue of sustainable funding and the problems with fund-raising was closely followed by the myriad of issues in maintaining a volunteer base. Staffing was a big problem for small agencies with little money. The paper burden of operating a service was out of proportion to the income. Issues common to service-providers and others included the uniqueness, challenges and benefits of being small and also their invisibility in the shadow of bigger voluntary sector groups.

Key recommendations centred on:

funding;
volunteer support;
public education about small organizations/agencies in general and specific services locally;
infrastructure support including computer hardware and technical services;
local information centres to support small organizations/agencies; and
addressing liability of voluntary sector groups.

Asked to rate the Voluntary Sector Initiative, representatives of agencies and organizations thought that it was important work (35%), a nice try (22%), not sure (38%), won't matter to my organization (5%), and waste of money (0%). "Thank goodness for at least this effort to hear from small organizations. Not nearly enough has been done to include the voices of small groups in the VSI." "All the study in the world won't help us unless federal, provincial and municipal governments take concrete steps to implement change and support small groups."

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