Christopher Dougherty

is an MPNL alum and a Visiting Scholar at the , University of St. Andrews, in the UK. He spoke to PANL Perspectives about his findings relating political contributions and charitable donations.

Question: What are the main factors in increased political contributions being correlated with increased charitable donations?

Christopher Dougherty: Charitable donations increase with age, gender, income and marital status. For example, women and married people are more likely to donate to charities. These factors have been consistent across cycles of Statistics Canada’s (GSS-GVP) and in the analysis done by David Lasby and Cathy Barr in the report.

What wasn’t known is how these variables (except for gender) affect the likelihood of political contributions in Canada. My results, which used data from Ontario and Alberta in 2003-2017, show increases in likelihood for age, income and marital status that align with charitable giving likelihoods. Also, women are less likely than men to make a political contribution, and that shows up in my results.

See Christopher Dougherty’s two other Q&As with PANL Perspectives: (1) “Do Private Family Foundations Engage in Political Activities Through Their Granting?” and (2) “To What Extent Do Politicians Use Canada’s Nonprofit Sector to Access Constituencies and Political Power?”

Other things that weren’t known in Canada is whether the same people are giving to charity and making political contributions. My results show that each type of giving increases the likelihood of the other, but about ten times as many people make charitable gifts as make political contributions

Political context also affects both types of giving. Living in a more politically competitive riding makes it more likely that people will give to charity and politics, and people are also more likely to give to charity in election years.

On top of that, donations are more likely when people are more educated and when they attend religious services more often, but those variables aren’t included in the data set I used, so I wasn’t able to test whether they also influence political contributions.

Question: Your research is based on a huge amount of data from the Longitudinal Administrative Databank. What’s the LAD? And how much data does it have?

Christopher Dougherty: The from individual tax returns (T1 forms). It contains a random selection of 20% of all Canadian tax filers (about 2.7 million Ontarians and 850,000 Albertans). Once an individual tax filer is in the dataset, they remain part of it until they stop filing taxes. This means that researchers can analyze how behaviour changes over time and can make clear connections between events, like elections, and behaviour, like donating to charity. The data in the LAD is protected, and research using it requires approval from Statistics Canada and can be done only in a secure research data centre.

Question: You write that this study is a first step to extending Charitable Triad Theory to political contributions. Can you explain?

Cassandra Chapman and her colleagues developed the Charitable Triad Theory, a fundraising framework about a complex interaction between donors, beneficiaries and fundraisers.

Christopher Dougherty: , developed by Dr. Cassandra Chapman and her colleagues, is a fundraising framework about a complex interaction between donors, beneficiaries and fundraisers. Things that increase the likelihood are having a beneficiary and fundraiser who speak to some part of the potential donor’s identity, like their gender, age, hobbies or political beliefs. Donations are less likely when these things aren’t aligned.

Because political contributions in Canada aren’t widely studied, partly because so few people make political contributions and partly because individuals and parties tend to keep political gifts quiet, there isn’t a lot of theory that’s specific to political donors. By showing that political contributions and charitable gifts are related and influenced by similar factors, my research can help other researchers use charitable giving theories to understand political giving.

Question: Your research suggests that being female decreases the likelihood of claiming a political contribution credit and increases the likelihood of claiming a charitable gift credit. Can you elaborate?

See “The Power of Women in Philanthropy Recording, Reports & Resources,” from an event featuring Canadian and US research about women in philanthropy. Photo is courtesy of Chris Czermak.

Christopher Dougherty: Women in Alberta and Ontario are less likely than men to make a political contribution, which is something that’s well established in Canadian political science. Women are also more likely to make a charitable gift. However, research is needed to figure out if this is because of how tax credits for the two types of giving are treated. For instance, charitable tax credits can be spread out within a household, and political credits have to be claimed by a single person up to the limit.

is an MPNL alum and is a Visiting Scholar at the , University of St. Andrews, in the UK, where he’s researching “The political expressiveness of charitable sectors in comparative perspective: Canada and its provinces and the UK and its countries.” Read hisĚýtwo other Q&As with PANL Perspectives: (1) “Do Private Family Foundations Engage in Political Activities Through Their Granting?” and (2) “To What Extent Do Politicians Use Canada’s Nonprofit Sector to Access Constituencies and Political Power?”

Charity law in Canada innovates at a glacial pace, but reform is essential to address modern problems in our sector. We can’t rely on the 400-year-old Statute of Elizabeth 1601 to address 21st-century issues. To further a reform process, we must have a better understanding of what’s happening now, but that’s not possible with the existing rules of confidentiality at Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). For instance, while 77% of charity applications were approved by CRA in 2022-23, we have zero visibility into why the other 23% didn’t succeed. Is this level of secrecy still serving the public interest?

Something needs to change.

In an essay, “What We Don’t Know Does Hurt Us,” for the Pemsel Case Foundation, , CEO of the Muttart Foundation, provides compelling arguments for how increased transparency could strengthen the sector. He looks at what could change in terms of Registration and Compliance within the Charities Directorate, a group within CRA, and what could change in the Appeals Branch of CRA, including whether CRA’s requirement for secrecy should be waived in certain cases when CRA itself is accused of improper behaviour.

Click here for the 17-page pdf: What We Don’t Know Does Hurt Us, By Bob Wyatt, 2024

Banner photo is courtesy of Michel Rathwell.

Christopher Dougherty

This year, completed a about the extent to which the Canadian charitable sector is a politically expressive sector, based on data from Ontario and Alberta from 2003 to 2017. The data doesn’t include cross-provincial data, such as a political contribution from an individual foundation trustee in Alberta to a provincial political party in Saskatchewan. The dissertation focuses on private family foundations and their granting decisions within Ontario and Alberta. There were 5,606 private foundations in Canada in 2017, and collectively, they held about $92 billion in assets. Dougherty spoke to PANL Perspectives about his findings, including some of the eye-opening discoveries along the way.

Question: How do private family foundations engage in subtle political activities through their granting or through the personal actions of individual trustees?

Christopher Dougherty: Individual private family foundation trustees aren’t particularly subtle, and they’re directly contributing to political candidates and parties at high rates. Approximately 25% of them made at least one political contribution in 2003 to 2017, about 40% were repeat donors with a consistent political preference, about 20% were repeat donors who gave to more than one type of party, and the rest made a single gift.

That 25% political-contribution figure is about 10 times higher than the 2.6% of Canadians in general who are estimated to make political contributions, according to a 2022 study by Tolley, Besco and Sevi.

Read Christopher Dougherty’s other Q&A with PANL Perspectives: “To What Extent Do Politicians Use Canada’s Nonprofit Sector to Access Constituencies and Political Power?”

But not all private family foundations have trustees who make political contributions. In Ontario, somewhere between 20% and 50% of foundations have a trustee who makes a political gift in any given year. In Alberta, it’s as low as a single trustee at one foundation in one year and goes as high as 30%.

And it’s mostly one or two trustees out of the whole private family foundation board who are making political contributions.

What this all means is that the differences in granting between private family foundations with trustees who make political contributions and those foundations without any trustees making political contributions might be caused by just those one or two trustees. Also, what we don’t know is how granting decisions are being made or what influence individual trustees have on granting decisions; we only know that there are differences in granting when boards have politically active trustees.

Q: You write, “Politically aligned family foundations are much more likely to give to religious missionary charities, while non-political foundations are much more likely to give to mainstream Christian congregations.” Can you explain the difference?

Canadian charities that register with Canada Revenue Agency as “Missionary” are more likely to receive grants from foundations where trustees make political gifts.

Dougherty: This difference comes down to how the recipient charities classified themselves when they registered for charitable status with the Canada Revenue Agency.

In my study, there are five religious subsectors that are combined from denominational or sectarian choices: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Other (which includes Baha’i, Buddhist Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and others), and Missionary. As each charity chooses how to classify themselves when they register, these subsectors include congregations, religiously affiliated service-delivery charities (such as food banks, homeless shelters, pastoral counselling organizations) and congregations with an integrated service delivery.

So, what I see in the results is that charities who choose to register under a specific Christian denomination (like Catholic, Anglican, United or Lutheran) are more likely to receive grants from foundations whose trustees don’t make political gifts. In contrast, charities that register as Missionary are more likely to receive grants from foundations where trustees do make political gifts.

Q: Do specific political connections influence which charities a foundation gives to?

Alberta Legislature

Dougherty: Because I looked at political alignment (left, centre and right) rather than specific politicians or parties, I can’t say anything about specific political connections. What I can say is that political ties between foundation trustees and federal parties tends to be a bit more fluid and the differences are more about whether a trustee is making political gifts or not. At the provincial level, in Alberta and Ontario, political ties tend to be with right-of-centre parties, and foundation granting when trustees are making gifts to provincial parties reflects right-of-centre politics (less for arts and culture charities, Muslim charities, and environmental charities, for example).

I’m aware of a few charities that have current or former politicians on their boards or that were founded by politicians or their relatives. In future research, I hope to look at how recipient charity’s political connections affect granting from foundations with similar political connections.

Q: Do Canadian foundations direct grants to supporting public policies for the benefit of themselves and their wealthy peers?

Dougherty: No, there’s no evidence that private family foundations are granting more often or more dollars to charities that are involved in developing or building support for policies within Ontario and Alberta. My future research will look at grants across provincial boundaries to analyze granting to national think-tanks or advocacy organizations that were missed because of the geographic limits in this study.

Q: What did you find eye-opening about your research related to private foundations?

Dougherty: When I started this study, I expected trustees to be more consistent in their support of parties or political goals. However, the number of trustees giving to both centre and right-of-centre parties in the same year meant that I had to change my thinking about political giving to include non-political goals, like helping a friend get elected or accessing a decision-maker at a political fundraiser.

On the granting side, I was surprised by the importance of giving to religious charities in the results and how political ties correlate with types of religious charities; I mean, foundations without politically aligned trustees are more likely to give to mainstream Christian charities, while foundations with politically aligned trustees are more likely to give to missionary religious charities

A lot of the conversation around foundations seems focused on service delivery and achieving impact, and religious organizations aren’t always part of that conversation. There needs to be a broader conversation about the different things that private family foundations do with their granting, and not just service- and impact-focused granting.

Christopher Dougherty is based at the , University of St. Andrews, in the UK, and is researching “The political expressiveness of charitable sectors in comparative perspective: Canada and its provinces and the UK and its countries.” He’s on .

In 2023, Christopher Dougherty received the H. Woods Bowman Student Award from ARNOVA for preliminary results from his .

Recently, completed research that asks, “How does government funding for charities change when the party in power changes?” His answer is based on data sets covering the provinces of Ontario and Alberta from 2003 to 2017. In a , he analyzed changes in electoral district representatives and governments, looking at which nonprofits gained new funding and which lost funding — and the extent to which the changes reflected the interests of new governments. Dougherty spoke to PANL Perspectives about his findings.

Question: What inspired you to tackle this study about government funding of charities?

The Allan Inquiry into environmental charities, under the Jason Kenney government in Alberta, cost taxpayers $3.5 million and concluded that environmental groups had done nothing wrong, aside from raise awareness about climate change — and a few charities sued for defamation afterwards. Photo is courtesy of Andre Forget.

Christopher Dougherty: ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ half of all revenue for the charitable sector in Canada comes from federal, provincial and municipal governments, and governments can be quite vocal about which charities they want to support and which they don’t want to. I’m originally from Alberta, so the , under the Jason Kenney government, was top of mind, as were the .

There’s also . So, I wanted to see how governments move charity funding around to match their policy and political goals.

Q: You write that in Ontario, changes in funding reflect partisan identity as governments and local representatives change. Can you give examples of this — or explain what you mean?

After the Dalton McGuinty government was elected in Ontario in 2003, Jewish religious charities, social services, health, animal welfare, and parks and environment all saw cuts that year or the year after the change in provincial government.

Christopher Dougherty: When there’s a new federal government, charities in Ontario see some of the biggest changes in funding. When I add together all of the federal government revenue to charities in electoral districts (excluding hospitals and post-secondary schools), they receive 27% more funding in a new government’s first year, when controlling for other variables. When I looked at a sub-sector, instead of an electoral district, new federal governments grant more to Ontario charities that are in the post-secondary education sub-sector, ‘other’ religious (not Christian, Muslim or Jewish) sub-sector, and social services sub-sector. Since post-secondary and social services are both provincial responsibilities, federal spending in these sub-sectors indicates something beyond direct program spending.

While new federal governments increase spending to some sectors after being elected, new provincial governments tend to cut spending. In Ontario, Jewish religious charities, social services, health, animal welfare, and parks and environment all saw cuts in the year or in the year after the 2003 change in provincial government, when controlling for other variables.

Q: In Alberta, there’s less change in funding to charities around elections and changes in government. Is there an example of this?

Read “Do Private Family Foundations Engage in Political Activities Through Their Granting?” by Christopher Dougherty.

Christopher Dougherty: Alberta sees far fewer changes and smaller changes to its funding following elections and changes in government. The biggest changes are increases to Christian religious charities and missionary religious charities in election years and in a new government’s first year. Funding changes in other sub-sectors involve smaller numbers of charities, so the changes might not be due to big patterns and are likely because of changes involving individual charities.

Q: You write, “The combined results show that the charitable sector is indeed an outlet for aggregating and expressing collective identities, but that the degree to which this happens depends on the political context.” What to you mean?

Samantha Zuhlke, a prof at the University of Iowa, found that politicians in the US use charities to access constituencies and political power. Canadian politicians seem to be doing the same thing.

Christopher Dougherty: One of the interesting things in these results is that elections, new governments, and electoral district competitiveness seem to be behind a lot of the changes in charity funding. The party that forms government, the party representing an electoral district, and whether an electoral district is in government or opposition all seem to matter less.

For me, this suggests that politicians use charity funding to achieve political goals: gaining or keeping power. Jane Jenson wrote more than 30 years ago that politics is about creating constituencies and building support for collective identities, which charities do, and Samantha Zuhlke found in the US that politicians use charities to access constituencies and their political power. Canadian politicians seem to be doing just that—trading funding (or the promise of funding) to constituencies represented by charities in exchange for votes. And, they are doing this more in electoral districts that are more politically competitive and that are located in more competitive parts of the country (in Ontario, for example, compared to Alberta).

Q: Did anything surprise you in this study related to charity revenue and government?

Christopher Dougherty: The degree to which federal government funding changes for charities in the post-secondary, hospital, and social services sub-sectors was surprising, because each of these sub-sectors is in an area of provincial responsibility. It will be important to take a closer look at what’s happening here.

The other surprising finding was the role of religious charities in the results. It’s not clear, in the data set, which funding is going to congregations and which funding is going to religiously-affiliated service charities, and that needs a closer look.

Overall, the results suggest some interesting trends, and I plan to look at other provinces to see if these trends show up in other places with different political situations.

Christopher Dougherty has PhD in Public Policy from the School of Public Policy and Administration and he completed a Master of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership (MPNL), both at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. His research focuses on the charitable sector in Canada. He’s currently a Visiting Scholar at the Business School of the University of St Andrews, in the UK. He can be found on .

She’s a graduate of theĚýMPNL program, with a BComm from the University of Manitoba and an Adult Ed degree from Saint Xavier University. As part of her MPNL degree in 2022, she wrote a capstone paper,ĚýLeadership Practices of Emerging Community Foundations in Manitoba. She spoke toĚýPANL PerspectivesĚýabout this research and her work with community foundations in Manitoba. The interview has been shortened and edited for this Q&A.

Question: What was your community-foundation research about?

Community foundation leaders from Manitoba and staff from Endow Manitoba met in Killarney, Manitoba, to share knowledge and stories about building community awareness.

Feldman: One of the key messages in my paper is that community foundations are evolving. With the presence of community foundations in Canada for more than 100 years, with the first beingĚý, in my home province, my research paper highlights a shift in how these organizations are creating community impact. We’re seeing a shift from what was historically a financial institution for the community to, now, a vehicle for change and impact through coordinated efforts, long-term relationships and a holistic look at community wellbeing. A community foundation is more than its financial assets; there are many ways community foundations are supporting community wellbeing. Simply put, we’re not going to grant our way out of society’s challenges.

In my paper, I looked into the nature of this new leadership role of community foundations, regardless of asset size of the foundation. I found that, large and small, they hold leadership roles in their communities, demonstrating everything from advocacy to granting to building community capacity to fostering partnerships and collaborations.

Q: What does success look like for a community foundation?

Feldman: Community foundations are leaders, and they’re evolving. Success is no longer focused on financial assets alone. Success also includes measures of collaborations, relationships and impacts on wellbeing.

We now have 57 community foundations in Manitoba, which is the largest concentration per capita in North America. There are just over 200 community foundations in Canada, and we have 57 here. This is a tremendous display of generosity in Manitoba.

There’s a deep sense of pride in Manitoba. It’s like, “If you can have a hockey team, then we can have a hockey team. If you can start a foundation, then we can start a foundation.” People think of vibrant communities, and they think of future generations, when looking at community foundations. I have the pleasure of working with all 57 community foundations in my work with Endow Manitoba.

Q: In general, how should community foundations engage in leadership activities and remain accountable to their communities?

Feldman: They need to continue to listen and learn — to pause, connect, convene and build relationships within their communities, just as they’ve been doing. Community foundations are evolving, and the only way they can do this effectively is by doing it with their communities. We have to remember that we as community foundation don’t do anything alone; we work together with our community partners.

Q: Can you comment on how Manitoba community foundations are connected with Indigenous partners or nations?

Board members of The Pas Tri Community Foundation, which was formed by The Pas, Opaskwayak Cree Nation, and the Rural Municipality of Kelsey. It’s Manitoba’s first community foundation established in partnership with an Indigenous community.

Feldman: Recently, The Winnipeg Foundation engaged several Indigenous communities and organizations regarding community trust-based philanthropy. This engagement was an opportunity for community foundations in Manitoba to learn more about the complexities and opportunities that reflect Indigenous values regarding community philanthropy. From this, we’re building relationships and learning how the network of Manitoba community foundations can work alongside Indigenous communities and organizations.

At last year’s Endow Manitoba Community Foundation conference, Coty Zachariah with the spoke about the need and opportunities of listening and learning from each other. This work is continuing. The network of Manitoba community foundations is interested in continuing these conversations.

At the inaugural Endow Manitoba Community Foundation Conference, more than 160 attendees from more than 40 Manitoba community foundations listened to a panel of Indigenous leaders share insights about strengthening relationships. Left to right: Coty Zachariah, Nicole Chartrand, Sky Bridges, Sharon Redsky and Justin Johnson

With few connections between Manitoba community foundations and Manitoba First Nations communities, there’s significant opportunity for connection and collaboration. The Winnipeg Foundation is exploring how best to move forward with the learnings from the recent engagement sessions. These learnings focused on continued dialogue on the thoughts, values and understanding of community foundation models, training and development on the cultural traditions, values and history of Indigenous communities, advocacy that encourages more equitable distribution of resources, and further research into how community foundations could operate under an Indigenous governance system.

Courtney Feldman is on . Her research can be downloaded here: Leadership Practices of Emerging Community Foundations in Manitoba.

Kristen Pue

Kristen Pue is a Policy Analyst in the department of Employment and Social Development Canada. She spoke to PANL Perspectives about her research when she was a post-doctoral fellow at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University (after a PhD in Political Science in 2021). Her comments and findings here don’t reflect the views of the ESDC. Her post-doc paper with Anna Kopec, titled “Do Service-Providing Nonprofits Contribute to Democratic Inclusion? Analyzing Democracy Promotion by Canadian Homeless Shelters,” was published in 2023 in the .

Question: How did you come to research democracy-promoting activities in our sector?

Kristen Pue: The paper came out of research in ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) and was an extension of my PhD dissertation, which had looked at how governments acquire nonprofit organizations’ public services. The literature tends to divide nonprofits into two categories: (1) nonprofits that deliver social services and services that alleviate the symptoms of poverty; and (2) nonprofits that campaign, or promote democracy, or fulfill associational functions. But it struck me that, for organizations that are frontline service providers that serve some of our most vulnerable populations, like the unhoused, the potential to do both could be a powerful force for egalitarian democracy — and it didn’t seem like there was much research that put those two together.

Anna Kopec, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration

My co-author, Anna Kopec, has a robust depth of knowledge about homelessness, and she and I wanted to understand to what extent service providers are providing democracy-promoting functions that we think are important about civil society and to what extent are they just focused on being homeless shelters that provide services and nothing beyond that. That was the idea behind the paper.

Q: What were the findings of the paper?

Pue: We found is that a lot of homeless shelters are involved in democracy-promoting functions in three areas. The first area promotes political participation — activities like acting as a polling station during an election or providing information about when an election occurs. The second category is what we call internal, democratic governance, such as having procedures within the nonprofit itself that incorporate participatory democracy — things like having meetings that involve clients, so that they can provide feedback. The third category is representative voice, which is about advocacy. So, for example, to what extent are homeless shelters acting as their clients’ representatives to governments and advocating for their clients’ needs? Also, to what extent are they including people with lived experiences directly in that advocacy?

With all three of those buckets, we found that homeless shelters in Canada are undertaking those roles. We also identified, in the paper, that there’s room for further action, but I was surprised, in a positive way, by the extent to which these organizations are advocating to address the root causes of homelessness — to prevent homelessness, to support inclusion, and to do other activities that would lead to the organization becoming obsolete. To me, this is great, because if you have a justice-promoting organization, it should be okay with solving the bigger problems and becoming obsolete.

Q: Globally, how does Canada compare in terms of housing and homelessness?

Pue: As a supplier of affordable housing, Canada lags behind other countries. We’re an outlier not only in terms of the typical comparators, like Sweden and Norway, but also compared to the UK and US, both of whom have more social housing, per capita, than Canada has. If you’re relying only on market housing, you’re never going to provide enough affordable housing for low-income people. If I were to put priority anywhere, it would be in social housing, as well as providing supportive housing for people who might need a hand because they aren’t able to pay over the short term.

A cascading series of problems, like climate change, the housing crisis and inflation, is resulting in more people who have full-time jobs still not being able to sustain the means of life. That makes the pathways out of homelessness a lot more challenging — and we may see things get worse if effort isn’t put into addressing underlying problems. Really, the solution isn’t complicated: you house people in affordable housing.

Q: During the research related to housing and homelessness, were there any democracy-promoting activities that stood out?

Pue: The work of , got me excited. The way they frame the role of the people they serve — referring to them as “members” rather than “service users” and “clients” for instance — is inclusive and highlights what we want, ideally, in terms of the relationship between members and shelters. They’re members who have rights and agency.

Medicine Hat, AB

Also, Medicine Hat, in Alberta, successfully ended homelessness, although I’m not sure if they’ve been able to sustain that. They took a housing-first approach because there was adequate political will. A housing-first approach seems to be the most effective approach in that you house somebody first and you don’t worry about the underlying causes of their homelessness, because meeting that basic need gives them a lot more space to be able to deal with whatever other problems that are in their life.

Camp Pekiwewin

And there have been a couple of social movements that have popped up in Canada that have been helpful in promoting democracy and participation among the unhoused.

An example was , a tent city in Edmonton. , but for a considerable time (three months), they were a promising space for cross-class, political engagement in which you had social-justice organizers and unhoused populations in an environment where needs were being met.

Tent cities are a sign of a problem, but in an absence of affordable housing, that was a space where people were able to show their cross-class solidarity — and people were able to interact with one another in a way that promoted class consciousness and promoted a sense of agency that’s often lacking when you’re talking about marginalized populations.

I do think that democracy-promoting initiatives like that are helpful, and nonprofits can play a role in supporting them, because the volunteers and staff of those organizations are oftentimes the people who go to those initiatives — and the nonprofits themselves could have a more formal role.

Kristen Pue is on . Anna Kopec is on as well.

, and , graduate students in the Master of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership (MPNL) program, at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University, recently released a that examines if and how gift acceptance policies and practices account for: ethics; Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI); and reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenization.

This is an important study. Universities welcome gifts from individuals, corporations and foundations to help achieve their academic missions and to enhance programs and services for students, and university fundraisers consider a number of policies and protocols when accepting or soliciting, most significantly the written gift acceptance policy, but they face challenges. For example, many universities have strategic commitments and/or plans related to reconciliation, though most interviewees in the study indicated there was no or limited specificity regarding the role of advancement-related tactics to support those strategies.

Webinar introducing the study (from Feb. 16, 2023)

Download the report

outlines key findings and provides practical considerations for advancement professionals to consider when creating or revising gift acceptance policies in the short-, medium- and long-term. .

Bios of report authors

Tanya Rumble (she/her) is a fundraising leader who’s raised millions for some of Canada’s largest charities. She’s passionate about equity, diversity and inclusion, and actively works to imbue these principles along with her personal commitment to reconciliation in fundraising and the philanthropic sector more broadly. Tanya holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from McMaster University, earned a Masters Certificate at NYU, and is a Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE). Tanya is naturally inquisitive and a lifelong learner — and she’s a graduate of the 2017 Association of Fundraising Professionals Inclusion and Philanthropy Fellowship, and the 2010 DiverseCity Fellowship. Tanya gratefully acknowledges the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, whose traditional territory she’s a settler and responsible steward of. Tanya Rumble is on .

Bill Mintram (he/him) is MĂŠtis and a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan, with a Bachelor in Education through the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program. He has more than ten years of experience in senior and executive-level roles within the Friendship Centre Movement, Red Cross and Rideau Hall Foundation. He’s served communities through various appointed and elected roles on boards, advisory and adjudication committees, along with being a fundraiser who’s raised millions within the Indigenous nonprofit sector. He’s driven by working towards improving the quality of life for Indigenous peoples across Canada and recognizes that supporting these outcomes is impossible without his family’s love and support. Bill Mintram is on .

Ellen Doty (she/her) toured full time as a jazz singer-songwriter for several years following her university studies and then moved into programming in the arts, which then naturally led to fundraising. While she had been grant writing and crowdfunding for her own music activities for many years, she’d never considered fundraising as a career path. Fast forward a few years: she now works in university fundraising. She believes in advocating for equity, diversity, and inclusion, not only in philanthropy, but in every facet of our lives. As a settler, Ellen continues on a path of commitment to reconciliation, both personally and in her work in the charitable sector. Ellen Doty is on .

The Young Foundation has a culture of “doing with people” rather than “doing to people.” How does this influence the organization and service you provide?

Smith: That’s what drew me to working with them. I’m a big supporter of “working with” not “working to.” I wrote a report for the Young Foundation called The People-Centered Approach, because the Foundation is a leader of this approach in the sector, but no one really had the time to write down how they did the work. Their people-centered approach is something they apply to their researchers’ work, their community work, and their social investments; that means listening to communities and allowing them to be drivers of change. The Young Foundation creates space and provides resources for communities to create their own change.

How did you get started in the social enterprise sphere, and how do you see social finance moving within the sector?

Ally Smith and a colleague at Operation Come Home.

Smith: I’m excited about social enterprise, and I feel like it’s an untapped area of the nonprofit sector. In Scotland, the social enterprise sector is quite robust, and there’s a lot of government support for it. I randomly fell into this opportunity. There’s a tech, co-working space in Edinburgh, and I’d heard that their pop-up coffee shop closing during the pandemic. “I could do that,” I told myself. The only reason I want to run a cafĂŠ, a business, is to create social impact, because that’s the thing that gets me up in the morning. I want to tie the cafĂŠ to youth work. In the past, with OCH’s employability programs and social enterprises, I helped youth to write resumes, prepare for interviews, and get their first jobs. I feel like there aren’t enough opportunities for folks who just don’t fit the mold of the first-job requirements, and they need a little extra support. The plan with the cafĂŠ is to partner with an employability program in Scotland to become an employer of youth who face barriers to employment, and to offer barista and customer-service training, so that they have an opportunity for paid employment.

Why do you think Scotland embraces social enterprise and provides a lot of government support, compared to Canada?

Smith: The UK in general has a strong, social-welfare state. There’s strong community presence, community groups, and unions. Scottish people have a strong sense of taking care of one another, so there’s a lot more of an appetite for social enterprise. The government has been funding social enterprises here for around 20 years.

Read Imagine Canada’s 2020 report, “Are Charities Ready for Social Finance?,” which discusses how many charities aren’t interested in taking on social finance loans, and how their awareness of this revenue source is relatively low, particularly among small- and medium-sized organizations.

What barriers or sources of hesitation do you think Canadian nonprofits face when thinking of starting social enterprises?

Smith: The traditional ways that charities think of themselves are barriers. Charities are used to receiving government funding, so they maintain the status quo. It takes money to be able to think outside of your current circumstances, but a lot of charities are in survival mode. Also, the lack of professionalization of the sector — I mean, that’s why the MPNL program exists. It’s important to have people in the sector who understand the concept of social enterprises; you don’t know what you don’t know, so that’s probably part of it as well.

Also, I remember fighting to tell people outside of OCH why the organization was doing social enterprise. The charity had an uphill battle for a long time, and led the way in social enterprise in Ottawa. The onus shouldn’t be on nonprofits to convince funders that nonprofits and communities are doing the best things; funders should trust that the sector knows what the sector needs. And funders aren’t always expert in what’s going to best serve a specific community. The community is the expert. And who’s closest to the community? The nonprofits that work with them. That funding narrative about social enterprise needs to be flipped.

Ally Smith is on . Sherlyn Assam is on and . Photos of Smith and OCH are courtesy of Smith, and photo of cafe table is courtesy of Luke Chesser.

It’s Time to Go

“ (Jan. 2021) is a Capstone Project by Uzma Gilani, Praan Misir, Shane Norris and Ellie Sabourin for .

Using findings and lessons from Canadian nonprofit leaders who faced difficult decisions, this workbook helps to end a program or close an entire organization.

A pdf of the workbook can be , or click about the research.

Photo of sunset is courtesy of Petr Vysohlid.