Maytree Conversations

“How do we build a really big tent with a lot of different perspectives working together, locking arms and taking a big initiative forward? It turns out that no one organization has all the best ideas and the idea of bringing people together in a big tent kind of way can often really be a leap forward, a swing for the fences kind of opportunity.” Jean Case, CEO, Case Foundation

On Feb 21, 2013, I attended Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) Strategic Co-funding Conference in Washington DC. The gathering was part of GEO’s Scaling What Works initiative, which connects grantmakers to practices that grow impact and build stronger and more effective nonprofit organizations.

The focus of this particular conference was exploring “co-funding.”

In brief, the idea of co-funding suggests that “what one grant or grantmaker can do alone pales in comparison to joining forces and funding with others…. [I]n order to maximize everyone’s resources and, ultimately, social impact, you must look outward to other funders and partners.”

As a small grantmaker that recognizes the need to collaborate with other funders, grantmakers, partners and our broad and diverse network to have social impact bigger than ourselves, this approach is very much of interest to us here at Maytree.

The setting

Approximately 140 grantmakers explored different approaches to strategic co-funding, to deepen their knowledge and advance their practice around key areas such as:

• building trust;
• developing joint strategies, goals and common processes (e.g., due diligence, reporting);
• coordinating with public systems, policy and funders; and
• collectively raising, administering and evaluating pooled grant dollars.

Practitioners presented a number of co-funding examples during the break-out sessions, including projects such as the California Civic Participation Project (CCEP).

Co-funding backgrounder

Co-funding practitioners themselves presented their approaches and perspectives. Their “rapid fire” presentations dug deeper into the benefits that participating grantmakers and grantees realized, along with lessons learned, challenges and questions.

They presented three Co-Funding Models:

1. Pooled Funding – where funders contribute to a collective fund, which may be jointly administered by the group or by a lead donor or third party
2. Targeted Co-Funding – where funders deliberately but independently make grants to the same program, organization or issue
3. Strategic Alignment – where funders agree to adopt joint or complementary strategies in pursuit of a common goal, and put their resources toward aspects of that strategy

The co-funding approach is perhaps best described by the Case Foundation’s Be Fearless project.

“Those of us charged with finding or funding solutions to social challenges – philanthropists, government, nonprofits – seem to be moving too slowly and often operating with the same set of tools, concepts, and caution of the generations before us. If we’re going to keep up with the rapid pace of change and the daunting complexities of these challenges, we must rethink traditional models. It’s time for us to be bold, act with urgency, and embrace risks with potential to produce exponential social returns. It’s time for us to Be Fearless!”

In his opening remarks Jim Canales of the Irvine Foundation noted that a move to co-funding requires three shifts in the way that grantmakers work:

1. Impact – a grantmaker must think beyond attribution to contribution
2. Culture – move from taking controlled risks to taking considered risks
3. Leadership – leaders need to be engaged in collaborative, not person-focused, leadership

Watch Jim’s presentation:

Moving forward, practically

In the final plenary, Case Foundation CEO Jean Case and GEO President and CEO Kathleen Enright shared an insightful conversation about five principles of their Be Fearless project, directly related to a co-funding approach:

1. Make Big Bets and Make History – set audacious, not incremental goals
2. Experiment Early and Often – don’t be afraid to go first
3. Make Failure Matter – failure teaches, learn from it
4. Reach Beyond Your Bubble – while it’s comfortable to go it alone, innovation happens at intersections
5. Let urgency conquer fear – don’t over think and analyze, do

Related:

• We’re better together: creating large scale change at Tamarack
• Backbone Support: Essential for Successful Collective Impact

(image: Lollyman, Working together…, March 11, 2010, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic)

Our website, maytree.com, is one of the key ways we keep you informed about our work, issues and ways to work with us. We’re giving it a needed overhaul!

Please help us improve the maytree.com website by completing the following online survey. We welcome your honest feedback and all responses will remain confidential.

It should only take you about 10-15 minutes to complete the survey. Please note that none of the questions are required. If you wish to focus your input and comments on a particular area, due to time constraints or interest, feel free to do so.

We’ll also be running some focus groups and one-on-one interviews. If you have more to say after you’ve completed the survey, let us know. We’d be happy to chat.

If you have any questions, please contact:

Marco Campana, Maytree Communications
mcampana@maytree.com
Tel: 416-944-2627 x252

(image from Wikiepedia Commons)

by Geraldine Cahill, Communications Manager, Social Innovation Generation (SiG)

When Social Innovation Generation (SiG) launched in 2006, the global conversation about social innovation was relatively small. By 2013, it’s grown considerably. There are now offices of social innovation in national governments, centres for social innovation across the globe, journals, blogs, regular newspaper columns and dedicated academic programs.

The most encouraging aspect of this growth in social innovation activity is that millions of people around the world are dedicating time and energy to solving complex social and environmental challenges.

While social innovation enjoys growing recognition all over the world, many of us are unsure of how it happens, why we need it and how we can most effectively achieve impact and scale.

Enter the SiG Knowledge Hub. This website provides learning resources about creating conditions for social innovation, highlighting examples in Canada and around the world. The site draws its inspiration from the idea that social innovation:

• is the result of the intentional work of people trying to address complex problems and make positive change;
• is a process, product or program that profoundly changes the way a given system operates;
• changes systems in such a way that reduces the vulnerability of the people and the environment in that system; and
• builds system resiliency to meet future challenges.

Find out more in this overview video:

With the Hub, SiG seeks to bring clear and practical access to current thinking about social innovation to help various sectors, communities and practitioners. SiG has designed the Hub to ensure that there is something for everyone – whether you are new to the topic of social innovation or already an advanced practitioner. They have identified themes that will help you on your learning journey.

The SiG Knowledge Hub is a comprehensive curated learning site that will apply a developmental evaluation approach to ensure that it is constantly improving based on your feedback and for your benefit. Formally launched on February 21, 2013, SiG hopes that the Knowledge Hub will provide you with the resources you need to affect positive change in our world.

In developing the Hub, SiG has learned from and been inspired by the work of other organizations across Canada, to support and encourage those who believe positive change is possible.

Related:

• Sojo – a collection of tools and informational resources to inspire and empower you to transform your ideas for social change into reality.

Recently, Maytree was honoured with an Excellence in Community Service Award from the Intercultural Dialogue Institute of Toronto. In his acceptance speech, Alan Broadbent reflected on Maytree’s mission and what our priorities continue to be.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing some additional posts reflecting on our work in 2012, as well as our priorities for 2013. For now, please read Alan’s remarks on why we do what we do at Maytree.

For our 30+ year history, Maytree has worked on issues of equity and equality, focusing on bringing people in from the margins of society to the centre. Through the creation of The Caledon Institute of Social Policy twenty years ago, and the Tamarack Institute ten years ago, Maytree has worked through policy and practice to reduce the terrible burdens of poverty for Canadians.

And through Maytree’s own work, we have focused on the immigrant and refugee communities in Canada to accelerate their settlement and inclusion in the life of our country. Through our work in developing leadership in new Canadians, in effectively connecting immigrants to the labour market, and in helping society develop its skills in including newcomers, we have sought to collapse traditional timeframes to create success for everyone sooner.

We can be proud that Canada has done a very good job for over a century in developing the instruments and investments to welcome and include immigrants and refugees. As we travel internationally, we are consistently told that Canada has created a model for the world.

From our work at Maytree, we believe this to be true, but we also know that there is always room for improvement. In the process of building a great nation, there is no room for complacency.

Nor is there room for attempts to rewrite history as many in Canada do when discussing immigration. To characterize our immigration practice as a failure, as turning a blind eye to terrorists, as being unconnected to the labour market, or as being replete with bogus claims and fraudsters, is an attempt to rewrite history. Such claims may make interesting political tactics or sell some media, but they ignore our comparative success among nations. Worse, they divert us from the steady improvement of our practice, from the regular maintenance and improvement that anything worthwhile requires.

Immigrants and refugees have proven to be one of Canada’s great strengths. As we sit tonight in the middle of Toronto, which has risen in the last quarter century to be consistently ranked among the world’s great cities, we realize that much of this has been driven by immigrants, and by our region’s ability to embrace them, to change as needed to make them succeed, and to play host to the millions of daily interactions across religion, culture, and language that are so commonplace they go almost unnoticed.

We are grateful for this recognition of our work. We salute IDI Toronto for the power of its work and the example it sets.

Thank you.

IDI Toronto created this great video celebrating Maytree, enjoy:

View more of the IDI Toronto annual Dialogue and Friendship dinner.

Related:

• About Maytree
• Five reasons Canada leads the world on immigration
• Five myths about Canada’s immigration system
• Maytree Policy Insights

What are the key issues facing the vitality of the voluntary sector in Canada?

If asked you would undoubtedly have strong opinions. If you asked others, you’d get a diversity of opinions, insights and ideas. If you were looking for evidence-based research to help your answer, you could probably rhyme off a few think-tanks, academics and websites where you know you could find some of that information. But you’d likely find as much diversity there as you did when you asked your peers. Could you find the definitive source? Or are we missing something?

Enter the Mowat Centre’s Not-for-profit Research Hub. This hub was recently established to provide evidence-based research and analysis on structural, foundational, and systemic issues facing the voluntary sector in Canada. Working with strategic partners like the Ontario Nonprofit Network, it will be looking for solutions to the issues and challenges that impact our sector

I spoke with Elizabeth McIsaac, Executive Researcher at Mowat, to find out more about the project, what its goals are, and how we can participate.

According to Elizabeth: “We’re going to be looking at the critical issues that are impacting the not-for-profit sector and crafting a research agenda to look at evidence-based research to support a stronger, more vital sector. In plain language, this means we’re going to look at questions like: how can we better understand the sector’s economic and social impact? What are the financial tools and strategies that will make the sector stronger? How can the sector become a stronger voice in shaping policy? What are the new approaches, and innovations to solving common challenges facing the sector? And how can we document and understand these ideas and trends and get that information back out into the sector?”

Mowat has been talking to a variety of voluntary sector representatives. As a first step, it is conducting an environmental scan of current nonprofit sector research, including academic and community-based research. This will become a baseline and a place for it to understand where its research can add value. Mowat is looking at our sector in its broadest definition, “the voluntary sector writ large:” from nonprofits to charities, service-based human service organizations to cause-based advocacy groups; from the formally funded to the grassroots, volunteer-driven start-ups run out of someone’s basement; from organizations that have provided decades of service to the new cadre of social entrepreneurs.

As the hub crafts its research agenda, it will be “convening partners and stakeholders to ensure that the ideas we put forward are relevant, resonate with the sector and can be adapted to inform strong public policy going forward.”

The Research Hub is funded in part by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. Elizabeth believes that this support “is part of a larger investment in the capacity of the sector… a signal from the province of their commitment to strengthen the sector itself, and to strengthen the partnership that exists between the public and the not-for-profit sector. Our challenge and ambition is to advance ideas and recommendations for policy solutions that will contribute to a strengthened relationship and to a stronger sector.”

You might be wondering, why Mowat? Mowat is considered a thought-leader in public policy in Ontario. In 2011, it released the study Strengthening the Third Pillar of the Canadian Union: An Intergovernmental Agenda for Canada’s Charities and Non-Profits which took a high-level view of the regulatory and legislative issues impacting the sector.  Partnering with the ONN, the Mowat Research Hub is also supported by the Metcalf Foundation, The Atkinson Charitable Foundation, United Way of Toronto and Maytree.

Will Mowat succeed in moving the sector forward in a cohesive direction to address the myriad of issues facing us? Will we ultimately create the strong sector voice needed at the policy level? Clearly, it’s too soon to tell. But the idea is a good one. The approach (talking with, convening the sector) is the right one.

One project alone can’t revitalize the voluntary sector or even create a consensus on what needs to be done. A public policy approach can ensure that informed change might come from our funders.  However, that’s only one part of the puzzle. Mowat’s discussion and consulting/convening approach may just get us talking more actively to each other. Will Mowat succeed in starting and facilitating a discussion not just with sector leaders, funders and academics, but also with practitioners, and, ultimately, among all these groups? If so, perhaps we’ll see the sector’s valuable tacit and practical knowledge more actively define the kind of sector we all know we can have.

A call has already gone out to the sector through the ONN asking for input (PDF). They’re interested in getting your knowledge and expertise into their project, into their thinking. There is a wealth of insight, information, experience and passion in the nonprofit sector. Make sure your voice is heard.

Related links:

• Five things business can learn from non-profits - we asked what businesses can learn from non-profits and received advice from acrossCanada.
• Five Good Ideas - a lunch-and-learn program where industry or issue experts discuss powerful yet practical ideas on key management issues facing non-profit organizations. The sessions are most useful for management staff and board members at small and mid-sized non-profits.
• Maytree Leadership Conference – we believe in the power of leadership to create social change by investing in those who work and volunteer in the non-profit sector. We also place emphasis on building relationships among our program participants.

The results of our Five Good Ideas contest are in!

We asked what businesses can learn from non-profits and received advice from acrossCanada.

Here are the top five entries.

1. Hire globally by sourcing locally
(Charles Achampong, Manager, Corporate & Stakeholder Relations, TRIEC)

If your staff and board do not reflect the community you serve, chances are you are not going to understand their needs. With today’s demographic trends, in urban centres like Vancouver and Toronto, this means hiring skilled immigrants and visible minorities. It’s not just about equality; it’s about the expanded capacity to link to new markets, enhanced innovation, stronger social capital and, ultimately, the bottom line.

2. Understand your employees
(Elaine Magil, Manager, WoodGreen Community Services)
We know that non-profit work doesn’t usually pay well, so why do smart people do it? Because people choose their vocations for reasons beyond salary. People want to work where they feel valued and respected. They want to know that what they’re doing has impact. They want to go home at night and not question whether they’re making the world better off. On these metrics non-profits easily beat the private sector, where it’s accepted wisdom that if you want the best people you have to pay the most. I’d like to tell my corporate colleagues that it’s not that simple. If you build a corporate culture that nurtures people’s passions and helps them feel committed to the outcomes they’re working towards, salary will no longer be your primary recruitment tool. It’s harder to do, but lasts longer.

3. Long-term value creation
(Errol Mendes, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa)

Non-profits seek to be sustainable in the long term. Sadly, business is often blinded by short-term profits and interests especially if it is a publicly traded company. This has resulted in accounting irregularities and other unethical behaviour that have doomed so many companies.

If business learns from the best non-profits who focus on the long-term interests of their communities and their clients, then there could be a meeting ground for learning from each other. Non-profits can learn to be more efficient while business learn that long-term value creation can be profitable.

4. The right people (not the right product or program) make for a great organization
(Chris Pullenayagem, Director, Christian Reformed Church)

Many private (for profit) organizations rely on products or processes or programs to be successful in their business. For those that do, this seems to be an inverted way of pursuing excellence. People bring vision, passion and creativity to their work as evidenced in non-profit organizations. If the right people are hired, every organization will move towards excellence in achieving its vision and what it was mandated to do. Any organization can show results, but only this type of organization will thrive with excellence.

5. Improv-ise!
(Susan Ryan, Children’s Peace Theatre)

All non-profits have to improvise. Improvisation workshops are a powerful tool, and not just for training actors. According to Stony Brook University’s Centre for Communicating Science, improv frees anyone “to talk about their work more spontaneously and directly, to pay dynamic attention to their listeners and to connect personally with their audience. Improv can teach people to communicate more effectively with customers, co-workers, and the media.” Children’s Peace Theatre in Toronto takes improv workshops to the next level with a unique combination of collaborative theatre and conflict transformation.

Thanks to all who submitted an entry and congratulations to the winners, each of whom will receive a copy of the book Five Good Ideas: Practical Strategies for Non-Profit Success (Coach House 2011), co-edited by Alan Broadbent and Ratna Omidvar.

When was the last time you told a story?

This morning at a staff meeting? Last night to your daughter? While giving someone a job reference?

Whoever they were, did your audience hear you? More importantly, did they listen? I mean, really listen.

Here I must credit my colleague with a young daughter who explained to me that just because she is being heard by her six-year-old, doesn’t mean that she is being listened to. Listening is a choice.

How do you tell your story so people will listen? Particularly within the relentless narrative buzz that is part of our daily reality.

Let me tell you a story we’re excited about.

Maytree just published the book: Five Good Ideas: Practical Strategies for Non Profit Success. It has been eight years in the making.

Here’s an inside look at our listening strategy…

Tell it to a reader.

In his introduction to the book, Alan Broadbent, Maytree’s Chairman talks about how a conversation he had with Maytree’s president, Ratna Omidvar in 2003 turned into a successful formula, then turned into a book idea that Coach House books had the vision to recognize as valuable for the sector.

Tell it to your best friend.

“I just finished this amazing book that you and your Board of directors would find useful. Maybe you should buy them all copies.”

Tell it to a journalist.

Who, what, where, when, why. In the book, Toronto Star columnist Carol Goar tells us “Before you make a phone call or send an e-mail to a member of the media, ask yourself: Why does my message matter to the public? If you don’t know, it probably isn’t news.”

Oh, and thank you Metro Morning for knowing your audience is filled with practitioners in the non-profit, private and public sector and that this book is for them.

Tell it in the lunch room at the office.

“The launch was great! Amazing crowd. I’ll send you the link to the photos.”

Tell it unexpectedly.

Here’s the story in a haiku:

Five Good Ideas
Resource for non-profit orgs
Buy the book and learn

A modern spin on this ancient form of Japanese poetry is of course, the tweet.

Tell it to a stranger on transit.

Tell it to people who will help you tell it.

At yesterday’s Five Good Ideas session Helen Hayward presented Diversifying Your Board: Why It’s Good and How to Do It.

To diversify a board, you should look beyond traditional skills and knowledge for a competency-based board. You should deliberate not only what your board’s current gaps are, but what the future needs will be.

A well articulated strategic plan with broad stakeholder engagement sets the direction for the organization and the priorities you want to focus on over the next number of years. This will inform you of the necessary mix of sector/industry knowledge/skills to move the organization forward. The governance structure and membership is a dynamic process that requires foresight and insight before you can exercise oversight.

Helen’s Five Good Ideas:

1. A well articulated strategic plan with broad stakeholder engagement sets the direction for the organization and the priorities they want to focus on over the next number of years.
2. Develop a board matrix – an objective analysis of current make-up, future needs/gaps in governance competency, expected turn-over, board structure and membership.
3. Determine scope of search and outreach based on projected needs. Do use networks of board members and stakeholders.
4. Develop a transparent recruitment process. Allow for a number of months for sourcing and interviewing. Active recruitment for fit is everyone’s job, particularly the Executive of the Board.
5. Organize Board interviews with questions that include what value an individual brings to the organization, why the individual is interested to serve, understanding of board and member role and duties.

We’ll be producing and posting the full video soon, but here is one tip Helen would leave with participants.

After the session we asked a few participants to let us know what they thought of the session, and the value of Five Good Ideas.

Darren Cooney (Accessibility Directorate of Ontario), Susan Burns (SMB Enterprises)

Derek Luis (MangoMedia Entertainment)

Related links:

• Five Good Ideas
• DiverseCity onBoard

At the 2011 ALLIES Mentoring Conference in Calgary, Alan Broadbent and Tim Brodhead, two of Canada’s leading philanthropists, shared their insights on the benefits of scaling up programs to have greater impact, and pointed out the possible perils we should avoid in building successful collaborations.

Alan initially spoke about how Maytree came to be involved in initiatives focused on immigrant success. Maytree is interested in collapsing the “natural” time frames for settlement, especially in terms of access to the labour market. The Toronto Region Immigration Employment Council (TRIEC) was created in this vision.

Tim spoke about how the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation is focused on helping Canada become a more resilient society. A critical element in this work is ensuring that our society is inclusive. The foundation looks for promising initiatives that can be scaled up more broadly. Collaborating with Maytree to create ALLIES (Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies) was a natural fit, as it took the TRIEC idea national.

Working successfully with the private sector

Alan explained that for good ideas such as TRIEC and ALLIES to become successful, you need to be able to articulate them well, show their impact and possibilities for success, create a credible plan and have the right people to deliver them. It’s easier to attract others to the table, especially from the private sector, if you have all of these elements clearly in place.

A multisectoral approach

Government is still an important player in initiatives of this sort and magnitude. But many other actors have a role to play. Government sets the policy and controls immigration inflow, employers hire, community groups support newcomers in their settlement. These are not issues that can be addressed by just one or a few groups, they’re complex and require multi-sectoral approaches.

How best to build capacity in communities to do this work effectively

Taking ideas that work in one place/community and implementing them elsewhere requires adapting them to ensure that they can work locally. This takes time, effort and resources.

We need to allow for the time it takes to develop capacity to build community and effective collaboration. In good collaborations, it’s important to have clarity of roles, so everyone knows what’s expected of them. As well, once you’ve identified roles, you can find any capacity gaps, which can then be addressed.

At the end of their conversation, Alan and Tim provide some advice to ALLIES conference participants about how to take next steps in building collaborative approaches in their work. They emphasized that it’s important for all present to realize that they are doing important work, and that it’s essential to maintain a clarity of purpose and focus in that work.

View the conversation

Alan Broadbent is the Chairman of Maytree. Tim Brodhead was the President and CEO of The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Their conversation was moderated by Stephen Huddart, current President and CEO of The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation.

Find out more about the conference on the ALLIES site.

On October 4, join us for a fantastic opportunity to talk social media for social change with one of the nonprofit tech community’s rock stars, Allison Fine!

Philanthropic Foundations Canada is bringing Allison to Toronto to speak at their annual conference, and Maytree has been involved in helping to coordinate her session there. Having this fantastic resource in town for a short workshop, we wanted to find out if she’d be willing to provide another session for the local nonprofit and charitable community.

And she was!

So, together with Philanthropic Foundations Canada and TechSoup Canada, Allison will present an interesting and informative workshop in Toronto. Did we mention that it’s free?

This isn’t going to be your usual social media for social change 101 session. Allison wants to mix it up a bit and have a conversation about taking our social media use to the next level. If you’ve read the Networked Nonprofit, a best selling book she co-authored with Beth Kanter, you know that she’s interested in moving beyond talking about tools to discussing organizational change.

One of the questions she will definitely address is how we can move beyond conversations about technology to a conversation about how we do our work differently.

It’ll be a great 90 minutes, and a fun opportunity to meet someone whose work has influenced many in their day-to-day approach to social media.

Join us October 4. Not only will you meet an inspiring speaker, you will also get to know a new, high tech and free meeting space for Toronto charities, ING’s Network Orange.

Oh, and if you are outside of Toronto, or simply can’t make it, don’t worry. We’ll be recording the session for your future viewing pleasure.

Related links:

• Five Good Ideas – capacity building lunch ‘n’ learns for non-profit organizations in Toronto
• TechSoup Canada
• Philanthropic Foundations Canada