As we mark International Transgender Day of Visibility, contributor Désirée Nore Duchesne shares some practical tools for funders who want to support the liberation of gender-diverse people and make our society more equitable, starting with strategic planning and making access to funds a priority.
For the last five months, the Senate hearings on Islamophobia have featured testimony about systemic discrimination in the Canada Revenue Agency’s auditing practices of Canadian Muslim charities. In a healthy democracy, such revelations should cause public outrage and spur urgent corrective action by government. Neither is likely to occur, say lawyers Faisal Kutty and Faisal Bhabha.
The need for the sector to lead on policy advocacy has been described as a moral imperative, yet it often faces criticism that it has lost its sense of urgency and become too content as a service-delivery vehicle. Contributor Tim Harper looks at policy institutes across Canada that are teaching the pragmatic skills of building support, refining a policy “ask,” and having bureaucratic and political doors open.
With volunteering in Canada in decline, contributor Yvonne Rodney looks at the data and talks to sector leaders to ponder the way forward. The solution, she writes, includes acknowledging the impact of the pandemic, understanding generational differences, and convincing funders to do more to help organizations.
“Future people count. There could be a lot of them. We can make their lives go better.” These statements capture the essence of the argument made by the author of What We Owe the Future. William MacAskill is widely known as the primary exponent of effective altruism, an approach to “doing good,” in his words, that has as much impact as possible on the well-being of people across the world.
The meaningful participation of people and communities with lived experience is key to a human-rights-based approach to poverty. Storytelling is a start, but it is only one side of the process, says Maytree’s Elizabeth McIsaac. We need to think deeply about how we receive those stories and incorporate people’s expertise into decision-making, she says, and we will improve our practice if we admit that we have lots to learn.
In the midst of Canada’s housing crisis, there’s a strong narrative that housing is a commodity rather than our right. Bonnie Mah, strategic narrative lead at Maytree, considers the opportunities and challenges of rights-based framing and talks about how she and her colleagues are trying to shift the conversation on housing in Canada.
Toronto Foundation’s Nicola Hives reflects on her organization’s three-year learning journey via the Trust Collective, a group of women philanthropists and community organizations serving women and girls. “We made a lot of mistakes,” she says, but they also learned some important lessons. First and foremost: “We can’t let our ambition to make a difference get the better of us. Thoughtfulness and partnering with community are everything.”
