When the economic d ownturn of 2008/2009 began to tighten access to resources and to constrain the grants made by funders, attention turned to collaboration as a strategic response to tough times. Working together seemed to offer a way out of the financial box for charities and funders alike. Indeed, the talk of strategic alliances…
Contents: Volume 23, Issue 2 (2010)
Introduction In 2008, the Tides Canada Initiatives Society (tci) began a project to consider a mod—el support structure for charitable activities that is variously and perhaps erroneously termed “fiscal sponsorship,” a support or “umbrella” organization, or a “facilitator” organization. None of these terms adequately describes the multi-faceted structures that currently exist in Canada in support…
The voluntary nonprofit sector is a collection of highly varied organizations that create a landscape of care across Canada. Most often the sector is understood through the nature of its components or through its relations to government rather than through the complexity of the whole. In this article, I speculate about how we can re-conceptualize…
Uncommon solutions for the common good “We are in challenging times for nonprofits… We need the organizational structures that will allow everyone to be more efficient and smarter with the money that is available. Fiscal sponsorship [Charitable Venture Organization] is one of these.” – Kathleen Enright, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Every nonprofit and charitable organization,…
Uncharitable: How Restraints On Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential by Dan Pallotta Medford, Mass: Tufts University Press isbn: 978-1-58465-723-1 in recent years, there has been increasing discussion ab ou t the “blurring” of the lines that separate the charitable sector from the private sector. To many people, the argument goes, the concept of “charity” is no…
What if I told you only 185,000 out of 200 million Facebook members worldwide have ever given money to a charity through Facebook? You might be disappointed at the lack of generosity. You might assume that not many Facebook members are interested in charity. Now what if I told you that not only do almost…
The organization I work for, the Canadian parks and wilderness society (CPAWS), is facing the same challenges as many other NGO’s these days—our tradition—al donor base is aging and the response rate to our direct mail prospecting campaigns is declining slowly but surely. But it’s not just funding to keep our organization growing that motivates…
Introduction The federal budget in March 20101 announced the elimination of a significant part of the disbursement quota for charitable organizations and changes to related provisions. The reform of the disbursement quota came after a substantial effort by associations representing charities, such as Imagine Canada and the Canadian Bar Association, to reform the disbursement quota. Charitable…
You can’t read a newsletter or go to a sector conference these days without being batted heavily about the head by the concept of social enterprise. It is, according to proponents, the greatest thing since sliced bread or the remote control; it’s going to solve all of the sector’s problems and allow organizations to grow…
Abstract: Who should be called a philanthropist today? Usually, this designation applies to members of the rich elite who donate important sums of money to different charitable causes. But this image is somewhat inaccurate. The paper presents some thoughts on philanthropy and on the profiles and motivations of philanthropists. Summary: Today, who should be called a philanthropist?…