As the federal election heads into its final laps, the $8 billion/year charitable sector, which employs 2.5 million Canadians, finds itself in a significantly different position than 2015. In the past four years, the federal government has removed restrictions for charities engaging in non-partisan policy work, allowing the philanthropic sector more opportunity to promote its…
Issue Area: Civic Engagement
Later this year, Canadians will vote in the 43rd federal election. Many non-profit organizations, networks, and coalitions see elections as a critical opportunity to raise relevant public policy issues. Recently, the rules for charities engaging in public policy have become a prominent source of debate and discussion in government and the sector. As we countdown…
Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count, by Phil Buchanan. Public Affairs. New York, 2019; 256 pp: ISBN 9781541742253 The act of giving is defined in deceptively simple terms by any dictionary: “to grant or bestow by formal action; to accord or yield to another; to put into the possession of another…
This is the final article in our series about European philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Lawson Foundation. Early in 2018, well before Theresa May’s Tory government revealed its contentious proposal for splitting with the European Union, the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros placed a £400,000 bet on an outspokenly anti-Brexit lobby…
Engagement Organizing: The Old Art and New Science of Winning Campaigns, by Matt Price. Vancouver, British Columbia, On Point Press, 2017, ISBN 9780774890168 Most articles on social impact mention the importance of engaging those most affected by an issue in creating solutions. Unfortunately, in many cases in the non-profit sector, we’ve professionalized the community out…
Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values, Edited by Rob Reich, Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016, ISBN: 978-0-226-33550-6 Philanthropy is a “hybrid and ever-changing form of public and private power” (p.7). This is the central image of philanthropy – in flux, contested, and always in relationship to market and…
The year 2017 shouldn’t be so much about celebration as it should be about a turning point for our democracy. Whether influenced by Brexit, the Trump presidency, or the fact that 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom (Freedom House, 2017), it’s time for Canadians to take a serious look at…
We live in a new era of engagement that is redefining how we make change in the world, with implications for NGO practitioners and funders alike. Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol documented[i] a similar transition in the late 1960s, as large membership organizations (like the once widespread men’s and women’s service clubs) were eclipsed by groups…
Recently, a colleague shared with me a volunteer experience she had, and that prompted me to write this article. As a fellow not-for-profit employee who is very familiar with volunteerism, she decided that she would share some of her experience and expertise with an organization that was well established and worked with volunteers in many…
Introduction: It’s not actually about “volunteering” at all I spent a part of my childhood in the back of a soup kitchen, quite literally. My parents started two soup kitchens when I was growing up, and I remember sitting with my brother, looking at all the cakes in the freezer and wishing we could eat…