Proceedings of the Special Senate Committee on the
Charitable Sector
Issue No. 7 - Evidence - October 1, 2018
OTTAWA, Monday, October 1, 2018
The Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector met this day at 6:34 p.m. to examine the impact of federal and provincial laws and policies governing charities, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and other similar groups; and to examine the impact of the voluntary sector in Canada.
Senator Terry M. Mercer (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I would like to welcome you to this meeting of the Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector. I am Senator Terry Mercer from Nova Scotia, chair of the committee. I would like to start by asking my colleagues to introduce themselves. I will start on my left with the deputy chair.
Senator Omidvar: Ratna Omidvar, an independent senator from Ontario.
Senator Duffy: Michael Duffy, Prince Edward Island.
Senator R. Black: Robert Black, Ontario.
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman, Montreal, Quebec.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. Today the committee will continue its study to examine the impact of federal and provincial laws and policies governing charities, non-profit organizations, foundations and other similar groups and to examine the impact of the voluntary sector in Canada.
For this meeting, we will focus on employment and the people who work in charities and non-profit organizations.
For our witnesses, we welcome Ms. Cathy Winter, Program Manager, DiverseCity onBoard, Ryerson University. Thank you for being here. On behalf of the Bhayana Family Foundation, we have Ms. Raksha Manaktala Bhayana, Chief Executive Officer. I probably mispronounced your name so I would ask you to correct me.
Raksha Manaktala Bhayana, Chief Executive Officer, Bhayana Family Foundation: You pronounced it correctly. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
I would invite the witnesses to make their presentations, but I would also remind them that, as per the instructions they were given, their presentations should not exceed five to seven minutes. Following the presentations there will be questions from my colleagues. I would ask the questioners and responders to keep the questions and answers as short as possible so that we can get in as many rounds as possible.
We will start with Ms. Bhayana, please.
Ms. Bhayana: Good evening, honourable senators. Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective with you. I am a former front-line worker in the non-profit sector. I have witnessed the value of the work the employees in the sector do and the impact they have on their clients. My impression of their value has been reinforced in geometric progression through my foundation’s work in partnerships with several United Ways across Canada.
We recognize outstanding performance among staff of United Ways and their funded agencies. I’d like to focus on two issues tonight: adequate compensation for the staff of the non-profit sector and the need for public recognition of the sector’s value.
I’d like to begin with something that happened in Halifax. I was there last week. It is a story about a part-time staff at a centre for youth with complex developmental disabilities. He received a leadership and dedication award from our foundation. His nominee wrote, and I quote:
Last June, we held a large prom dance, and he paid out of his own money for a huge surprise. Our members couldn’t believe it when a huge pink stretch limo arrived to take people for rides. Many had never been in a limo before. He spent the evening lifting people out of their wheelchairs and into this fabulous vehicle to help them have a night to remember for their high school graduation, just like mainstream kids. Although we offered to reimburse him for a portion of the cost of the limo, he wouldn’t accept it. He expected no reward other than to see the joy on the faces of those who took part.
His executive director was not sure she could retain him and other young staff for long. Why? Because, as another worker put it very poignantly, “I have struggled with my salary. It helps that I’m single. There is no way I could have a family with this job. None of us are secure, really.”
This is especially the case with small organizations that make up the bulk of the sector. They’re staffed mainly by women, members of racial and ethnic minorities like myself, and youth.
What is driving the employment challenges the sector faces? One of the key factors is funding policies by governments. A recent report says that flatlined and project-based versus core funding has led to lower and non-competitive wages and job instability and a decline in permanent full-time jobs, which I had when I started out 30 years ago, with benefits, and now it’s high rates of precarious forms of employment with no benefits.
Staff training? It’s a dream. Community service agencies struggle with meeting increasing service demands and onerous reporting requirements to multiple funders consuming up to 40 per cent of their time. There is little time to focus on systemic issues like poverty, the homeless or lack of housing. Are we getting the best return on investment with this situation?
I’m moving now to a second issue, which is the need for public recognition of the hidden powerhouse of our economy. You know these figures well. The charitable and non-profit sector contributes 8.1 per cent to the GDP, supports the vulnerable and employs close to 2 million people. These people need recognition in terms of both adequate compensation and performance excellence. We reward people for selling more products and services. Our company does too. Why not reward people who help people become productive citizens? Our foundation plans to produce videos to depict the work of these heroes and their impact in partnerships with United Way of the GTA, the Lower Mainland and Halifax, where we have just finished the first video and charity village.
How are other countries recognizing workers like this in the non-profit sector? In the U.K., a Respect for Social Work campaign has been launched in a bid to improve the working conditions of the sector. March is Social Work Month in the U.S. I’m currently a board volunteer and the CEO of the Bhayana Family Foundation. Over the last decade, our foundation and its United Way partners have recognized the extraordinary work done by close to 900 staff through award ceremonies organized to celebrate their achievements in the presence of their peers.
Post-ceremony evaluations indicate the impact of the awards. One executive director said, “For our front-line winner, it was the external recognition that we could not convey alone. The awards instilled an added sense of pride not only to the winner but everyone one on the team. Morale was boosted, and ripples were felt beyond the walls of our agency.”
Here is a short vignette that shows the lack of profile of people in the sector. After one of the awards ceremonies, a recipient shared his story. He is the youngest of three sons in his family. The eldest brother is in the investment business and is seen as successful. The next brother is in the real estate business, and he is seen as doing well. The award recipient is perceived as a loser because he works in the non-profit sector. But getting the award made him a winner for a day.
Where do we go from here? We have recommendations. One, the federal government must support, at the provincial level, decent work employment that governs wages, benefits and pensions. Two, there needs to be coordination at the federal level, funding frameworks, and a balance between time-limited project funding and core funding to ensure sustainability. The biggest recommendation, anecdotally, talking to executive directors, was to please move from annual funding to at least a minimum of three years because otherwise you just can’t sustain.
Funding applications, accountability and outcome requirements for different federal government departments need to be coordinated. Support is needed for the provinces to invest in organizational integration — which is really needed — and leverage technology to support shared platforms.
Governments at all levels need to resource the creation of collaborative tables. Funders, philanthropists, foundations, private and public sector contributors need to work towards implementing a common vision of health communities in their geographic regions. Perhaps then there will be less redundancy and duplication.
Last, but not least, create a day of recognition and celebration of the everyday invisible heroes.
Honourable senators, this is an opportunity to ensure a transformation and renewal of the overburdened non-profit sector and make it a thriving one. Thank you very much for your time.
The Chair: Ms. Bhayana, thank you very much.
Cathy Winter, Program Manager, DiverseCity onBoard, Ryerson University, as an individual: Good evening, honourable senators. My name is Cathy Winter, and I lead the national and the GTA DiverseCity onBoard program, a program of the Chang School at Ryerson University in Toronto. Thank you for inviting me to speak to the committee this evening.
Boards of governance have the power to effect change, to set the agenda, to influence policy and to allocate funds, to make decisions that affect the people who live, work and play in our country.
I would first like to tell you a little bit about the DiverseCity onBoard program, soon to be rebranded to onBoard Canada, and how our work has relevance to the work of this committee.
DiverseCity onBoard strengthens governance capacity by promoting and providing effective leadership for everyone everywhere. We do this in two distinct ways. First, we provide affordable, accessible governance training to anyone across Canada, regardless of background. In our focus group session several years ago, we found that affordable and effective governance training was lacking in the non-profit and charitable sector. Second, in a growing list of communities across Canada, our board matching program connects non-profit, charitable and public sector boards with qualified individuals from communities that have historically been excluded from governance positions, such as Indigenous peoples, members of the LGBTQ2+ communities, persons with disabilities, visible minorities and women.
From our beginnings as a local program based at the Maytree Foundation, focused at that time on increasing the representation of visible minorities on boards of the not-for-profit, charitable and public sectors, the program has received international recognition by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and has expanded nationally and facilitated over 1,000 appointments to boards and committees across Canada. It has a network of more than 1,500 individuals and 900 not-for-profit and public agencies.
We have created a pathway and a pipeline to leadership in governance for communities that are traditionally under-represented in leadership and governance.
Our governance training courses, which are fully accessible, give board members and prospective board members the tools, competence and confidence to serve on governance boards. Moreover, when individuals from these groups are connected through governance boards of the not-for-profit and public sectors, they can add value to the decisions that affect them and their communities.
In these spaces, they not only add new perspectives to board conversations and decisions but also serve as role models for others in their communities. They utilize their leadership skills at the tables of power and influence and strengthen the capacity of the board, as well as their social capital, by building new social and professional networks, which contribute to social cohesion.
The training program ranges from modules on governance fundamentals to inclusive leadership and unconscious bias for boards. We see diversity and inclusion as an integral component of governance and of strengthening board and organization capacity. Our work has always been built on evidence, such as our research series conducted in partnership with Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute. Our latest study, currently in progress, is a large-scale nationwide survey of the representation of equity-seeking groups — First Nations and Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ2+ communities, under-represented immigrants, visible minorities, women and persons with disabilities — on not-for-profit, public and corporate boards. Cities include Calgary, the GTA, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Metro Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax. Our study is expected to be completed in January 2020.
There are over 170,000 non-profit and charitable organizations and hundreds of public sector agencies across Canada largely governed by boards of directors that do not represent the diversity of our nation’s communities. Our latest census shows that in major cities, such as those in the GTA, the majority of residents identify as visible minorities. It also shows that Indigenous youth are the largest growing demographic, and there is a marked increase in the Indigenous population from rural to urban centres.
So let’s juxtapose that against research findings from a study, DiversityLeads, by the Diversity Institute at Ryerson University, which looked at the representation of visible minorities in senior leadership, including board positions. In 2014, the representation of visible minorities on those boards of the non-profit and public sectors was 17.6 per cent. In 2017, it decreased to 17.4 per cent even though the demographic is expanding. In Montreal in 2011, the representation was 11.4 per cent, and it declined in 2015 to 5.6 per cent.
So it’s not about the pool of visible minorities, as evidenced by the census data. The pool is there. It’s about intentional policies and practices.
Moreover, by 2031, immigration is projected to account for more than 80 per cent of Canada’s population growth. So we have and we will continue to have a diverse society, but do we want a diverse society that is an inclusive one or a diverse society that is an exclusive one?
The answer is that it’s about governance, it’s about leadership, and it lies in the hands of those who make public policy and those who lead our many organizations. Our work over the past 10 years has revealed the need for new approaches and intentional practices to strengthen board capacity.
Let’s take a look at the new arrangements that are needed. While having like-minded and known people on a board — who may be beholden to the board member or the executive director who got them there — assures homogeneity, the new work of the board calls for different perspectives, new arrangements and new conversations about how to operate in the best interests of the mission of the organization and the community it serves.
The new work of the board includes understanding the correlation between mission, strategy and board composition and that having an inclusive organization starts with establishing a diverse and inclusive board.
New leadership is required to probe the following: Strategically, how do diversity and inclusion strengthen the capacity of the board and advance the organization’s mission, vision, campaigns, policies, programs, budget, services and outreach? And ethically, do the organization’s mission, vision, values and actions reflect the organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion?
Board composition impacts how the board leads. Board members impact how an organization functions and what decisions it makes. Numerous research studies have shown that homogeneity breeds groupthink as it stifles new ideas and perspectives.
In new approaches to board recruitment practices, while representation is important, it must be authentic and should not be rooted in tokenism. Communities must see themselves represented in positions of power and influence. If they don’t, why would they support those institutions? And once there, they must feel valued, supported and respected; otherwise, they won’t stay.
Organizations must carefully examine recruitment and hiring practices. They must conduct extensive outreach and provide training for hiring managers to recognize bias and coded language. They must utilize the services of DiverseCity onBoard. Term limits help ensure that a board’s composition reflects its current leadership needs and creates opportunities to bring new voices to the table.
We must foster a culture of inclusion. It’s not about ticking check boxes or putting different bums in seats. It is about inclusion, a feeling of belonging, being valued, supported and respected. This is crucial to retention.
So what’s the role for public policy? Public policy-makers must ask the questions. How can we advance a more inclusive society? How can we use our country’s diversity as our strength and not just as a slogan, but as a means of strengthening board capacity in a sector that is closest to the community where decisions are made that affect the community members directly: the arts, health, sports and the environment, for example?
Simon Brault, CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts, introduced a new funding model in April 2017 that directly tied diversity to funding for large arts organizations for the first time since the council was established in 1957. Moreover, it not only applied to the artists but also included the administration, the backstage crew, the audience, the board of directors and art galleries that had a revenue of more than $2 million. And they needed to demonstrate a commitment to reflecting the diversity of the organization’s geographic community or the region.
It’s clearly an assessment criterion. It’s no longer a wish, says Simon Brault. Further, demonstrating both the strategic and the ethical imperative, he adds that these changes are not just a matter of being inclusive but of the arts being sustainable in an increasingly multicultural country. This exemplifies a new direction.
So here are some recommendations: My advice to the committee is to be fact-based because what gets measured gets done. We need to measure, evaluate and refine. Develop a reporting mechanism for board and organization capacity that includes board equity. This would include developing assessment criteria, gathering evidence and assessing the findings to identify options for a systemic fix. Consider base representation on employment equity demographic groups for boards of governance in the non-profit and charitable sector.
Thank you for your time.
The Chair: Thank you both for very thoughtful and thought-provoking presentations.
Ms. Bhayana, you reminded me in your presentation about my first job in the sector as executive director of the Kidney Foundation of Nova Scotia. It sounds like a very prestigious job, with my office in my own basement, with a desk and a phone and no computer in those days, trying to help a large group of volunteers take the organization to the next level, when your first job was to fulfill the commitment of the organization, but also to raise enough money to pay your own salary and expenses. These are struggles that are faced by a lot of organizations. They build character in the people who do them sometimes, and I attribute much of my success to the good volunteers who were with me at that time.
We will go to questions.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you to both of you for being here. Those were very interesting presentations. Raksha, I have to say that your presentation reminded me, like it did Senator Mercer, of my first job in Canada, which was in the sector too. It was an administrative job, but I can draw a straight line from that opening to my position here in the Senate. That story you told us about that young man in Halifax was most moving.
But my question to you is around deconstructing this picture of, as you said, overburdened workers in the non-profit and charitable sector. The charitable sector and non-profit sector are very big. So on the one hand, you have universities, hospitals and museums, and I don’t think anyone would say that their workers are necessarily underpaid in any way. Some could say maybe they’re not at all underpaid.
Can you clarify for us which parts of this ecosystem you are talking about?
Ms. Bhayana: I’m talking about the human and social services.
I believe a StatsCan report came out recently about salaries within the charitable, non-profit sector. If I am remembering correctly, for the hospitals, it was about about $1,200. For a non-profit for home health care, it was about $600. So that gives you an idea of the differences per week in the range of salaries.
Senator Omidvar: You are talking specifically about human services, maybe arts organizations?
Ms. Bhayana: The figures I gave you were more hospital based. The $675, I believe, was home health care. So it gives you an idea of the range. So I’m really talking about the core human services. Because I was in Halifax, that example was very much on my mind. The devotion that people have to the work that they do is just incredible. It moves you when you see how hard they work, and they will give it their all.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you for that. I’m trying to reconcile two polarizing elements in our society. One is the pay-for-impact mentality that is definitely part of government funding, and the other is decent work. How do you reconcile these two almost contradictory tensions in our system? On the one hand, government has to be accountable, and it has to provide services at a decent price. On the other hand, there are workers in the sector who also need to be decently treated. Do you see these as mutually exclusive? Can you have impact in the social service field and pay people decently? Is that possible, or is that out of our range?
Ms. Bhayana: I think that’s a fundamental question. I can quote some of the executive directors that I have talked to through our foundation and awards program. I would say the majority have no trouble with accountability or measuring impact. What they do have trouble with is the multiple funders and different funding applications and different reporting requirements, all of which mean that they spend 40 per cent or more of their time meeting those expectations.
Quite honestly, from a business viewpoint, there is no ROI on that. There is no return on investment on having multiple funders. And then it’s for one year. So the whole process gets repeated. There is a loss of organizational resources, powerful management resources. Again, I’m giving this example because I was recently in Halifax. There are funders who are paying executive directors to go to meetings to talk about the homeless because they don’t have time to go. They are too busy. They can’t talk about the system. They have no time to talk about the system.
Senator R. Black: Thank you. I’d like to hear from both of you about how your programs and organizations are impacting rural Canada. I heard GTA and Halifax and Vancouver and the Lower Mainland and Toronto, et cetera, but how are your programs and organizations impacting and assisting groups in rural Canada?
Ms. Winter: On November 1, we are rebranding to onBoard Canada, and we will be promoting and marketing our governance training program to all cities, including rural Canada.
Senator R. Black: How?
Ms. Winter: Our training is online.
Senator R. Black: How will you get to the local 4-H association that has a volunteer board of 20 working in Renfrew County? How will they know about your program?
Ms. Winter: One way is through social media, which we will be ramping up quite a bit with our new branding to onBoard Canada. Another is going to local organizations to talk about the program. We will be hiring a marketing person to do that outreach, to actually do specific outreach so that then we can reach out to those organizations.
Ms. Bhayana: Our foundation does not have a reach, honestly, in the rural areas, but United Ways do. So they are partners, and they are very much present in all urban and rural areas. We are hoping through the videos that we are planning to create about these heroes to be able to represent what’s happening all across. These are just three people we are going to show, and the majority of the 2 million people who work in this sector are giving more than 100 per cent.
Senator R. Black: Thank you.
The Chair: There are so many heroes in this sector, and it is extremely important to identify them all and to give them all a platform for Canadians to recognize them. We wish you well with that. I have been fortunate enough to meet some amazing people in my career, and I have looked at them and said, “How do you do this? How do you give the time and the energy?” And for the rest of your life, which is an important aspect.
Senator Martin: Thank you. Apologies for my late arrival. My flight was delayed, but I did hear the second half of your presentation. Thank you to you both.
If I may say, I have volunteered in a number of charities and in non-profits, and I know the incredible dedication of the people like yourself and others. I think what you put into the organizations is immeasurable and invaluable. So thank you for what you are doing.
I have a question about the collaborative table and what you were talking about in terms of trying to reduce the redundancy and duplication, where possible, and how to maximize the resources that are available.
We have heard from other organizations about the importance of core funding and moving away from annual to multi-year funding. This is an idea that I’m just asking for your responses to. If there is to be more core funding, rather than having all the organizations receive core funding, which would be ideal, but if that is not possible, how do we say these groups should and these should not, when there are some essential services that all these organizations offer? What about core funding to, say, a charitable hub, where organizations could come together so that the resources that could be shared are, and then respective groups could do their work? Do you see that as being a way forward in what government can do to provide really good core funding to help all the organizations?
Ms. Bhayana: I think that’s a great idea. We need more models where people are working together. People want to work together. People would like to see integration happen, but they need resources to be able to do it. If you are going to put your IT and your HR together, you need some resources. It’s not just a matter of economies of scale and you just combine it and it costs less. You need some resources upfront to invest to make it eventually more efficient. So I think that would be a great idea.
I was also on the board of the LHIN, the Local Health Integration Network, in the health sector. We did that with some organizations, small community health organizations, and they were responsive. It took time. You have to deal with the resistance, but they are quite willing.
I think the other point I would like to make is that contrary to the stereotype, executive directors and senior managers and staff are entrepreneurial at heart. They have a lot of ideas. If you would like, I can tell you one idea somebody shared with me recently. I’ll just go forward.
Most mid-sized organizations have assets of some kind, whether they are endowments or whatever, and they said, “Well, look, we have a huge housing problem in our area. Why don’t the organizations that have capital pull it together, try to leverage it to get some private money, get some government money, and do some housing together?” It gives a stream of revenue to the organization as well.
That’s just one idea. There are lots of ideas on the ground in terms of people. It’s really mining those ideas and investing in those ideas. It requires some resources upfront, but there is huge potential for it to work in the future.
Senator Martin: I think the ideas you mentioned are excellent. I guess the coordination would be the biggest challenge in how to bring these ideas to reality. You talked about the health industry’s example; who coordinated that effort?
Ms. Bhayana: The Local Health Integration Network, which is one of the 14 bodies that were created about 12 years ago by the Ontario government.
Senator Martin: Thank you.
Senator Seidman: Thank you both very much for your presentations. I was going to talk about your funding issues and how the lack of core funding affects your recruitment, hiring practices and the quality of the people you can attract to your organizations.
As parliamentarians, we meet all the time on the Hill with organizations in the not-for-profit sector, and they do such phenomenal work for Canadians. Yet I feel it’s an invisible sector. That’s sad and disappointing because those people do fabulous work.
If it’s systemic, what is the impact of the fact that the funding is not permanent? There is not a lot of core funding. It’s renewable on an annual basis. That has an impact on the kind of people you can hire or recruit and what you can offer them in terms of salary and benefits, like retirement benefits. If you can help me, as a federal legislator, I’m trying to understand if there is something we could do to improve that situation.
Ms. Bhayana: All of those problems are very much present in the smaller organizations, which are the majority all over Canada. The example that one executive director gave was how would you like to have your family doctor changed every two years? They can retain young staff for a few years, but that’s about it.
The Imagine Canada study showed that only about 35 per cent of youth would ever consider going into the non-profit sector because it offers very little money.
In terms of what can be done about it, this is not an age where you keep going back to the government saying, “Give us more resources.” I think we are asking for resources that are better planned and that will, in fact, release resources. And then we are saying that let’s look at social finance and social innovation and leveraging the private sector to help us out at this point. But in order to do that, you need to invest.
There is a federal committee on social innovation and social finance that has made some recommendations. It’s going to be really important that some of those are implemented so that we can get those off the ground.
There is not going to be one solution; there will be a myriad of solutions. We start with let’s stop with the annual funding. It’s a real resource loss for these very small organizations. To report indicators and measurement is very difficult.
The Chair: There is also a need for creativity in how donations are given because many times we only measure the dollars and cents of how much someone actually gives to a charity. Large corporations can give in so many different ways. From my own experience, I convinced a large food retailer in my part of the world, which is not difficult to figure out since I’m from Nova Scotia, to donate some office space in an office they owned in downtown Halifax.
I thought at the time that was wonderful. I was moving out of my basement into a real office with real office furniture. Twenty years later, they were still there. I had not been involved in the charity, but I still knew one of the staff. I said, “Are you still rent-free?” And they said, “Yes.” Just think of the size of that donation that acted as a stimulus to that charity that they didn’t have the burden of rent. Is creativity still alive?
Ms. Bhayana: Absolutely. They are very resourceful. Spaces are often from churches or corporations at a very low rate, or the city will give. There is no dearth of creativity and innovation on behalf of clients. Absolutely.
Senator Duffy: Welcome. Maybe you can help me with my problem. I have two not-for-profits in P.E.I. right now who don’t know what to do. They know what they’d like to do, but they are not certain how to do it. Part of the problem is that they don’t have people with the technical expertise to teach them how to put together a proper application for funding. They are not yet at square one; they are at the starting line. There is a need, and they have all they can do. They pulled together a place, and they have done a lot themselves. But to move it to the next level, they need a level of expertise, which goes to two things. One is the eventual ability to hire professional staff. One is a youth centre, which has a burgeoning need for young people to keep them off the streets and occupied. The other is a historical society.
I’m listening to you and asking myself, when the federal government goes to multi-year funding, they will have people who are not as busy as they were before. Should it be part of the federal government to have an area, group, department or a branch of these departments that would provide these very small not-for-profits with help in putting together their applications? Does that occur now?
Other people have talked about having hubs where small charities would share resources and presumably expertise. We are going to need them more as the boomers age.
Ms. Bhayana: For sure. The uptake on senior services, according to this study, is 100 per cent since 2006. I’m aging too; we are all going to need those services.
It is a very complex issue. My answer would be twofold: Yes, there are many federal departments that you can call and ask for help to fill out an application. I personally don’t know now. My experience is dated because I haven’t been working in the sector for the last 20 years. I would have to find out, senator, and let you know.
I hope you won’t laugh when I say this, but one of the executive directors said to me that this could be a business that they start. Helping each other and not charging. It wouldn’t be a business in that sense, but it could be a service that is provided to smaller ones and they give back in kind. Just like in the barter days. You give me something, maybe you have something that I need, and I can help you with this application. They are quite willing to do that.
Senator Duffy: Funny, that’s sort of what I’m trying to do now, to get some of our witnesses who have been here to help the folks down in P.E.I.
Thank you. I agree with you. We have to have some infrastructure or some kind of plan that provides pay and some certainty. It’s in the interests of government to have multi-year funding. Not only is it in the interests of charities and not-for-profits, but also in the interests of government. If we can have groups helping groups, all the better. I’ll make sure that we tweet out onBoard Canada, Ms. Winter, when you do your big launch. We’ll make sure we get it out to as many people as we can.
Ms. Bhayana: The groups helping groups model is operating in Ontario. United Way has gone toward that kind of model with anchor agencies. The children’s mental health system has gone into that with anchor agencies, so they are working together. Not as formally as you were talking about — actually, formally, but not necessarily in the way that you were talking about. If I can help in any way, I’d be happy to, senator.
Senator Duffy: Thank you very much.
Ms. Winter: I want to say thank you for tweeting us out.
The Chair: Helping each other is part of what the sector does. People are very generous with their time, but time is limited and valuable. Do you see a role for professional development of workers in the sector as part of the process of training? The problem with the sector, in many ways, is that a good person comes in at a junior level, gets a concept as to how it works and becomes good at it while they are working for a very small organization. Guess what happens to them? A larger organization snaps them up and they move along. That’s good for their career development, but it affects the charities. If everybody is involved in supporting professional development, is that not a side of the sector that we don’t pay much attention to, Ms. Winter?
Ms. Winter: In terms of assisting the individuals?
The Chair: In assisting staff to become better at what they do, and learning more about what they do. Senator Duffy referred to a group not knowing exactly how to write a proposal, which is in many cases a bit of an art form, but if you don’t know how to do it and the people next door do — there needs to be some structure that helps you learn that. There are not that many schools that spend time teaching non-profit volunteers.
Ms. Winter: It’s certainly a void. It’s a gap.
Senator Duffy: Would it be something to build on your governance training, that you would offer some professional development?
Ms. Winter: We are a small not-for-profit as well in terms of resources and funding. We are a tiny team.
Senator Omidvar: I’d like to shift the conversation from decent work to decent governance, because that is why you’re here, Ms. Winter. I happen to know the work well, but I won’t rest on that.
I have a question about good governance. Good governance is in the interest of the federal government because if charities and not-for-profits are governed well, public money is being spent to its best effect. So, what should the appropriate role of the federal government be, in this case, in broadcasting and reaching out to rural communities, island communities and metro communities on your work? Do you see a recommendation around governance competency and access to affordable online governance training in the way you do it?
Ms. Winter: If there is a role for the federal government in that?
Senator Omidvar: Yes.
Ms. Winter: I think in terms of providing funding for that —
Senator Omidvar: Should the federal government insist that every charity that has charitable status and every not-for-profit that has not-for-profit status under the federal government should have competent governance?
Ms. Winter: Yes, they should, because it’s essential for the viability of the organization as well as the impact on society. They are using public funds, so there should be a link.
Senator Omidvar: I heard you say that evidence matters. I think we all agree in this room that evidence should be the baseline of whatever we recommend. You have suggested that in order to get to governance equity, the way I hear you, we need to have a baseline of information on governance demographics. It’s a good idea, but the sector has told us that they are drowning in paperwork, that, as Ms. Bhayana said, they have 40 funders to meet, and here comes the federal government with another demand. Do you think the sector is ready, willing and able?
Ms. Winter: I agree that they are drowning. I think if the sector sees it as critical to their own survival, it’s something that they would do. The other piece of that is the ethical piece. The words are there in terms of diversity and inclusion, but there is no specific action to show that it’s not just a slogan, that it’s an action. I think that would drive them to do that. If they could spend more time on strategy to see how that links to their strategy, to their bottom line, then I think they would see it as being in their interests.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you. Can I have a final question?
Ms. Bhayana: Senator, I would like to make a comment. I think that there are existing bodies who already have standards, and most organizations that I have been a board member of have had an accrediting body. Accreditation Canada has very high standards, and so does Imagine Canada.
You are shaking your head.
Senator Omidvar: I’m shaking my head because, while the standard exists, there is no training that brings people from the baseline to the standard. Yes, standards are good, but so is the pathway to getting to those standards. That’s my concern with pushing the kind of affordable work that Cathy is talking about broadly.
I have a question for you in the two minutes remaining. We have heard in previous witness testimony that there is competition in the sector. You have told us there is collaboration in the sector. Does that depend on size? Does it depend on function? Does it depend on the sector? Because you are giving us a completely different picture of a sector that collaborates, as opposed to fiercely competing for the charitable dollar.
Ms. Bhayana: There is both. There is competition because you want more funds for your organization. You are going to compete with X, Y and Z for the dollars. That’s a fact because you need dollars, but collaboration is also being required by funders. They are both happening at the same time.
Senator Omidvar: So they can coexist?
Ms. Bhayana: There are tensions on the ground; there’s no doubt about that. There is resistance to integration, for example, even though the LHINs are really pushing for integration. So I think both can and should coexist.
I’m concerned about the accreditation because there are many bodies besides the two that I have mentioned, and obviously that’s an issue.
The Chair: Thank you both for your thoughtful presentations. As you can see by the number of questions we have, you have provoked an awful lot of interest and thought. You’ve given us a lot to think about, helped us raise more questions and given us some insight as to what the answers will be.
On behalf of my colleagues, I would like to thank both of you for being here.
Ms. Bhayana: Sorry, senator, that I didn’t answer your question on the issue of accreditation.
The Chair: Honourable senators, the committee will now hear our next witnesses. We would like to welcome Ms. Jacline Nyman, Former President and Chief Executive Officer, United Way of Canada; and from the Ontario Nonprofit Network, Ms. Cathy Taylor, Executive Director.
Thank you both for coming. Very quickly, you will both be given five to seven minutes to make a presentation. Then we will get to questions from my colleagues. We will try to keep our questions and answers short, so we get in as many questions as possible. We’re here to learn. We’re going to start with Ms. Nyman.
Jacline Nyman, Former President and Chief Executive Officer, United Way of Canada, as an individual: Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the special committee, for your invitation and opportunity to speak with you this evening.
As you know, my name is Jacline Nyman, and I’m appearing today as an individual. In my 30-year career, I’ve been a professor, a charitable gift fundraiser and a leader in the non-profit sector. For the past six years, I served as President and CEO of United Way Centraide Canada. In August of this year, I left to join the University of Ottawa to become an associate professor and Vice-President of External Relations. So I have recently made that switch.
As requested, I’m pleased to appear before you to share my thoughts on this topic, and in particular the implications for employment. It goes without saying the sector employs approximately 2 million people. Additionally, 44 per cent to almost half of us volunteer our time, contributing almost 2 billion hours per year. The generosity of Canadians is indisputable, but how do we ensure the time, energy and labour devoted to the sector and to each other are supported by policies that ensure that the impact of those investments are maximized?
This evening I would like to focus my comments on three specific areas that are having a tangible effect on our sector with special emphasis again on the employment lens: First, precarious and often unstable funding for the charitable organizations; second, the rapid disruption of technology and its effects on the sector; third, the competition for human resources inextricably linked to the above.
The first is precarious and often unstable funding for charitable organizations. Instability of funding, as you know, leads to precarious employment in the sector. When grants and charitable donations are annual or time limited in nature or simply insufficient to fund the cost of hiring staff to deliver on our mission, it makes for recurrent short-term contractual employment, which, by its very nature, does not lend itself to long-term stability for the individual worker nor for the organization. This contributes to the growing issue of precarious employment in the country. Precarious employment includes part-time and contract on-call positions, jobs without benefits and jobs with uncertain futures, and these are marked by uncertainty, again, insecurity and instability.
Charitable organizations serve all Canadians, but we focus primarily on the most vulnerable and often those living in poverty. The irony should not be lost on any of us that our sector serving the most vulnerable also contributes to the precarity through the very nature of its instability to provide long-term and stable employment.
Canadians choose to work in the sector because they’re connected to the mission of the organization and the people that they serve. In other words, there is that connection to personal values. However, the sector on the whole must compete for the same individuals in a very competitive market, one in Canada right now that is experiencing very low unemployment, making it even more difficult for us to recruit and retain competent and performing individuals.
Policies in place for non-profit organizations, as have been referred to by other witnesses, often makes the charitable sector ineligible for funding that permits stable employment, and with that, the ability to invest beyond the core mission into innovation, which is so necessary. Further, short-term funding cycles, criteria and evaluation requirements really take away from the sector. They contribute to the administrative overhead instead of what would otherwise be deployed directly to delivering service to the intended beneficiaries.
My recommendation is to promote stability in funding for the non-profit organizations through progressive policies, including long-term stable grant funding similar to that used to stimulate the corporate economy, start-up and grant funding for innovation within new and existing non-profits, and a reduced burden of the short-term evaluation cycle.
Let me touch now on the rapid disruption of technology and its effects on the sector. Allow me to add a lens of complexity, namely, the current pace of the disruption associated with technology enhancements and revolutionary changes such as the implementation of new digital technologies, such as data analytics and artificial intelligence. One of the issues we’re facing around the globe, including in Canada, is the declining trust in government and non-profit organizations. Part of that issue is the rapid mobilization of information and transparency in governance and expenditures, which are often referred to as the line of sight on the donation made. Technology investments are required to ensure that we meet these challenges as swiftly as possible with real-time connectivity. It helps us not only to communicate but also to offer evidence-based solutions and to evaluate those programs more swiftly.
Investing in the research and development budgets of non-profit and para-public sectors is crucial to moving our organizations forward at a time of revolutionary technological change. Without this investment, we simply won’t be able to keep pace with the technology enhancements themselves, let alone afford the competencies or talented human resources for which we compete with the for-profit marketplace. The professional, scientific and technical services sector in Canada has a much lower than population average unemployment rate right now at 2.7 per cent. This makes our ability to recruit talented, technology-competent staff even more difficult and almost impossible, given our inability to compete on salary or compensation or stability.
When you combine the administrative burden felt by all charities, the often urgent and unrelenting need to deliver services, and the high cost of competing for top talent, you can quickly see why this sector is often a laggard from an innovation perspective. Often those technologies which show us the most promise for the sector are the ones that are out of reach, for example, AI, blockchain, et cetera.
Right now one of the only options to invest financially in the order of magnitude needed to leapfrog into digital technology is for charities to partner with for-profits to make that investment. Indeed, for-profits are even entering the charitable marketplace, as we have seen with fundraising software and consultancy, aiming to profit from the very segment of the economy that’s meant to exist outside of the profitability paradigm. In other words, non-profits are now competing with limited resources against for-profits in the charitable sector itself.
In closing, employment stability in the charitable sector will promote long-term employment, the aspiration of fulfilling a values-based career, a viable option for young adults to invest their time from graduation through retirement. The sector is innovative and sustainable, as evidenced by the longevity of the contribution to the Canadian economy now in excess of 8 per cent of our GDP. People are prepared to make their living devoted to mission-based work, and our country needs this kind of thinking and innovation to thrive. Our governments need to promote policies aimed at stimulating secure employment and eliminating the current precarity associated with our sector.
Thank you very much for inviting me this evening. I hope I’ve made a valuable contribution.
Cathy Taylor, Executive Director, Ontario Nonprofit Network: Thank you to all the senators for the invitation to join you today. We have a vision for employment in the non-profit and charitable sector. Our vision is to mobilize a decent work movement across the Ontario non-profit sector that will allow organizations to more effectively achieve their missions because they provide decent work to their employees. We believe it is vital to build a better understanding and a deeper understanding of the sector’s workforce if we are to develop effective, long-term solutions for employers and employees alike.
Our premise is that with happier, healthier and better-supported workers, non-profits can do a better job in meeting their mission and delivering their services and programs, and this will benefit all of our communities.
As you have heard, the non-profit and charitable sector in Ontario and Canada is a critical part of our economy and social fabric. As Jacline has just pointed out, the non-profit sector in Canada employs 2 million Canadians, about 11 per cent of our economically active population. That does not include the 13 million volunteers who contribute enough hours to equal 1 million more full-time jobs.
In Ontario alone, there are 58,000 organizations, and we estimate that there are 1 million sector employees. It is an estimate, as there is either no or limited workforce data on the non-profit sector, which is problematic for funders, policy-makers and organizations.
The non-profit sector does differ from other sectors in terms of its own characteristics, challenges and opportunities that significantly affect employment in the sector. We’ve been working on labour force issues in Ontario for a number of years, and our work thus far has resulted in using the framework of “decent work.” This concept was developed by the International Labour Organization and was introduced to us by the Atkinson Foundation.
The definition of decent work is opportunities to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It is a lens to think about fair, equitable and stable work, not just about meeting minimum requirements, but also about creating a work environment in which diverse people can thrive.
In September 2015, Canada and 192 other UN member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Goal number 8 on that list, which Canada committed to, is decent work and economic growth: “By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.” Therefore, Canada is committed to implementing decent work in our communities, and we should build on this momentum specifically in the non-profit sector.
There are seven indicators of decent work that we believe have particular resonance for the sector according to the Change Work report we produced. These are employment opportunities, fair income, health and retirement benefits, stable employment, opportunities for development and advancement, equality and rights at work, and culture and leadership. These indicators would give us a work plan for creating a better employment in the non-profit sector.
I want to take a moment to particularly highlight the issue of women workers in Ontario’s non-profit sector, and this also extends to Canada as a whole. Women make up 80 per cent of the sector workers in Ontario, but we know very little about how they are faring in the sector. Given the critical intersections between labour, the non-profit sector and women, we have been exploring this question by applying a gender-based lens to the decent work movement with the support of Status of Women Canada. We have been compiling women’s voices on their employment experience in the sector and will be releasing a report later this month. We have learned that gender plays a significant role in the sector’s labour market. We know that the sector is women-majority, but it is not women-led. We have also learned that women workers experience sexism and other forms of discrimination in our sector.
We believe this is a situation with some urgency. Demographic shifts tell us that leaders and employers in the non-profit sector are soon to retire. Succession planning is limited. We don’t have the resources, benefits and supports to entice younger and more diverse workers. And never before have the services that our sector provides been more desperately needed by our communities, whether they’re food banks, immigrant-serving organizations, after-school programs, community art programs or shelters. We need to retain and recruit talent for the benefit of all Canadians, not just for the benefit of our sector.
Fundamentally we believe that there is a power in convening the voices of the sector and listening to their lived experiences. We thank you for the opportunity to share that with you today.
There is an appetite in the non-profit sector, among all types and sizes of organizations, to improve working conditions, and I can tell you it’s the most popular work that we have done in the last number of years.
The charity narrative and the overhead myth have deep roots and a negative impact on the sector’s workforce, and we believe that the non-profit sector is often in an impossible situation, choosing between investing in staff and serving their community.
We respectfully recommend that the Senate consider the following measures: Better labour market information and data collection at the federal and provincial levels with the support of Statistics Canada; supporting the development of a specific non-profit sector workforce strategy with a particular focus on the shifting demographics and their implications, such as succession planning and funding opportunities to support the sector; how federal grants and contributions be can be reformed to allow for appropriate investments in staffing and meaningful administrative burden reduction; applying a gender-based analysis plus lens and a diversity lens, and solutions, to the non-profit sector workforce; considering those other systems-level changes that the federal government can take on that would benefit non-profit sector employees and all employees in Canada, such as an increased minimum wage and a commitment to paying a living wage, CPP enhancements, pay transparency, gender wage gap solutions and a national child care strategy; and finally, supporting retirement savings and registered pension plans, particularly portability within sectors and between provinces.
We wish to thank the Senate for undertaking this study, and we look forward to the possibility that we can co-create a strategy together.
The Chair: Thank you both for the excellent presentations. We will now go to my colleagues.
Senator Omidvar: Those were two excellent presentations. Thank you very much for your time.
First of all, Ms. Taylor, congratulations on your breakthrough. Ontario not-for-profit and charitable workers will be able to subscribe to a defined benefit pension plan that is funded by employers and employees. It is a wonderful breakthrough.
What I have heard from both of you — and I take this from you, Ms. Nyman — is that precarious funding leads to precarious work, and decent funding would lead to decent work. Those are important statements, somewhat aspirational. I want to try and get to the guts of how. We’ve heard about three-year funding envelopes, coordinated funding strategies and hubs.
With this myth of overhead and administration, would you recommend that the federal government have a line item in every application that enables organizations to get a certain percentage of overhead funding and administrative funding as part of their application? In my time, it used to be 12 per cent. I’m sure those figures are no longer valid. That’s one idea I’d like you to reflect on.
The other idea is, of course, shared back-end services. Ms. Nyman, you talked about the technological revolution, how the sector is getting left behind. What about back-end services that the federal government funds so that organizations can keep pace with technological evolution and revolutions, share back-end and HR services? It’s hard for non-profits to advertise, recruit, et cetera.
And Ms. Taylor, could tell me what happened to the voluntary sector HR? There was one legacy that came out of the Voluntary Sector Initiative.
Senator R. Black: What was it called?
Ms. Taylor: The HR Council for volunteers.
Senator Omidvar: It is a package of questions, and we can address them in the second round if we can’t address them right now.
Ms. Nyman: It’s interesting when we talk about acceptable overhead. If we’re talking in a for-profit context, acceptable overhead is anything that still returns a profit to the shareholder. When we’re in a non-profit context, as my experience with the United Way will tell you, it can be one of the lowest-overhead organizations, and we’re still criticized.
I think you’re all familiar with the famous email that goes around every year that some people work for nothing. I have a mortgage and a daughter and I’m deeply devoted to this sector. So there is going to be overhead to attract good, educated, strong people who want to make their careers in this sector.
On the question about one part that the government could help with, what is acceptable overhead? The CRA says they don’t even investigate or look into things beyond 35 or 40 per cent. What is acceptable in for-profit organizations? Keeping charitable organizations so painfully low makes it so that we can’t afford to invest whatsoever in research and development. There is no room for failure or risk, yet we all know that to innovate is to take risk and to invest, and there isn’t a for-profit that does not invest significantly in R&D in order to succeed.
Making more funding available to stabilize or to cover acceptable overhead and starting a conversation with all levels of government to say there is a legitimacy to overhead are a great place to start.
Ms. Taylor: The issue of the overhead myth, of course, and what’s an appropriate admin expense has been around for a long time now in the sector, and there have been lots of conversations.
I would challenge us to think about the real cost of doing business. Do we even need to call it administration or overhead anyway? When I look at a small organization that has an executive director doing programming and they have three staff, how much of the executive director’s time is administration versus doing actual programming of the organization?
It’s a false ratio we’re trying to set. Most government departments, both provincially and federally, do have a set amount that they give. It is anywhere from 5 per cent to 20 per cent, and it usually has nothing to do with what that organization is doing or where they’re located; it’s a policy of that particular department. It requires some thought around what that actually looks like and what that covers.
Stanford Social Innovation down in the U.S. has done some work that talks about the real cost of doing business and not having that pie chart of administration and overhead. With the private sector, we don’t ask them how much they’re spending on overhead, so why are we using the same issue for us?
In terms of shared back-end services, I think that’s a great opportunity. There’s huge interest in doing shared back-office services. It’s being tested. I’ve seen it in many communities. I work in a co-workspace where we share IT, office support, office space and receptionists. That is something we’re seeing happen a lot in the sector, and funders and organizations themselves are investing in some of those shared services. I think that’s a huge opportunity.
The HR Council was one of the sector councils that were funded by the federal government, and all of those sector councils were defunded. A number of years ago, three or four years ago, they were actually defunded. The assets of the HR Council, in terms of their web assets, still exist, and they’ve been stewarded by Community Foundations of Canada.
The Chair: One of the problems is that you only need one person or one charity to have extremely high overhead. That becomes a news story. That becomes front page news. Everyone else is struggling to keep the overhead as low as possible and direct money into the programs and into the mission of the organization.
Do you not think that media have a role to play in that? Yes, if someone is abusing the system and is not performing well and spending too much money on overhead and not enough money on the programs that they are supposedly committed to, the media has an obligation to report that, but they also have an obligation to report on the charity next door that is doing just the opposite, that has extremely low overhead and is doing good work in the community.
Ms. Nyman: To follow up on the comments around back-room services, I think we’re at a point in time where we need to articulate very carefully what the difference is between sharing offices and photocopiers and sharing high-end digital technologies. As we move more to digital, licence-based, cloud-based technologies that have to be highly customized to the particular organization, it is not always realistic. One of the biggest investments that charitable organizations must make at this point in time is to be able to play in the digital economy and to regain, if not continue to earn, that trust of Canadians and funders in that relationship. So we must invest, yet it is prohibitive to afford the talent, let alone, often, those investments in hardware, software, et cetera. That’s not really shareable. It is something unique to each organization, so it’s difficult for us to paint it with one brush regarding being able to move everything into a shared space where customization is required to a significant extent.
Senator Duffy: Thank you. Following up on that technology part, the federal government reaps billions of dollars from auctioning spectrum to mobile telephone companies — cellular companies — to sell them a chunk of the public airwaves. They get $5 billion to $10 billion out of these auctions.
Should there be some requirement for these broadcast organizations, and the telcos in particular, to provide a certain amount to the charitable sector? Broadcasters have to kick in and cable companies have to kick in so much to these production funds that fund Canadian talent. Should something be looked at to see whether the telcos and cellular companies should be providing some of that revenue stream back either in services or in hard cash to charities to enable them to be in that space?
Ms. Nyman: It’s a fascinating idea. I would certainly encourage that line of thinking and inquiry. It doesn’t stop there, either. When we talk about everything from net neutrality to accessibility of the Internet for those vulnerable populations, as a sector that serves the same populations possibly, having access to that kind of pooled resource would be extraordinary and give a huge lift to the sector. Thank you.
Senator Duffy: Do we need a minister for volunteers and non-profits, some person to go and become a champion inside government and to be an external face for the sector? Witnesses have told us the statistics about declining numbers of donors. Do we need that kind of heft behind getting these issues resolved by the federal government?
Ms. Nyman: My opinion is — and I think it was my colleague Tonya Surman from the Centre for Social Innovation who recently said, “We are not criminals.” It’s interesting because our reporting structure is to CRA, which is a function of whether we are in compliance as opposed to the assets that we build as 8 per cent of Canadian GDP. So I would very much welcome that, and I know Imagine Canada, also, has been extraordinary in advocating for that for some time. It provides the sector with the kind of legitimacy that it is due for such a significant factor in our Canadian culture. This is who we are: We give, we share and we shouldn’t be reporting to CRA for compliance alone.
Senator Seidman: Thank you very much for your really informative presentations. I’m going to go back to the question I asked the earlier witnesses. Your presentations are very clear that funding issues and lack of permanent core funding have a direct impact on recruitment and staffing, and as a result, the kind of quality that an organization can offer. Everybody here probably knows these numbers well, but I’m new to this committee, so I don’t know the numbers, but I believe you said, Ms. Taylor, that 11 per cent of active workers are in the non-profit and charitable sector. Of those, 80 per cent are women.
Ms. Taylor: In Ontario, 80 per cent are women. We don’t know the numbers nationally, but we suspect it’s the same.
Senator Seidman: But the women are not in the upper-level positions, so they would not have stable work hours, very good wages or likely any retirement plans. The question I’m leading to is this: What would you see as a better plan to retain and recruit talent? We have had people around this table talk about professional development, but it seems to me that we can’t talk about professional development if we are not offering the kind of employment that provides a person with the security and stability so that they are interested in professional development.
Help me with this one. I think it was you, Ms. Taylor, who talked about a non-profit workforce strategy. I’m struggling a bit here a bit, but help me with the concepts.
Ms. Taylor: Young people definitely want to work in the non-profit sector. This next generation of workers wants to do things they are passionate about. They want to contribute to their community, more than any other generation. This is a really engaged generation coming up. So the sector is the perfect place for these young people to work.
There are a number of things we can do to recruit and retain them. I would argue that fair wages, benefits and pension are one. That’s the one that costs money, and that will take some resources and some structural changes to the way the sector is funded and resourced.
But there are many other things the sector can do to attract and engage. For instance, we can invest in professional development, we can make sure there are opportunities for learning and mentorship, and we can create cultures in our work environments that are conducive to the next generation.
Already we hear from young people that working in the non-profit sector provides more flexibility, more time to work at home, more creativity and more innovation. We have the work they want to do, but giving them six-month or one-year contracts is not the solution. Not paying them even remotely appropriate wages and benefits that they might get in an entry-level position in the private or government sectors is also problematic. We need to even that playing field a little bit.
Part of it is challenging the myth with non-profits and charities that you should take a discount — a passion discount, if you will — if you work in the sector. That’s not relevant. We need talented, experienced people. The work the people do in our sector is incredibly important to our communities. We need people who have the skill sets, whether technology skills, human resource skills or counselling skills. It’s not a second career; it is a career of choice.
Looking at it, we would love to see a workforce strategy. Many other sectors and industries have workforce strategies that really look at it from a holistic picture. As a whole bunch of leaders and senior people are going to retire in the next few years, how are we building the pipeline for leadership in the non-profit sector? We haven’t figured that out on our own. Most of the sector are micro-employers. There are a lot of employers out there that have fewer than 10 or 15 staff. They don’t have a talent officer or a vice-president of human resources, so they are not able to create these strategies on their own.
I see a strong role for government in helping us create that workforce development strategy. The decent work framework and indicators are a perfect layover that the government is already committed to with which we can work together to create that strategy.
Ms. Nyman: You mentioned women in particular. Based on a tremendous study done with the United Way of Greater Toronto and McMaster University, our vulnerable populations, such as women, do experience greater precarious employment than men. There is a gender piece of that precarious employment lens.
When I think of our charitable sector, and I mentioned it earlier, serving vulnerable populations and yet to have the representation of diversity reflected in our own employment, that we are incapable of offering the same means that we are also contributing to the very problem we are trying to serve. So I think that is something we could also do because the instability of employment within our sector necessarily will lead to that kind of precarity as well. I think there are many strategies, as you have mentioned, that can be used to try to lower that precarity. But the bottom line will always be that this funding that is unstable and short-term will mean that we cannot provide the recurrent employment, which is really the biggest thing that individuals are looking for in time: Some stability at least for a given period of time, and not a multiple contract situation.
Senator Seidman: So besides the core funding — and we did discuss now the non-profit workforce strategy — what do you say is the role of the federal government in this area?
Ms. Nyman: The federal government has a work-study program, and funding can be accessed. Making a special tranche of funding available to the non-profit and charitable sector would be tremendous, with much advance notice and year-over-year commitment. It’s being able to build that.
I remember when I was in my very late teens and early twenties, the McConnell Foundation created a program called the McConnell fellows, and they permitted universities to hire young graduates to develop them into career fundraisers. I now look at where those McConnell fellows are, and they are leaders in charities all across this country. That started from that program, so let us not underestimate really great, old tools such as paid internships and work-study programs where the government provides that kind of seed funding to take the pressure off, and we can provide the experience to bring people into the sector.
There are a lot of lower-paying jobs and very few who receive compensation in a leadership level. If we don’t have that succession planning strategy, we will lose our experienced workers; they will opt into other sectors before we are able to develop them into the leaders where, perhaps, the compensation is more comparable.
Ms. Taylor: I very much agree. I think the federal government has a role to play in terms of leveraging its relationships with the provinces. There are a lot of matching dollar programs and grant partnerships between the federal and provincial governments. Things like reforming how the federal government does grants and contributions will also impact how the individual provinces do transfer payment agreements or their own grants and contributions.
For example, if we are looking at administration with a different lens, then that is something that can be leveraged with the federal government. Only about 40 per cent of the sector gets government money, so let’s not forget that 60 per cent of the sector invests in their staff with the resources they earn, whether they are a soccer club and have fees that they collect, or whatever that might be. A lot of the time they are not investing in their staff not because their funder doesn’t let them, because they make those decisions, but because of the issue of administration and saying, “If we invest in our staff, we’ll look like we are spending more on overhead.” It’s not either-or, it’s and-both.
Senator R. Black: I want to go back to this recent announcement. What has been the initial response, Cathy, to the announcement about the retirement plan? Is it a done deal? Is it all systems go and drive on?
Ms. Taylor: Thank you. It’s a done deal, all systems go. It was launched on Monday. This is a defined benefit pension plan for non-profit sector workers in Ontario that is portable from organization to organization, so if you work at a small one and move to another, you can take it with you. It’s a matching program, so it’s 3 per cent of the employer and 3 per cent of the employee, matching 6 per cent.
Compared to other public sector pension plans, it’s not as high of a percentage, but it’s a start. In Ontario and Canada, less than 10 per cent of our sector has any kind of pension savings. We have created a wonderful partnership with OPTrust, who is the non-profit trust company that manages the Ontario government and OPSEU pension plan. They have been able to leverage all of their assets and create this plan just for our sector with a three-page application form and really easy administration. And as I mentioned, it is portable.
The feedback has been outstanding. We have had over 100 organizations in the first week want to sign up, and we have lots in the queue. We really think it’s going be a game changer. That’s one of those tools that we didn’t have in our tool box, and so what are some of those other tools?
It was a lot of work. It took us over four years to get to this point. Again, it’s something that requires the employer and employee to contribute to, and now part of our work will be to advocate to funders, governments, non-governmental funders, and corporate funders to say pension contributions are a real cost of doing business, so you may see that in your application forms going forward. That’s important because almost all of you get pensions and contributions. That advocacy will continue now that we have that plan in place but from a different angle, so we are thrilled.
Senator R. Black: Is there a need for funders to demand that organizations start to work better together or more closely together so that there are not two board rooms and two photocopiers and two executive directors if one funder is funding both of them? I go to that back-end operation, as well. But is there that need?
Ms. Nyman: There has been a huge rationalization in the sector already where we are doing a lot of that of our own volition. I don’t think it’s compliance measures. The missions are often so divergent that if you ask one executive director to take on the mission of another enterprise, it wouldn’t be possible to deliver. With a lot of the SMEs in our sector, it would be impossible for them to also then deliver on the mission itself. There is also highly specialized knowledge in the delivery of that particular mission.
I don’t think it is something that requires a compliance measure. What I know with the United Way, for example, over the last few years some issue-based funding has been available. If we are trying to drive forward with, let’s say, the opioid crisis in Canada, there may be group funding available for those enterprises that get together to deliver on the solution toward that particular issue. And I think that kind of incentive is far more progressive than a compliance measure on the back end.
Ms. Taylor: I agree very much with Jacline. I get asked all the time whether there are too many non-profits and charities in Canada. The answer is always yes and no. There is a plethora of them. Do some of them have similar mandates and are they competing? Probably. But in a democracy, any group of citizens can start a non-profit organization to meet a community need that they define and identify. We want that to be a strong part of our democracy. So I think that funders can play a role in encouraging and supporting collaborative activities. They can have grants that contribute to that.
As an organization, I don’t necessarily think that all the funders out there would actually know the details and have enough information to be able to say which organizations should merge and which organizations should work together. That really should be something that the community identifies.
Senator R. Black: Thank you.
Senator Martin: This is a little bit off topic about something Ms. Nyman said. I had some questions about it. I am curious about your comments regarding the for-profits that are competing in the non-profit sector. Is that a growing concern? Is it because of a lack of what I would call regulations, or are they encroaching on what should be more protected for non-profits? I was curious about that specific comment you made in your statement.
Ms. Nyman: I’m happy to unpack that. As you can imagine, we’re a large non-profit organization, and our donors do not want us to spend on anything but the intended benefit for the individual. So I am extremely compromised on what I can invest in technology. But we all shop on Amazon; we want the Amazon experience, and we want line of sight. I want to see, as I can with other charities, the water that a child is drinking in the well that I have provided money for. But for me to be able to provide that, I’m going to have to take money out of that charitable donation to build that infrastructure.
Cue the non-profit that comes in with lots of bells and whistles, technology and private investors returning and ROI, and they are going to compete in the same space but with the bells and whistles and the line of sight on the donation and the digital dashboard and the Amazon experience.
But I can’t compete with that because when I am in the charitable sector I have to return as much money as humanly possible to that intended beneficiary, not only because of the CRA rules but because that’s also the expectation of the donor.
So it’s fascinating to me, if we have for-profits able to invest extraordinary sums of money in the most innovative ways to reach individuals, yet we are to compete on that level. So that’s where that comment came from. I just find the irony extremely rich that there are for-profits in the non-profit sector making money off that same charitable dollar and it’s acceptable. When it’s about the experience and that it is so enhanced and it’s shiny and it’s exciting, that’s okay, but it’s not okay when it’s a charitable organization where we want every last dollar to go to the intended recipient.
So I’m not sure how easily reconciled it is, although we have made suggestions on whether that concept of overhead can be debunked and be covered in innovative ways. I think there is no shortage of recommendations that have been made.
I heard an expression this week, and pardon me if it is old and tired, but it was the first time I had heard it: Let’s roll out the red carpet and not the red tape.
I love that saying, and it worked for half a dozen universities where we have scholarship money that is not given out because the student has to apply for it and they don’t know it’s available. I think it’s the same with charities. Do I have to hire a grant writer to write grant after grant, or should I hire that person to be doing the charitable work? It is that same push and pull all the time. If we can get to a place where governments are rolling out the red carpet and seeking charitable organizations who are known and legitimate in the space to find their own associative networks to be able to deliver on that promise, now we are rolling out the red carpet to be able to deliver on the mission, and we are removing that red tape and that barrier that we often face.
Senator Martin: That’s a very good sound bite for the night. Thank you for unpacking that because that was very helpful.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Omidvar: Ms. Nyman, you have talked a great deal about comparing and contrasting the for-profit world with the not-for-profit world. Here is something I picked up in my 30-plus years in the sector, and it’s hard to unpack, so perhaps you can help us unpack it. It is this: Who is the customer of not-for-profits and charities? Is it the donor? Is it the government? Is it the client? If we got that straight, would we get the respect that we deserve as opposed to just getting the trust that we normally have?
Ms. Nyman: It’s a big values-based question, so I’m going to put my hat on as a donor right now. I’m going to take myself out of being a worker, a lifelong worker in the sector. I’m going to be a donor right now, and I think I’m the customer. I have a right to know where my money goes. Now I’m going to be a beneficiary and someone whose child needs day care, and I’m going to think I’m the customer because I’m the one in need. So I don’t think that we as the charitable sector leaders are ever the customer, and I don’t think governments are the customer. I think that we have a really great tie of lenses between the donor who is offering the funding and the individual who desperately needs the kind of supports we are offering. That’s a healthy tension that is only reconciled by personal values, but I think it’s a good tension for our Canadian culture to wrestle with.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you. That was very helpful.
Cathy, you talked in your presentation about the lack of labour force data in the sector. We heard earlier about the lack of any evidence around diversity measures in the sector in terms of both the workforce and the governance structure. Where do you think we are best positioned to get this information, from the T3010s, the T1044s, the legislation governing the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, or going back to the mother lode of StatsCanada?
Ms. Taylor: That’s a great question. I think it’s a combination. I think StatsCanada already does some great data collection about workforce issues and labour market trends and issues, so it’s helping figure out what the non-profit sector lens is. For right now, they don’t ask when they are looking at compensation rates or different kinds of labour force data: Do you work in the public sector? Do you work in the for-profit sector? Do you work in the non-profit sector? The non-profit sector is not seen as an industry. There is no industry classification. So we can figure out exactly how many people work in the automotive sector, but we don’t have a classification for the non-profit sector.
That actually is an easy fix. Not being a statistician, I think it’s an easy fix. But I do think we can better utilize T3010 data, and I do think non-profits that are not registered charities — there is some annual reporting that non-profits have to do. We can do a better job of what is in that annual reporting and have a bit of labour market and revenue information on there.
It’s not about lack of transparency or accountability. We have been travelling Ontario to talk to non-profit organizations for a number of years, hundreds of organizations, and they are not afraid of accountability and transparency. So that’s not the issue. If we are already reporting the T3010s, if we’re already doing an annual filing for our non-profit status, the issue is what the best mechanisms are to do it. Let’s leverage those tools we already have, use open data and common creative approaches and have that information available to our communities. Because the sector wants it too. They want to know what the compensation levels are in communities. They want to know what some of the trends and issues are. They want to know how we are doing on diversity.
Senator Omidvar: That was very helpful. Thank you.
Senator Duffy: The folks at home are desperate to know: OPTrust is great for Ontario, but what about those who work in the sector in the rest of the country? In the past, the Ontario government has often been a leader and offered other provinces the assistance of their more highly developed bureaucracies and expertise and so on. How do we get the rest of the country in on this defined benefit, which is rare and a very good thing, plan offered to those in the not-for-profit sector in Ontario by OPTrust? Look them up. How do we do that?
Ms. Taylor: That is a great question, and I have a number of calls scheduled this week and next week from people across the country who want to learn more. Pension plans are regulated provincially, so there is some economy of scale doing it at a provincial level. We have documented everything we have done and how we have done it, and we certainly hope it can be replicated in other provinces, and we are willing to support that transition in other provinces.
Senator Duffy: Does the law prevent OPTrust from doing it for the whole country?
Ms. Taylor: They have a mandate only to serve Ontario.
Senator Duffy: What about a union? If your workers were unionized, could the union not run a pension plan?
Ms. Taylor: Of the 10 per cent or so of organizations that already had pension plans before we launched this one, a lot of them were unionized, but the unionization rate in the sector is only about 12 or 13 per cent. It’s a very low unionization rate partially because it’s a sector of a number of micro-employers. So unions have been very effective in achieving pension plans, but unionization across the sector probably isn’t the solution that we need in order to develop pension plans across the sector.
Senator Duffy: So there is no obvious umbrella group to take this on on a national basis?
Ms. Taylor: My understanding is that the way pension plans are governed, there are some provincial regulations. We have noted in one of our recommendations that the federal government may have a role to ensure they are portable across provinces, and some of the rules are different across the country. But we will certainly take that back and take a look at it.
The Chair: Perhaps, Senator Duffy, it could be one of the minister’s mandates to look at that.
Senator Omidvar: Why is there not a Canada not-for-profit network?
Ms. Taylor: That’s a great question. Imagine Canada does play a role in supporting charitable organizations and acting as a voice for Canadian charities and non-profits as well. We work closely with them at the national level.
The Chair: Ms. Taylor and Ms. Nyman, those were fabulous presentations, and we had a great discussion going back and forth. Some very good ideas have come out of this evening. You may recognize a couple of those ideas when we get to writing a report.
Senator Omidvar: A good headline.
The Chair: Yes, indeed.
I would like to thank you for your contributions. If you see something we have missed, please don’t hesitate to contact the clerk and provide it to us. If, when you walk out of here tonight, you say, “I should have told them this,” again via the clerk you can get that to us. He is very good at what he does, and he will get the information to us.
(The committee adjourned.)