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By Katie McCallum & Kat Cureton, UBC Community Engagement

Universities can be valuable collaborators for the not-for-profit sector. From funding and research to hiring students and event space, there are many opportunities for not-for-profits (NFPs) to partner with universities around shared causes.  

Katie McCallum and Kat Cureton work for the Community Engagement office at the University of British Columbia. Since 2016, they’ve been working together to connect BC’s NFP sector to resources and people at the university. The way they work is founded on the belief that reciprocity and respect is at the core of successful collaboration.  

For our podcast, we spoke with Katie and Kat to learn how universities can be valuable partners in our sector and ask for specific opportunities and resources for NFPs at UBC. Listen to our conversation where we go in more depth, or keep reading for a brief overview of the discussion. 

Kat Cureton (left) and Katie McCallum (right) at UBC’s Vancouver campus.

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Q: How are universities supporting the not-for-profit sector?  

UBC students, faculty, and staff are partnering with local and regional communities on projects every day. There are many kinds of mutually supportive collaborations between universities and NFPs:  

• NFPs often collaborate with students and faculty members on research projects that help answer community questions.  
• UBC offers funding for community-university partnerships, collaborations, and relationship-building activities. Additionally, partnering with a university can open up new granting opportunities. 
• Faculty members can be strong allies in advocating for policy change. They may be involved in government advisories, or publish recommendations that get media attention.   
• Students can offer talent, time, energy, and new perspectives. They are eager to learn and the NFP sector can be a great opportunity for them to gain professional experience. 

• Universities can serve as natural conveners on issues that bridge sectors. UBC has many collaborators who love to partner on dialogues and public events that shine a light on issues that matter in our community. 

Q: How can not-for-profit leaders start building relationships at UBC?  

UBC is a huge organization and can be daunting to navigate. Through our Community Partner Help Desk, we can help you connect with UBC programs and resources that could support your work. Some of the most common requests we get from NFPs are to:  

• Access research and connect to UBC librarians 
• Find experts to participate in your events or join advisory boards 

• Share job and volunteer postings with UBC students 
• Hire students through our co-op and internship programs 
• Collaborate on events or projects 
• Communicate to UBC audiences about your opportunities and events 

We connect the work of the NFP sector with work happening at UBC but it can take time to find and make those connections. Reach out to our Community Partner Help Desk to learn more. We are always happy to start a conversation. 

Q: How can UBC help with funding?  

We offer funding to NFPs and other community organizations specifically to support partnerships between community partners and the university.  

Our flagship program is the Community-University Engagement Support Fund (CUES). To date, the fund has awarded over $1.7 million to 81 different community groups — including 32 Indigenous communities and organizations — and it was just approved for another 5 years!  

Paid directly to community partners, our funding reduces financial barriers and prioritizes reciprocal, inclusive engagement so more communities can benefit, especially those who are historically, persistently, or systemically marginalized. CUES funding can be used to support community-university collaboration on engaged research and scholarship, engaged learning, knowledge exchange, or civic engagement activities. 

Alternatively, our Partnership Recognition Fund is designed to help fill small resource gaps (up to $1,500) and acknowledge the work of community groups that partner with UBC. Funding is offered several times throughout the year. We especially welcome applications for projects that advance equity and justice through reciprocal community engagement. 

Beyond our own funds, partnering with faculty, staff, and even students on projects can open new doors to funding opportunities like the federal SSHRC Partnership Grants.  

Q: How can NFPs hire UBC students? 

There are many exciting new initiatives at UBC that have been designed to connect students with the NFP sector.  

If you are looking to hire a graduate student for a short-term project, the Arts Amplifier hosts info sessions for graduate students to learn about community partner organizations and jobs. They can also help you find funding to hire graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. 

UBC is currently piloting a community based Work-Learn program. In the new program, UBC gives funding to organizations to hire equity-deserving undergraduate students. This year, five to ten NFPs are taking part in the pilot.    

UBC’s Centre for Community Engaged Learning incorporates student learning into community projects. They will work with you to develop a pertinent program or initiative, and then find a way to integrate it into course-work. 

Finally, UBC CareersOnline is a free job and volunteer board that thousands of students and alumni have access to. Hot tip: Late spring is a great time to post a job or volunteer opportunity as students have just started their summer breaks.   

Q: What other resources are available to NFPs at UBC?  

So much we could go on forever. The Community Scholars Program (CSP) provides BC non-profits and charitable organizations with free access to academic journals and research. If you’re looking for research to cite in your grant applications, there are dedicated CSP librarians that can help you. 

The Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal, developed by the UBC Learning Exchange (an amazing community learning hub in Vancouver’s DTES) and UBC Libraries, provides free access to research and research-related materials relevant to the DTES.  

UBC is also home to a vibrant arts and culture district, gardens, and an active farm that are all open to exploring partnerships and collaborations. 

Lastly, it would be remiss of us to not mention opportunities to learn. UBC is a contributing partner to EdX, a huge collection of open, online courses and programs taught by university professors, online, at no or little cost. UBC also offers continuing education courses, aimed at working professionals.  

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Universities work at a different pace and annual cycle than the NFP sector and it can be challenging to perfectly align everyone’s needs and objectives. That said, every day, people on and off-campus work together on joint initiatives that benefit both communities and universities. The first steps are to connect, listen, and get to know one another — just as you would with any new relationship. 

Whether it is engaged research, experiential learning, planning and policy development, educational programming, dialogue projects, or workshops — our impact grows when we work together. 

Connect with the UBC Community Partner Help Desk to start exploring opportunities to collaborate on your initiatives.  

By Gordon Holley, President and CEO of Humanity Financial Management

Consider these questions for a moment:  How is your organization’s financial well-being? Is your organization financially healthy? Is your organization financially sustainable? What about your annual financial performance compared to your peers? 

Many organizations would struggle to answer these questions. If their budgeted revenue for the current year is enough to cover expenses and they’re getting timely and accurate financial reporting, all is good from a financial perspective.

Right? 

We think organizations who view finances solely from this point of view may be missing out on a huge opportunity to use finances strategically to improve annual financial performance and increase the financial health and sustainability of their organizations.  It’s all about setting and achieving financial goals in addition to the programmatic and organizational goals we might have in our strategic plan. 

Organizational financial planning has much in common with strategic planning and strategic frameworks.   We start by identifying where we are today and agreeing on where we want to be in three, five, or twenty-five years.  We then implement strategies and a plan to make this happen. 

To understand “Financial Well-being,” it can be useful to start with some basic financial questions: 

• • For our organization, what does good annual financial performance look like (aside from meeting our budget)?  
  •  What does it mean to be financially healthy?  
  • Or financially sustainable? 

Through our work with many social purpose organizations, we’ve come to classify organizations in one of five stages of financial well-being, divided into two overall sections (Financial Compliance and Financial Liberation).  The five stages are as follows: 

Financial Compliance 

1. Financial Crisis 

• • Running out of money  
  • Not getting timely, accurate financial reports 
  • Behind in regulatory or funder reporting

2. Financial Fragility 

• • Minimally meeting financial budget, cash flow, and reporting needs 
  • May not have robust, efficient, and effective financial systems 

3. Financial Stability 

• • Robust, timely, and accurate financial compliance reporting 
  • Documented, efficient, effective financial systems, policies, and procedures 

Strategic Finances 

4. Financial Strength 

• • Setting and achieving strategic goals for financial health, financial sustainability, and financial performance 

5. Financial Liberation 

• • Abundant and unrestricted funds 
  • Own-source revenue 
  • Financial health and sustainability 
  • Financial growth, independence, and control 
  • Actively working on mission achievement instead of symptoms of broken systems 

Many organizations can get stuck at Stage three, Financial Stability, and may not move on to treat finances strategically.  As a result, they don’t spend time planning their finances or setting and achieving specific goals for financial health, financial performance, and financial sustainability.  That’s fine if you are content with the status quo, but if you aspire to financial abundance and financial liberation, it takes an investment of time and resources to undertake financial planning and then to monitor and evaluate progress toward your goals. 

Organizational financial health and performance can be measured in many ways: 

• • How many months of expenses does the organization have in cash and liquid unrestricted net assets? 
  • How dependent is the organization on short-term, restricted donor funding? 
  • What percentage of the organization’s funding is long-term, own-source, or unrestricted funding? 
  • Is most funding received in advance of spending, or following spending? 
  • Is the organization able to pay market rate compensation, benefits, and pensions comparable to for-profit organizations? 
  • Does the organization expect significant overtime from its employees, or has it adopted a reasonable work week? 
  • What percentage of revenue is spent on salaries compared to the organization’s peers? 
  • What percentage of revenue is from government or foundation sources? 

When we start thinking about financial sustainability, we start asking more complex questions: 

• • Given the impact that we want to have, do we have the right business model and funding model? 
  • What core fundraising capacities should we develop? 
  • Have we considered our return on investment?  How much effort is needed to attract each source of funding? 
  • Do we have the best funding mix for our organization with respect to short-term vs long-term funding and with respect to restricted and unrestricted funds? 
  • Do we have an appropriate level of diversity within our funding streams? 
  • Are we attracting funding from the best sources, given our cause?   
  • Are there other sources of funding that we should be considering?  
  • Are we using the right strategies to attract those funding sources? 
  • Have we considered how we might develop plans to generate our own sources of revenue and reduce our reliance on external funding sources? 
  • Do we have an effective case for support that makes our case compelling to our potential funders? 

Every social purpose organization is unique and needs to answer these questions for their organization.  The right answers at any given time will depend on the nature of the organization’s work, which stage of financial well-being they are currently in and what stage they are at in their non-profit Lifecycle*. 

Benchmarking is another useful process that can be used to compare our organizations and our financial performance with those of similar organizations.  The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) makes all the financial information that is filed on the annual T3010 Registered Charity Information Return available publicly, so benchmarking against peers and similar organizations can be done. You can also request the financial statements for any registered charity from the CRA and they will mail these to you.  

If this topic is of interest and you want to learn more about strategic financial planning and the Five Stages of Financial Well-being for social purpose organizations, listen to our recent Vantage Point podcast: The Five Stages of Financial Well-being. 

*The Non-Profit Lifecycles model assesses what stage of development your organization is currently at and how to expand your organizational capacity to reach the most relevant goals for growth. A Lifecycles self-assessment can be completed in our workshop Understanding Capacity. 

by Cherie Payne, Director of Government Relations and Sector Development at Vantage Point

April is here and we can start to look forward to spring. It’s the season when all the seeds we planted earlier in the year start to sprout. At Vantage Point, we’ve had a busy month of new beginnings.

Collective Action: Lobbyist Transparency Act

Vantage Point has been collaborating with Board Voice, the United Way, and the Vancouver Foundation to call on the BC Government to improve the Lobbyist Transparency Act (LTA).

In February 2022, we submitted this brief to the Attorney General and the Registrar of Lobbyists. The brief outlines some of the unintended impacts of the Act on not-for-profit organizations. It calls for a review of the legislation and offers some short-term solutions to immediately improve the current approach.

If you have examples of how the LTA has impacted your organization’s decisions on whether to engage with government, please share them with us or with your local MLA. This type of feedback helps decision makers to understand how the sector is affected.

New Funding: Recovery and Resiliency Fund 

Over the last month, we saw how the sector working together can yield concrete results. On March 24^th, the BC Government, together with the Vancouver Foundation, United Way BC, and New Relationship Trust announced the creation of a $34 million Recovery and Resiliency Fund. The money will be distributed over the next three years and is designed to support community organizations who are struggling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Priorities for funding will be organizations identified by research as being most at-risk and those who have historically been most vulnerable, including:

• Those with annual budgets under $1 million
• Indigenous, Black, and/or people of colour-led organizations
• Organizations serving racialized communities
• Organizations with leadership from equity-seeking communities

You can read more about the funding in this Vancouver Foundation blog post. Sign up for updates on the Recovery and Resiliency Fund here.

Town Hall with Parliamentary Secretary Niki Sharma

We were pleased to host a town hall meeting with Parliamentary Secretary Niki Sharma last month. About 40 individuals and groups signed up to attend the event and had an opportunity to ask questions directly regarding the provincial budget, Community Gaming Grant guidelines, COVID-19 response, social assistance supports in BC, and core funding constraints.

Vantage Point was thrilled to host this open dialogue and we’re looking forward to hosting more opportunities for members to connect with decision-makers in the provincial government and in municipal governments around the province.

There is a lot happening around the province. We’re excited to see what initiatives and ideas you will soon be harvesting.

by Geoff Urton

During the Great Recession just over a decade ago, business leaders began emphasizing the new normal of frequent disruption facing nearly every sector. Managers throughout the org chart shared the pressure of needing to do more with less, speaking wistfully of the days of role redundancies. Economists proposed that the historic ebb and flow of disruption and stability had been irrevocably altered, leading to a new era of constant disruption. Change management and agility rocketed to the top of core competencies as organizations baked them into their leadership principles and business systems. It was a modern rise of resilience.  

To some, the challenges of the Great Recession may seem somewhat trivial now given the upheaval of our way of life presented by COVID-19 and the measures used to fight its spread over the past two years. The Great Recession may have equipped us for the current crisis, though, creating the necessity to develop new competencies in leading ourselves, our families, and our businesses through unpredictable change. Much like a child learning new developmental abilities in succession, every challenge offers the opportunity to gain new competencies that equip us to handle future circumstances and solve the next problems. This is resilience. 

According to organizational resilience experts, Timothy Vogus and Kathleen Sutcliffe, businesses that have proven resilient over time consistently show three qualities: humility, learning, and attunement¹. These nimble organizations plan for the best and prepare for the worst, not relying too heavily on past success to predict future outcomes. They apply their intellectual, cultural, and financial resources to cope with and learn from unexpected events. Finally, they attune themselves to the environment, relentlessly seeking feedback and applying it in the desire to improve. 

We may also be able to strengthen the ability of dedicated individuals to sustain their efforts by supporting their psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. According to the model of intrinsic motivation described by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan in their self-determination theory, people generally desire a say, “value learning,” and want to connect.^2,3  

When these psychological needs are not met, poor mental health, weak performance and higher turnover have been documented among employees. By contrast, employees who report fulfillment of these intrinsic motivations show stronger performance, greater well-being, higher retention, and better policy compliance, with lower interpersonal conflict and emotional burnout.⁴.  

As leaders, our ability to establish these attributes in our teams relies on our own understanding of resilience. By default, we often think of resilience as toughness. Reflect for a moment on the image that first comes to mind when saying the word resilience. I see a man in a trench coat brandishing a black umbrella like a shield against an onslaught of horizontal rain. This represents a steadfast bracing for impact – a determination not to give in. Determination may well be an essential factor in one’s ability to succeed through adversity, providing the required energy to maintain one’s commitment to one’s work through obstacles and setbacks. However, determination alone can prove brittle in the long run. How long might it take before the umbrella’s material yields to the storm’s assault, or for the hands gripping its handle to fatigue?  

Resilience goes deeper, requiring devotion – a commitment to something bigger than oneself.  Devotion transcends a determined survival instinct, tapping into the greater motivation produced by values or an inspiring vision for the future. A determined mindset and a devoted heart provide the fuel required to see oneself, or one’s community, through a major challenge. And yet, while determination and devotion are both necessary qualities to resile, alone, they are insufficient.  

Despite the role of grit in overcoming challenge, resilience is not synonymous with toughness, determination, or devotion. The term originates from the Latin resilire, meaning ‘to leap back’, much as a flexible metal returns to its original form after compression. For a person or an organization, it is the ability to cope and thrive through adversity. Resilience requires flexibility and the ability to adapt. However, it would also be a mistake to synonymize resilience with softness. An accommodating approach that only makes concessions to one’s environment is wobbly, lacking direction.  

Neither rigid nor lax, resilience requires something different. It takes a devoted commitment to the reason for one’s efforts – a compelling vision or a devoted value – and the adaptability to change one’s methods to thrive in a new environment. This is how both determination and adaptability can co-exist. There is a Zen-like quality to this competency. The game is to at once hold both a mindset of singular determination for your goal and an attitude of adaptability for how best to accomplish it.  

Resilient leadership is the endeavour of a sailboat tacking upwind, its pilot engaged in the seemingly impossible task of moving forward into a wind blowing against them toward an objective beyond. With every switchback, they may lose some ground, from which they must rebound. To accomplish this feat, the sailor is mindfully attuned to the information coming at them – the wind on the sail, the feel of the boat – and adjusts the tiller, the trim of the sails, and their body position based on this feedback. With determination and adaptation, they eventually prevail.  

Leaders devoted to supporting our organizations and our people through adversity succeed through a resilient mindset of determination and adaptability. We create an attuned culture of humility and learning in our organizations, and we tap into the intrinsic motivations of our people by supporting their opportunities for autonomy, learning, and connection. As we each engage in our own upwind tack, we leap back from each necessary change in direction, creating the conditions for our people and our organizations to grow and thrive. This is the endeavour we are called for now as leaders together in our journey onward through the storm. 

¹ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255853978_Organizing_for_Resilience 

² https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/the-theory/ 

³ Meyer, J. P., Stanley, D. J., Herscovitch, L., & Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: A Meta-analysis of Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61(1), 20–52.  

⁴ Meyer, J. P., Stanley, L. J., & Parfyonova, N. M. (2012). Employee commitment in context: The nature and implication of commitment profiles. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2011.07.002 

by Vantage Point

Our current Strategic Plan set a course for Vantage Point (VP) as one of its strategic goals to strive to be a leading contributor to equitable, inclusive, and sustainable practices in the not-for-profit sector, especially in lifting and strengthening Indigenous, underrepresented, and emerging not-for-profit leaders in BC.  

While our internal journey to learn and grow in the areas of equitable, inclusive, and sustainable practices started well before the current strategic plan, naming this aspiration explicitly has given the team clarity and purpose to invest as individuals and as an organization. We participate in a range of internal learning opportunities and initiatives that support our operational objective to build policies, practices, and resources that support and solidify our commitment to inclusion and decolonization within our Vantage Point community. 

Our impacts in this area can be hard to pin down. How do we know we’re making progress? Or that we’re having a positive impact rather than unknowingly reinforcing existing systems, behaviours, and unjust results?  

In pursuit of a practical, immediately applicable solution, the team recently convened to talk about how we can leverage something that we know is making a difference and that we have the power to influence – bursary supports to leaders to access Vantage Point open enrolment workshops and labs.  

For over 10 years now, the City of Vancouver Social Policy and Cultural Services have made VP bursary supports available to their grantees. We have added Vancouver Coastal Health – Population Health Initiatives – and the City of New Westminster as partners in providing further bursaries. We also established a more formal VP bursary fund in 2018 to provide more flexible access to bursaries for those not eligible through current partner bursaries.  

Given how the pandemic continues to impact not-for-profit budgets, and staff and volunteer needs for governance, management, and leadership training supports have increased, our bursary requests are mounting. Yet, we have lots to do to both reach and adequately resource supports to Indigenous, underrepresented, and emerging not-for-profit leaders in BC. 

In light of this gap, we are announcing a call to action to our community: Join us in building a Vantage Point Bursary Fund that enhances accessibility of our programs and supports to the whole of our diverse community of not-for-profit leaders across BC. We are committed to assuring clear eligibility criteria that prioritizes: 

• Indigenous people, Black people, and people of colour 
• Youth building careers in the not-for-profit sector 
• Leaders from equity-seeking organizations  
• Leaders from organizations addressing the climate change crisis 
• Leaders from organizations with operating budgets less than $250k and/or outside the Metro Vancouver area 

We have established the Vantage Point Bursary as a distinct fund, to which you can donate now through Canada Helps. Your contribution will help us reach under-funded and often overlooked groups in the sector. And as always, we are so grateful for your support.