Over the past few years, key national organizations supporting the social economy, including the Canadian CED Network, the Chantier de l’économie sociale and the Social Enterprise Council of Canada have come together to build a mutual framework with encourage government support for social innovation. Collectively, these organizations represent thousands of social enterprises, co-operatives and community organizations dedicated to creating and supporting businesses that blend social and economic goals, thereby responding to community needs with innovative solutions.

In anticipation of the federal election expected in 2015, we have updated our policy framework to focus recommendations for action to grow Canada’s social economy in four key areas:

• Support social economy business development
• Stimulate investment in the social economy
• Leverage procurement to expand the market
• Modernize legislation and regulations

The full list of recommendations can be found here (Policy Proposals for Canada’s Social Economy) and were recently sent to:

• Honourable Joe Oliver, Minister of Finance
• Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Employment and Social Development
• Nathan Cullen, Critic for Finance, New Democratic Party
• Jinny Sims, Critic for Employment and Social Development, New Democratic Party,
• Scott Brison, Critic for Finance, Liberal Party
• Rodger Cuzner, Critic for Employment and Social Development, Liberal Party
• Elizabeth May, Green Party of Canada

Groups consulted for the development of these policies include Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, MaRS Centre for Impact Investing, the Ontario Nonprofit Network, Trico Charitable Foundation, and the Women’s Economic Council.

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It’s true! Since its inception as CEDTAS (Community Economic Development Technical Assistance Service) almost 10 years ago, Spark has leveraged over $1 million dollars in pro bono assistance for Winnipeg’s community organizations. What started as a small pilot project at SEED Winnipeg has grown to a fully fledged service of the Canadian CED Network, helping up to 150 organizations annually.

While there have been a few bumps along the way, we’ve learned and grown, and are confident that we’ve got the experience and skill to help match community development/community economic development organizations with the professional help they need. For a reflection on the early years of CEDTAS, read more here; and you can find a more recent reflection here.

A celebration like this wouldn’t be complete without giving thanks where thanks is due. Many thanks to our amazing pro bono consultants who give of their time and expertise, to the many community groups that have used our services over the years, to past and present Spark/CEDTAS employees, and to SEED Winnipeg for helping get this project off the ground. A huge thanks also goes out to our funders: United Way of Winnipeg, The Winnipeg Foundation, the Province of Manitoba, and Thomas Sill Foundation. We’re also excited to be part of a growing Global Pro Bono Network.

Katie Schewe is a Recruitment Co-ordinator for Spark, where she works to connect Winnipeg’s vast and varied talents to support nonprofits in their work. Through her experience working in the financial service industry and communications, Katie brings a unique perspective to community collaboration and motivating volunteer engagement to support the work of local organizations. Katie is a graduate of Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the University of Winnipeg. She enjoys networking to inspire new connections, matches, and partnerships.

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Fall is traditionally a time to take stock, set new goals, and get back to work and study with renewed energy. In the spirit of furthering our own pro bono education, Spark has been hard at work this fall, studying some of our past matches and building theory. Those of us who have ever orchestrated a match between non-profit organizations and pro bono consultants know that from time to time, things go sideways. The best and most productive-looking match can limp along, break down, or even die if not helped out with preventative and corrective measures.

We looked back over our past three years of matchmaking, and did a careful review of feedback and evaluations from both organizations and volunteers, as well as our own case notes. The first discovery we made when sorting through the piles of data was good news: only 25% of the matches we made had some sort of difficulty or negative feedback attached to them, and a number of these more complicated matches completed the project regardless. This means three quarters of the time, things go well. Not too shabby!

With that in mind, we set out to determine what the most likely points of failure are, and how we can do our part to help steer matches clear of them.

1. Prioritize the match

We discovered that the most common reason for match difficulties is related to organizations not prioritizing the match by dedicating the necessary staff time – and effort – to work with the pro bono consultant.

The fact that this is the most common reason matches hit roadblocks isn’t surprising. Non-profits are busy doing important, complex, and often difficult work in their communities, and almost always getting it done with limited resources. However, the fact that they’ve approached us to find them pro bono help means that they know something could be done better. It’s our hope and expectation that they’ll find the time to work with the pro bono consultant as needed, whether that’s making time to meet, respond to emails, or do their portion of the work to make the project succeed.

When working to get an organization ready for a match, Spark stresses the amount of time and energy required throughout the match, as organizations orient, get information to, and collaborate with pro bono volunteers. In fact, it’s helpful to think of pro bono work as paid work, with the same dedication to timeliness, participation, as well as high quality work and results, on both sides. During an assessment meeting, we discuss this with the organization, and check to make sure they are able to commit the time to take it on. Then once a match is made we keep in touch to make sure that things are progressing well, and everyone is getting what they need, when they need it.

2. Make sure everyone’s on the same page

The second area of potential match difficulty is related to differing expectations of the match. This could come from different visions of what the end goal is, what will be produced along the way, by when, and the role each person plays within the project.

One of the ways Spark helps combat this is to draw up a solid match agreement with all parties present, before the work starts. We begin the process of developing the agreement with a facilitated discussion about the expected outcome of the match and the ways that will be reached, then together we outline all the relevant details. If there are divergent ideas and proposed solutions, these need to be clarified and negotiated until everyone agrees, and both sides want to proceed in working towards that common end result.

Once a common solution has been agreed upon, we facilitate the creation of a robust work plan which includes: the planned outcome; individual tasks and related timelines; an estimate of how many volunteer hours are involved; and the roles and additional responsibilities of each party involved in the match. Working out all of these details together and completing a thorough match agreement (which all parties literally sign) is a strong preventative measure to ensure the enduring health and results of the match.

3. Beware of overcommitment

The third most common area of difficulty is related to volunteers overcommitting themselves. This can take the form of overcommitting on time, skill, or experience.

Many people want to help out, and the organizations that Spark works with are doing important work to help make Winnipeg stronger. However, when volunteers are a bit too optimistic about their abilities, it can add extra challenges to their volunteer experience, and possibly add those challenges to the already-full plate of the person working for the non-profit getting the assistance. We understand that our volunteers are busy people, and that sometimes life and work can get in the way of good intentions. That’s why it’s important that volunteers think critically about their expertise, skills, and time, helping to create healthy matches that produce what the organization needs, on a timeline that works for everyone.

Spark works to prevent volunteer overcommitments through a thorough assessment of a prospective volunteer’s skill sets, level of expertise, and prior experience related to similar projects or processes. We make sure to ask the volunteer which type of project they feel most confident offering their pro bono assistance on, and then match the volunteer with a project that is a good fit for them. Part of the facilitated conversation mentioned above includes a discussion of how many hours of the volunteer’s time will be necessary to complete each of the various stages of the project, and checking with the volunteer to make sure that the total commitment is realistic. We also try to be honest about the fact that sometimes timelines slip – if that happens, will both the volunteer and organization have time to keep working together? After the work begins, Spark checks in frequently: if things are dragging or unexpected difficulties arise, the work plan can be reevaluated and adjusted if necessary.

4. Stay in touch!

The fourth most common reason for match difficulty or breakdown is related to inadequate communication, from either the volunteer or the organization (or both). It’s a bit obvious, but for a project to be successful, the lines of communication must stay open.

In our experience, if there’s an extended period of silence from either side, even if work is happening behind the scenes, things can get complicated. A lack of communication can be interpreted (sometimes correctly) as a lack of commitment to the project, dissatisfaction with the work, or as a change in priorities. Again, the best way to prevent this is to lay the proper groundwork for the match: a good work plan with specific timelines, and encouragement to both sides to treat the pro bono assistance as they would paid work. A discussion of expectations around communication can be useful – how does each side prefer to be contacted (phone calls? email? text?)?

Overtly stating and getting agreement on the first steps of the work (who is responsible for contacting whom, or getting which information to who by when) gets things off to a good start, and sets the stage for successful match completion. Spark also does frequent check ins with both sides to see how things are going, and takes corrective steps when necessary to keep things moving forward.

Conclusion

While making matches includes tangibles such as a defined need and a willing volunteer, through this review we’ve discovered some great tips to help make sure that some of the more intangible things don’t drag down the success of a project. We know that it’s important that all sides:

• are able to dedicate the necessary time to the match.
• know what the goal is, and agree how to get there.
• have the skill and experience to complete the match.
• stay in touch with each other, including us.

With these points in mind, we look forward to creating new, interesting matches for Winnipeg’s community development sector.

Katie Schewe is a Recruitment Co-ordinator for Spark, where she works to connect Winnipeg’s vast and varied talents to support nonprofits in their work. Through her experience working in the financial service industry and communications, Katie brings a unique perspective to community collaboration and motivating volunteer engagement to support the work of local organizations. Katie is a graduate of Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the University of Winnipeg. She enjoys networking to inspire new connections, matches, and partnerships.

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This blog is part of the ‘Voices of New Economies’ series within Cities for People – an experiment in advancing the movement toward urban resilience and livability through connecting innovation networks. This Voices series is collectively curated by One Earth and The Canadian CED Network. We are launching Voices of New Economies as part of New Economy Week 2014, hosted by the New Economy Coalition. Throughout this week, a series of 5 questions guide our exploration of what it would take to build the economy we need – one that works for people, place, and planet.

Today’s Voices story responds to the fifth and final question in the New Economy Week series: How can we support neighborhoods, cities, towns, and regions as the fertile ground for the kind of economy we need?

By Nabeel Ahmed

When Sean Geobey was in university, he helped start up a community capacity building nonprofit. It introduced him to the challenges of how social service organizations financed their work, a question he has grappled with in his doctoral research at the University of Waterloo and the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience. His work on social finance looks at alternative funding models and how they can transform the social sector, private markets, and governments that encourage more inclusive, democratic, and real-wealth creating activities.

For Sean, real wealth comes from the things that allow us to better express ourselves; things that allow for individual talents and interests to flourish in a way that doesn’t harm other people’s capacity to do the same. That wealth comes from our capacity to invest materially, socially, and intellectually in the creation of institutions and infrastructure that support collective efforts to try and make the world a better place

What are some key elements of new economies?

It’s important, here, to take stock of the new economies we are drifting into and guide them towards the new economies we desire (which may have elements of the ‘old’ economies as well).

Increasingly, real wealth is being diminished by the commodification of human inputs and creativity. This is a world of increased automation, designed more by bits and data rather than the creation of actual goods and services. It is a globalized world, not just economically but also socially and culturally. There has been a troubling shift towards institutions that are fundamentally unaccountable to the general public and community; corporate actors that act with impunity across borders present a real challenge for the remaining democratic institutions to channel productive capacity towards broader positive impacts rather than just shareholders.

Despite the discontents, more flexibility does hold an incredible amount of promise, and technological advances can increase material well-being and creative potential.

Ultimately, new, resilient economies that better serve people will require a revitalization of democratic people-controlled institutions, from governments, to finance, to worker organizations, to company ownership and control. It means a better understanding of local environments and the increasing variety of people in them, learning from past institutions while creating new ones, in ways that can leverage advances in technology.

How can we support neighborhoods, cities, towns, and regions as the fertile ground for the kind of economy we need?

At the local level, we have a real opportunity to revive and modernize this idea of a mutual aid driven society that was prevalent in the late 19th century. This includes the credit union sector, cooperatives, and craft unions, creating opportunities for people to support each other’s work around the world. Such organizations can maintain autonomy while working together at a global scale, which large multinational corporations and the financial sector do quite well, but older models of mutual aid have historically struggled with.

This is where social finance comes in. Just as the prevalence of sophisticated, globalized financial tools has helped the modern economy develop, a more human-oriented way of social, economic, and ecological prosperity can come from getting regular people engaged with finance to help develop their own communities and support the work of like-minded people wherever they may be.

The credit union sector, for example, has been pushing for innovation in local economic development through various means, including the creation of community bonds. These are small investments created by nonprofits and social sector organizations, mostly administered by credit unions, that allow organizations without traditional access to debt financing to convert erstwhile donors into more substantial supporters in the form of a loan. This allows social sector organizations with real capital and assets to leverage value in a way they have not been able to do so previously.

Crowdfunding is the most obvious technology-driven social finance innovation, emerging in the last decade to allow an unprecedented global flow of capital from ordinary people. It has been particularly transformative in turning retail consumers into financiers; in the entertainment, music, film and video game industries, the pre-purchase model has allowed new people to produce interesting ideas and tell new stories that were impossible a few decades ago. As a pre-purchaser, you effectively give a loan to a producer, which completely changes the relationship between consumers and producers.

Through tapping into both local and global social finance tools, individuals can transform institutions to be more inclusive of people’s creativity and fundamental dignity.

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Sean Geobey is currently a McConnell Fellow with SiG@Waterloo and pursuing a PhD in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. Sean Geobey has worked in policy, program development and research positions in a variety of organizations including the BC Ministry of Health Services, Sustainable Waterloo, and the Laurier Students’ Public Interest Research Group. He continues to provide strategic planning and facilitation workshops, serves on the National Council of Fair Vote Canada, and is developing participatory and experience-based adult education models. Currently his research focuses on how to integrate different perspectives in group decision-making, an approach which has concrete applications in social finance, policy development and resource-allocation within coalitions.

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