September/October 2009
 
The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle
by Ann Goggins Gregory & Don Howard 
A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs. To break the nonprofit starvation cycle, funders must take the lead. Read more»
This article was written for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Read the rest of this article and then join the conversation in ONN's Sector Forum.
Disbursement Quota: Tell Us What You Think
Does your organization have trouble complying with the CRA's charitable disbursement quota requiring you to spend 80% of revenue on programs and leave 20% for administration and fundraising? The disbursement quota is a problem for organizations that have charitable revenues as their primary or only source of income (particularly smaller ones and ones that use a lot of volunteers).
As an example, if you have $100,000 of charitable income you must spend $80,000 directly on programs and $20,000 or less for administration and fundraising. This can make paying for leadership, accounting, banking and office expenses, as well as fundraising expenses, a real challenge. Compare this to having $100,000 income of which $80,000 is from government and/or fees and $20,000 is from fundraising. In this case an organization only has to disburse $16,000 on programs and they are much better able to cover the agency administration costs that keep their volunteer based programs running.
ONN would like to hear from you if you are having trouble with the disbursement quota. Please drop us an email.
Featured Initiative:
Capacity Waterloo Region
Capacity Waterloo Region (CWR) is a five-year pilot project to deepen that region’s capacity for social innovation by developing resources to support the people and ideas that lead to social change. The region's non-profits and social enterprises will benefit from new cross-sectoral collaborations, enhanced leadership skills and networks, and improved sectoral impact. The project’s three main initiatives are... Read More»
ONN Announcements
- Save the Date: December 9th
ONN is inviting associations, networks and other umbrella groups from across the province to join us for a networking meeting on Dec. 9th. In addition to talking about how we can be better collaborating, we will also have a social media expert share with us the latest socal media tools and strategies. If your group would like to come to this meeting, let us know!
- ONN Goes on the Road To Hear From You!
ONN is travelling throughout the province this fall and winter to talk with nonprofits and to consult on the six cross-sectoral priorities identified by participants at our May 09 Forum.
Immediately following the Forum we were invited by the Social Planning Council of Sudbury to meet with nonprofits there and on October 21st we are very excited to be going to Thunder Bay. We have plans to do regional consultations in London, Windsor, Kingston and Ottawa and if your region would like to have ONN visit, please contact us.
Tonya Surman, ONN's co-chair and ED of the Centre for Social Innovation, recently received news that she was chosen as an Ashoka Fellow! Read more»
The Ontario Nonprofit Network hosts a Social Enterprise Constellation and the Centre for Social Innovation, on behalf of this group, has started a social enterprise wiki to gather input from a range of practitioners and stakeholders towards the development of a public policy framework for social enterprise in Canada. Please visit the site and give your input.
- ONN's New Advisory Council
ONN is delighted to have created a new Advisory Council to assist us in sharing news and issues to and from the field. This group is still growing but we'd like to welcome the first 23 sector leaders to our Council. (See list at right)
ONN has formed a new constellation that is looking into the impact of the tax harmonization on nonprofits. The Harmonization Working group has come together to assess the impact on the sector of the move to HST from PST and GST. The group is working on a brief outlining their analysis and making recommendations to the province for implementation. The brief will be circulated to the field so individual organizations can participate in the discussions around implementation. Please encourage your colleagues to sign up on our website to get our updates and receive this brief.
ONN is creating a new constellation to continue the discussion on social innovation that was started at our May Forum. If this topic excites you too, you are welcome to come to the group's first meeting on September 15th in Toronto - live or by phone. Email us and we'll give you the details.
- ONN thanks Guided Futures and Sun Life Financial
Last week ONN's Steering Committee held an a full day strategic planning session and we were very fortunate to have as our facilitators Morrey Ewing and Zeenat Chohan of Guided Futures. They did an excellent job and we'd like to publicly thank them for all their support and hard work.
A beautiful physical environment makes all the difference to how successful a meeting is and for that we'd also like to thank Sun Life Financial for generously letting us use their wonderful training event for the day.
Sector News & Events
Entrepreneurs pitch their business idea to a panel of investors in hopes of securing funding for their venture.
A free, not-for-credit course that gives an overview on the building blocks of starting a venture for aspiring entrepreneurs who lack a business background.
Resources
Would you like help this fall from the students in the graduate Fundraising and Volunteer Management program at Humber College? Contact Ken Wyman for details.
- Youth Eco Internship Program
The Youth Eco Internship Program places people aged 15 to 30 from diverse backgrounds into paid internship opportunities within the non-profit and community services sector in Canada with a focus on the environment, community and women's services.
A selection of resources to help social-sector leaders quickly and effectively apply networking to their work.
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