Shared Platforms: Important insights for nonprofits from hosts and users

Shared platforms allow committed and passionate individuals and unincorporated groups to focus on their community-driven work, instead of spending time on governance and administration activities. It also ensures capacity support by host organizations, including human resources, funding, and risk management strategies.

Shared platforms are a way to create a more supportive environment for nonprofits and community members to support communities, particularly post-pandemic.

During the webinar we will explore:

• How do we foster healthy relationships between grassroots and charitable organizations? And how grassroots organizations, shared platform organizations and funders can work together to advocate for direct funding access for grassroots organizations.
• What are the practices, principles and processes needed to ensure accountability for all parties?
• Who is responsible for what? How do we establish roles and boundaries?
• Why is transparency and trust-building so important to shared platforms?

The webinar will begin with a presentation from Jillian Witt, Consultant with Openly, who will explain shared platforms and how the sector can leverage this innovation. Then there will be a panel discussion moderated by Jermaine Henry with speakers who will provide insights as users and hosts of shared platforms.

Panel Speakers:

• Krista Bissiallon, Program Manager, at Youth Opportunities Fund
• Myia Davar, Creative Leadership Manager, SKETCH Working Arts

All registered participants will receive a recording, and a curated list of resources within one week of the event. If you have any questions about this webinar, please contact info@theonn.ca.

Speaker Bios:

JermaineHenry.CA (Change Agency) works to offer creative facilitation to cultivate braver spaces for meaningful change in the sector of philanthropy. Jermaine Henry is a published author, inspirational speaker, emcee, master facilitator and social entrepreneur who has worked in the philanthropic, mental health, youth-serving, arts, culture and social innovation sectors for over 10 years. His work has been published in the North American Journal of Psychology and he has been featured in the Toronto Metro Newspaper for his work with Brave Spaces.

Jermaine has worked with various grassroots initiatives that utilize Shared Platforms to leverage the administrative structure of Organizational Partners. This includes Young Leaders Circle, AVNU, Grassroots Youth Collaborative, YSI Collaborative, AGENCY, Children’s Peace Theater, Sketch Working Arts, The HEARD Co. (Formerly, Spoke N’ Heard), School For Social Entrepreneurs and more.

Jillian Witt has worked with a range of organizations and foundations across Canada to build community and shift philanthropy. Rooted in local organizing and neighbour-led change, Jillian’s passion for community-led solutions helped to shape a national shared platform at MakeWay (formerly Tides Canada). Jillian co-wrote the Shared Platform Guidebook for Ontario Nonprofit Network in 2016. In her role as the Strategic Implementation Lead at Openly, Jillian engaged with grassroots groups, shared platforms and funders to write the ONN Shared Platform Toolkit that is launching today.

Jillian has a Masters of Social Work from the University of Toronto. Her volunteer time is spent helping grow La Ruche D’Art de NDG, a community project using the arts to build community in Montreal, Quebec. She is also the Community Engagement Lead for The Philanthropist, a journal dedicated to the nonprofit sector in Canada.

Krista Bissiallon is French/ settler and Anishinaabe kwe from Bawaating (Sault Ste. Marie, ON), with roots in Mississauga First Nation. She is a graduate of the Community Economic and Social Development program out of Algoma University and continues to live in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. She has filled many community development roles, holding positions with Youth Social Infrastructure, Young Leaders Circle, NORDIK Instuute, and Northern Lights Collaborative.

Currently, she is co-chair of the Algoma Community Foundation, and a Program Manager with the Ontario Trillium Foundation. As a facilitator and dreamer, Krista has spent the last several years in various avenues of community development, with a strong focus on supporting young people doing positive change work in her own community, across Ontario, and in some contexts across Turtle Island. Given her breadth of work, Krista is well aware of the importance of shared platforms as a step toward reciprocal community development building between those working in the grassroots, and those working in institutions.

Krista is inspired by the good work of young Indigenous folks in her region. She brings her passion for people, learning, social justice and community development to her own practices in pursuit of just futures for all.

Myia Davar is a queer mixed South Asian & white settler who grew up in Treaty 2 territory in Manitoba, residing in Tkaronto governed by the Dish with One Spoon treaty. She is a project manager, network-builder and coach, currently supporting a team of emerging arts organization leaders to build their organizations and visions through SKETCH Working Arts’ Shared Platform. As a dream engineer working with people to scaffold their visions, she is passionate about conversations & possibilities, working through complexity, economic empowerment and holistic health. She’s committed to relationships, justice work and doing the on-the-ground work of partnership and capacity-building, as well as implementing strategy and systems change within and across organizations.