Financing
Our goal is to catalyze improvements in the Ontario nonprofit sector’s funding environment by advocating for the reform of the sector’s investment relationship with government and the removal of barriers for nonprofits to earn income.
Ontario Budget – our pre-budget submission
Community Benefits and Social Procurement
Channelling the purchasing power of the public and nonprofit sectors to provide further benefits for local communities.
Community Hubs
A community hub can be a school, a neighbourhood centre or another public space offering coordinated services in education, health care and social services.
Funding Reform, including Transfer Payment Agreements
Beyond administrative modernization, the sector grapples with a range of funding challenges and trends, such as funding levels (including cost-of-living increases and investments for innovation/systems change work), investment in core mission support, changing modes of funding and the need for data and evaluation capacity to measure outcomes. Our work on funding reform involves not just the Ontario government, but also municipal and federal governments, charitable foundations and private funders. Transfer payment agreements is one in particular need of reform.
Social Enterprise
Provincially, the nonprofit sector is a $50 billion economic driver which generates 2.6% of Ontario’s gross domestic product and employs a million people. Rather than extracting shareholder profit, nonprofits leverage government and other investments via earned income, donations, and volunteer hours to promote community benefit throughout the economic sectors in which they are active. The growth of nonprofit social enterprise is constrained by our regulatory environment which restricts opportunities. Investment in nonprofit social enterprise (loans, grants, and tax incentives) should be expanded to help this sector grow.
Social Impact Bonds
We’ve been watching the development of social impact bonds (SIBs) and the interest surrounding them for some time. SIBs as currently designed are not sustainable for the nonprofit sector unless they include the delivery organization in contract negotiation, program and evaluation design, ensure full cost recovery and include revenue sharing for the nonprofit. Find out more about our work developing SIB policy principles from a nonprofit perspective.