Investing in Change
United Way's new approaches to funding bring opportunities to youth
As Toronto's population grows and City budgets become more and more stretched, many communities face complex issues from lack of access to health care to a dearth of community space.
Addressing the complexity of social change is a challenge for all levels of government, social service agencies and community organizations. Funding has often been one obstacle in the way of significant positive change. According to a report from the United Way of Greater Toronto's Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce, "since the 1990s it has been virtually impossible to establish new community organizations, even when there is a demonstrated need for them."
The reason for this, the report continues, is that most funders have shifted to providing short-term project funding, which does not help organizations pay for core costs such as rent, program development and strategic planning. "Our funding is provided on a year-to-year basis," says one community service worker quoted in On The Front Lines of Toronto's Community Service Sector, a report issued by Family Service Association of Toronto last year. "This means that every February, we receive a letter notifying us that we might be laid off." Because of the restrictions funders often put on what can be funded, there has been little investment in essential programs and community capacity building in the areas of highest need, which most often do not have local community organizations that can apply for project funding.
Furthermore, even in areas that do have existing community organizations, many agencies do not have the infrastructure to both deal with the administration of complex funding applications and deliver programming. Many more are discouraged by the number of applications they have to go through to receive even small amounts of project funding.
Change is Good
New collaborative models are working to change this restrictive formula for community organizations. By pooling resources (creating bigger pots of money), streamlining the application process (allowing organizations to apply for one big grant at one time rather than many smaller ones) and opening the doors to smaller community organizations (making funding guidelines and criteria clear and the process simpler and shorter), collaborative grants are a new and improved model for funding.
Not only is the process easier for community organizations to navigate, but the larger grants also make it possible for them to have more stable funding and for longer periods of time, thus allowing them to focus on programming and not on where the next grant is coming from. For the funders the benefits are also clear: they can have a greater impact on communities by providing substantially more funding than they could on their own and they distribute the risk and administration by sharing the responsibility of investing in grassroots projects.
Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce
United Way's Neighbourhood Strategy, is a five-year plan to
strengthen 13 priority neighbourhoods across the GTA. The
Strategy was implemented by United Way following the Strong
Neighbourhood Task Force, a United Way-City of Toronto
collaboration that looked into ways to strengthen the social
infrastructure of neighbourhoods facing the greatest need
across the city.
www.strongneighbourhoods.ca/
Action for Neighbourhood Change
Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC) is a key component of
United Way of Greater Toronto's Neighborhood Strategy — a
coordinated response to the growing needs, and lack of services
in Toronto's inner suburbs. ANC is about neighbourhood revitalization.
To achieve success, we must all work together—local businesses,
governments, volunteers, community agencies and most importantly,
the residents of the neighbourhoods we are working to strengthen.
www.anccommunity.ca
ArtReach Toronto
ArtReach Toronto is a program designed to
support arts initiatives that engage youth who have experienced
exclusion in under-served areas of Toronto. ArtReach
Toronto is made up of partners from all three levels
of government and many funding organizations.
www.artreachtoronto.ca
In recent years the United Way of Greater Toronto has looked at funding in different ways to find new solutions to the complex challenge of effecting social change. One area that UWGT has focused on is the youth sector, where it has been central in the development of new collaborative initiatives to simplify the funding process for youth and youth-led organizations.
ArtReach Toronto, The Toronto Sports Leadership Program and The Remix Project are all collaborative funding initiatives between the United Way, other organizations and all three levels of government. "This type of leveraged approach lets us collaborate around priority issues and solutions – it's a bit of let's see what we each bring to the table and how we can leverage all of our resources and skills to make a difference," says Frances Lankin, President and Chief Executive Officer of the United Way of Greater Toronto. "Most people understand that if you come at these things in isolation you won't have same impact as you would if you worked together to address issues. It's about leveraging all our resources to address challenges in communities."
Shahina Sayani, Program Manager of ArtReach Toronto says, "Funding programs like ArtReach Toronto are vital to youth and to our communities." Citing lack of accessibility to funding as a major obstacle for youth, Sayani goes on to say that ArtReach Toronto is part of the new wave of funding that uses a "high-engagement" grant making process, which includes workshops for applicants and one-on-one help to support youth in developing skills in the areas of grant-writing, financial management, governance and more. ArtReach is also trying to simplify the funding process by using simple application and reporting templates.
The result is one-stop shopping for youth seeking funding for arts initiatives, with other skills and capacity building tools built into the application process. "Without collaborative, co-operative models like ArtReach Toronto," says Sayani, "many youth would not have access to quality arts opportunities that foster meaningful youth engagement in under-served neighbourhoods in Toronto. It's a huge change in the funding process and a step in the right direction for building assets in communities."
Bigger and Better
Another strategic approach to change has developed out of the research done by the United Way's Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce. As Lankin notes, with its reach across the City of Toronto, the United Way was positioned to conduct research that was paramount in providing the organization and other partners a picture of where the resources were most needed so they could all focus their efforts to make a bigger impact overall.
Lankin explains the strategy: "We worked with others on the Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce to develop the prioritizing of 13 neighbourhoods that were most in need of funding for infrastructure. We knew we needed to leverage our own strategies and other funders' strategies to focus on developing capacity in these neighbourhoods. With this research we really could kick-start collaborative approaches to different issues in the communities."
Research from the Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce informed projects like Action for Neighbourhood Change (ANC), which is built on the concept that top-down programs and cookie-cutter approaches don't work for most communities. ANC engages citizens to define the challenges in their communities and design solutions. The United Way is still working through community agency partners to deliver programming but the focus is on collaborating with residents. The goal is to develop a body of expertise within neighbourhoods that will help those neighbourhoods find the right solutions for them.
Lankin notes that all three levels of government have been strong supporters of this approach:
- The federal government, through the Department of Canadian Heritage, has supported and led many collaborative initiatives to foster youth arts programming and encourage youth engagement through the arts;
- The provincial government has supported the idea of community hubs in the 13 priority areas and is working with the United Way to build shared space for community health centres and neighbourhood centres;
- The City of Toronto was a partner in the Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce and a number of collaborative initiatives. It has also adopted a strong orientation to its programming that focuses on the 13 priority neighbourhoods.
All of these changes to funding structures, processes and directions will no doubt make an impact on communities in need, but Lankin is clear that the United Way's central pillar remains the same: "The most important thing that we have not changed is continuing to provide core funding support for a number of agencies across the city. Our goal is to understand how the United Way can bring about more positive change through investment of donor dollars the way we have always done, and through the participation in collaborative projects and processes that focus strategy and investment to help those most in need. We believe that the community is strengthened by a strong, vibrant social services network and we are always looking for innovative and effective ways to strengthen that network."
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