Last month, Justin Trudeau announced a $350 million Emergency Community Support Fund to help charities and non-profits support the vulnerable populations that have been most affected by COVID-19. 

This week the funds began rolling out, distributed by United Way Centraide Canada, the Canadian Red Cross and the Community Foundations of Canada, along with a $25 million fund to assist Black community organizations.

“Canadian charities and the non-profit sector play an essential role in supporting Canadians during COVID-19, and we are here to support them,” said Jessica Eritou, communications assistant to Ahmed Hussen, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development.

“These are unprecedented times, and with this fund, we’re giving more resources to reflect the new realities and difficulties brought on by the pandemic,” she said, pointing to the decrease in volunteers and need for charities and non-profits to adapt their services to meet increased demand.

By utilizing the three national intermediaries, the government aims to reach a national scale while leveraging the intermediaries’ community connections and knowledge of local issues, through their local chapters and partner organizations.

“Every community is impacted by COVID-19 and every community has vulnerable populations,” said Andrea Dicks, president of Community Foundations of Canada, a network of 191 community foundations across the country. “What we’re really wanting to do is ensure that this funding reaches across the country and deep into the places it’s required most.”

How does the funding program work, and how will it impact the capacity of charities and non-profits in dealing with COVID-19?

Prioritizing local response

United Way Centraide Canada and Community Foundations of Canada are giving grants to qualified donees and registered charities. The Canadian Red Cross, meanwhile, is providing grants to non-profits that are not registered charities, as well as boosting protective equipment and training across the sector to prevent disease transmission.

The partners have posted information and eligibility criteria online and streamlined the grant process with a simple online form for organizations to apply for the funding as quickly and easily as possible. Grant applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis with no deadline, and recipients have until March 2021 to use the short-term emergency funds.

The most important principle of the approach is that local communities will decide how the money should be spent. “The decisions will be made by local community foundations, which really allows them to respond to the unique needs of their communities,” said Dicks.

The most important principle of the approach is that local communities will decide how the money should be spent.

“It’s not about doing an analysis and pre-allocating where those vulnerable populations are,” she said, but “leveraging the network of the community foundations that have the pulse on communities across the country.”

These “vulnerable populations,” the government’s statement said, include “seniors, persons with disabilities, members of LGBTQ2 communities, veterans, newcomers, women, children and youth, and members of Indigenous communities and racialized communities, such as Black Canadians.”

Local community foundations and United Ways will be allocating the funds. Charities typically already have a relationship with one of the two organizations, but can contact them if unsure who best to apply to. 

The partners are working together on both a national and a local level, where strong relationships exist between community foundations, United Ways, and the Canadian Red Cross, Dicks said.

“In some cases, they’re working very closely together in communities to review applications together,” said Dan Clement, President and CEO of United Way Centraide Canada, the national organization for 79 United Ways and Centraides across the country.

“This is a prototype in using local community organizations in order to ensure that the dollars are invested against the local context,” Clement explained. It’s very difficult to build a single federal program, he said, when “the nature of the challenge is really dynamic, it’s changing week to week and it’s playing out differently across the country.”

Expanding the funding’s reach

Through their work reacting to major crises like the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016, the Canadian Red Cross had come to realize that “there’s a whole group of non-profits that are small, local organizations that don’t have charitable status,” said its president and CEO Conrad Sauvé.

Because they are not registered as charities, he said, these non-profits are “often overlooked in terms of support.” Therefore, $65 million of the government’s new fund is being directed towards local non-profits through the Canadian Red Cross.

Although the organization has given funds to non-profits in emergency situations, “it’s the scale across the country that’s unchartered territory,” Sauvé explained. Compared to registered charities, far less is known about non-profits which are often new, small and there is little data on them, he said.

Another $15 million is going towards the Canadian Red Cross’s efforts to improve access to personal protective equipment for the charitable and non-profit sector, as well as training on how to use it. “More than protective equipment and access, it’s how you use it safely and how you design your protocols,” he said.

Non-profits and charities benefitting from the fund will be working on a variety of projects to support vulnerable populations. Some of the biggest concerns are access to food, financial security, mental health challenges, and domestic violence.

Importantly, all three intermediaries will be reporting the results back to the government. This could be a valuable resource to understand more about COVID-19’s impact and the work of local organizations – particularly non-profits about which much less is known.

“This is about supporting a women’s shelter who needs to purchase more beds,” for example, Dicks explained, to provide shelter for people escaping violence at home. “It could be to support additional staff needs and capacities for the sexual violence assault line because the calls are increasing,” she said. 

Importantly, all three intermediaries will be reporting the results back to the government. This could be a valuable resource to understand more about COVID-19’s impact and the work of local organizations – particularly non-profits about which much less is known.

“We as organizations are monitoring the investments and where they’re going so that we also understand how the dollars are actually benefiting communities” said Clement.

In need of rescue

Although the emergency fund is welcomed, the dollars are not expected to last long when demand from charities and non-profits is so high. 

“I think there’s a chance that this program will be oversubscribed fairly fast,” said Sauvé. “What we’re hearing from the different groups is that they need resources very fast.”

All three leaders also reiterated calls for a stabilization fund to rescue the social impact sector. In March, Imagine Canada reported that a six-month lockdown would mean a loss of $15.6 billion and 194,000 employees.

On top of frontline projects, like those which will be supported by the emergency fund, “organizations are also struggling to how to maintain their organizations and their services,” said Clement. “There are very real implications for layoffs and loss of capacity within the charitable sector as a result of COVID-19.”

“I don’t have a crystal ball but I think this funding will go quite quickly, which speaks to the need for additional supports,” said Dicks. “Broader sector stabilization is still an important conversation that needs to happen, and a solution needs to be found for it.”

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