Canadian non-profits need an HR council (again) — here’s why, according to sector leaders
Why It Matters
Plenty of reports, studies, and surveys on Canadian non-profits exist, but very few of them cover the nation’s non-profit workforce in a comprehensive manner. In a time when organizations are laying off staff and preparing shoestring operating budgets, having good human resources coast-to-coast could be vital for non-profit directors.
Whenever Michelle Baldwin, the executive director of Pillar Nonprofit Network, needed help coming up with professional development opportunities or figuring out a social media policy for her staff, she once had a place to turn.
Her organization doesn’t have a dedicated human resources manager. “As an executive director, I’m the person that holds the strategy, the public policy, I do HR,” she says. The same is true for many of the 610 different non-profits and social enterprises comprising the Network. She recalls receiving a lot of questions about staff pay, professional review documents, and how to attract younger executive directors to the non-profit world as a generation of older leaders retired.
Until 2012, Baldwin could rely on the HR Council for the Voluntary and Non-profit Sector. Formed in 2002, it studied human resources issues affecting non-profit work
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