Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience to receive $1.2 million in funding, to enable sector-wide digital transformation over three years
Why It Matters
Dedicating funding to digital transformation means that non-profits are able to reach clients that are situated more remotely, or home-bound. It also allows them to invest in tools and technology that increases the organization’s efficiency, which has a knock-on effect on the impact it is able to have.
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The Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR) has announced that it will be receiving funding from five organizations, to help it further its goal of building a more digitally enabled non-profit sector. The total funding that CCNDR will receive will amount to $1.2 million over three years, which each funder will distribute at different timelines over the course of three years, Executive Director Katie Gibson has confirmed.
The five funders come to the table from different sectors. RBC and technology company Okta come from the private sector, while three philanthropic bodies have contributed to the fund: the Ontario Trillium Foundation, World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund, and the Sonor Foundation.
“This consortium of funders is special because it reflects the full range of grantmakers that need to get into the digital game,” Gibson told Future of Good in an email interview.
“Non-profits need resources for their digital priorities from foundations, corporate donors and public funders. Each donor can be a champion for digital resilience among their peers.”
“We’ve spent the better part of two years growing our community and proving out the value of a field-building organization,” Gibson adds. “With funding, we’re able to engage a team to deliver on our priorities. To start, we’ve hired an executive director and chief digital officer.” This is since the Centre formally launched one year ago, in late March 2022.
Why are funders now paying attention to technology needs and digital transformation?
Philanthropic organizations have historically glossed over funding that is dedicated to digital tools, software and hardware investments, for various reasons: firstly, it’s difficult to make a distinct connection between technology investments and community impact. This has meant that social purpose organizations are often not able to invest in critical overheads that, in the long-run, can expand their reach and impact.
According to Marina Nuri, associate director of Canada strategy and programs at the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, this investment has “great potential” for the immigrant and refugee-serving sector, which is where the Fund’s efforts are largely focused. The Mariam Assefa Fund has so far funded over 100 organizations in the US and Canada.
“One of the key areas of our focus in Canada is supporting innovation, collaboration and effectiveness within the immigrant-serving sector, and digital transformation is a core enabler for these,” says Nuri. “Improved digital capacity of various organizations within the sector means improved reach, accessibility and quality of services; ability to better engage funders and other supporters; better use of data to drive outcomes; and ultimately improved outcomes for immigrants and refugees.”
“We are especially excited about CCNDR’s Digital Leadership for Gender Justice initiative, which will launch this year and focus on creating a comprehensive approach to building digital capacity of non-profits serving immigrant, refugee and BIPOC women,” Nuri adds. “This work can help increase awareness of the broader digital ecosystem and existing sources of support among Canadian organizations serving immigrant and refugee women. This initiative’s developed prototype for holistic, intersectional programming for digital literacy can be further applied to other sectors.”
Meanwhile, over at technology company Okta, enabling “secure access to technology” has driven a large proportion of their funding, says Erin Baudo Felter, vice president of social impact and sustainability. “Last year we donated $5 million in philanthropic funding, and 50 per cent went to technology enablement for non-profits and the social sector around the world. We also donate our own technology and services to non-profits. This philanthropy is a long-term play to support technology enablement across the sector and lifting everyone up.” She adds that participation from the private, public and non-profit sectors are vital to the longevity of digital transformation in the sector.
Having recently funded a research project with Connect Humanity, Okta found that 95 per cent of community organizations were saying the internet was vital to them doing their work, but more than three-quarters of them are finding that they have the adequate skills and tools to support their communities. In addition, only 12 per cent of community members who needed organizations’ services were equipped with reliable access to the internet.
“It’s a two-part problem,” Baudo Felter says. “It’s the problem of transformation of the organizations themselves in terms of skills, tools, connectivity and leadership, and then of providing the community with access so that they can take advantage of the opportunities and services coming at them.”
This is part of why the Okta team looks to fund organizations that are looking to change the “ecosystem” of digital transformation, rather than individual organizations. For instance, Okta has previously funded NetHope, a global organization working on technology and connectivity in the humanitarian aid sector, and TechSoup, an international network providing technical support to non-profits.
Providing funding to CCNDR – as a network organization that researches, supports and advocates for transformation across the non-profit sector as whole – is likely to bring about more change than funding individual organizations’ transformation efforts. “Instead of a one-to-one model, it’s a one-to-many model,” Baudo Felter says.
“We feel very strongly that one of the best ways we can support [digital transformation] is to stop giving restricted funding,” she adds. “Our gift to support the startup of the Centre is in a multi-year and unrestricted format. Organizations know what the best use of their funds are, which is part of our trust-based philanthropy model.” Baudo Felter adds that while Okta is on the advisory council, the team will not specifically be asking CCNDR to report back on usage and impact of the funds. “I believe in the leadership of this organization. The leaders they have convened around the table are the right people.”
How can the impact of this funding be measured?
Another reason that philanthropic funders have historically not funded operational and technological infrastructure is because it’s challenging to measure the impact of these sorts of investments using tangible metrics. However, for both the WES Mariam Assefa Fund and Okta, a measure of success will be whether or not this investment encourages the rest of the philanthropic sector to take notice of the importance of funding technical infrastructure.
“In the short-term, we would like to see our investment catalyze other funding and support for CCNDR so they can expand their work,” Nuri says. “In the long-term, we are looking forward to the impact of CCNDR’s work on non-profits in terms of increased efficiency, quality, reach, and as a result, improved population-level outcomes.”
“This is an awareness and advocacy issue,” Baudo Felter adds. “There is not enough attention being given to technology. A way of measuring success would be how many other funders have joined on [to fund digital transformation], and how much support we have for the issue.”
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