A new nation-wide network is launching today, with the mandate to help non-profits across the country upgrade their digital capacities.

Five co-founding organizations incubated the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR): the CIO Strategy Council, Imagine Canada, NTEN, SETSI, and the Tamarack Institute.

This innovative collaboration emerged organically, out of needs that were identified by the non-profit sector. It is not a funds-driven or distinct legal entity, so the co-founding organizations are responsible for the day-to-day work and decision-making. They have each provided in-kind investments, with the hope that other co-founders will join post-launch. The Tamarack Institute has also accepted seed funding from the Sonor Foundation and Okta for Good on behalf of CCNDR.

At the time of its launch, CCNDR has more than 85 advisors from across the non-profit sector. Together, these charities, grantmakers, and technology experts from all over Canada will use a holistic approach to increase non-profit digital capacity and access to technology.

The Centre aims to help non-profits thrive in our increasingly tech-driven world — by focusing on nine key areas: research and knowledge mobilization; public policy; grantmaker practices; board digital literacy and skills; staff and volunteer digital literacy and skills; shared platforms, tools, and standards; vendor relationships; data standards and infrastructure; and access and connectivity.

The Centre’s vision is to see “a digitally-enabled non-profit sector, where Canada’s diverse non-profits use data and tech to advance their mission and multiply their impact.” 

The problems facing non-profits 

According to statistics from Imagine Canada, charities and non-profits represent 8.7 percent of Canada’s GDP. This sector also employs around 2.5 million people – roughly 12 percent of the workforce.

However, the need for digital transformation of charities in Canada is urgent, whether or not those in the sector are aware. Data from CanadaHelps shows that only 42 percent of charities with annual revenue of less than $100,000 have integrated – or plan to integrate – digital technology into everyday activities. Despite this, 54 percent of CanadaHelps respondents acknowledged that they would likely find it harder to do their work if they did not improve their digital capabilities.

Another challenge is the massive skills gap that currently exists. The majority of those surveyed rated their skill level with specified digital tools as “fair”, “poor”, or “not aware”. And with the adoption of digital tools, charities will also require more and more workers competent in their use.

Charities not only lag behind their private-sector counterparts with regards to technological capabilities; even within the non-profit sector, there are inter-organizational imbalances.

As Victor Beausoleil, the executive director of SETSI, one of the five co-founding organizations, points out, “Access to technology and digital skills is an equity issue… Black-led and Black-serving organizations have been historically and systemically under-resourced.”

Denise Williams, CEO of First Nations Technology Council, one of CCNDR’s supporting non-profits, notes similar issues with indigenous organizations. “In our journey to achieve digital equity as First Nations people we are often met with persistent structural barriers and technological challenges. Our communities and organizations are the least connected to reliable internet in the country. This means that the use of digital and connected technologies is too often inaccessible,” she says.

And these digital inequities exist at an even more micro level.

Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN, another co-founder, notes that there are “equity divides within organizations – executive and leadership staff are more likely to be white and program staff are more likely to be those in historically and systemically oppressed communities.” 

These divides are often exacerbated when “professional development budgets, staff training time, and even equipment are often not allocated equally or equitably across an organization,” Ward continues. “If everyone in an organization has regular and appropriate technology training and is part of the technology decisions and investments that impact their work and programs, organizations and the mission will benefit.” 

Why are non-profits lagging?

“Non-profit organizations touch the lives of all Canadians – providing vital services to individuals, families, and communities,” says Katie Gibson, vice president at CIO Strategy Council, another co-founder.  “But most non-profits aren’t equipped to thrive in the digital age.”

When asked why, Gibson says the reasons are numerous. Many non-profit workers are experts in their particular fields and were hired for their specific skillset – not because they are IT professionals. Expecting a social worker who aids victims of domestic violence to also have an expert knowledge of Salesforce administration or digital marketing techniques is unreasonable – yet many in the non-profit sector do take on these roles in the absence of workers with greater technological expertise.

“Non-profits don’t have excess unallocated dollars sitting around to hire [technical experts and] pay the rates that are expected,” Gibson says. “So you end up in a situation where you just don’t have the internal capacity and you can’t afford the external capacity.”

Another problem facing these organizations is how both donors and non-profits themselves categorize technology as an expense. A lot of funding is project-specific, and there’s often not a large amount of resources for ‘core funding’ – which, despite its necessity for many projects to function, is often where technological upgrades are slotted.

Previous Future of Good reporting on the social impact world’s digital divide showed that more than half of social impact organizations lack the financial resources necessary to acquire the digital tools they need, often because the funding received has been allocated for a particular program or service.

“The way technology is viewed is in that category of ‘overhead’, which we know is capped at 10 or 15 percent [of the budget],” says Gibson. “As long as we keep seeing technology as overhead, rather than seeing it as a critical component of delivering high-quality projects and services, we are going to continue to see non-profits struggling with their technology needs.”

A sector-wide approach to digital resilience 

While organizations that help improve digital capacity already exist, CCNDR aims to tackle this problem using a new approach: sector-wide interventions that are tailored to each specific need identified.

Working groups, which will include experts in the field, for the aforementioned nine focus areas will convene. They will seek to identify the problems as well as the best and most appropriate solutions.

As the working groups are launched, they will be co-chaired and joined by interested individuals. Each group will devise their own interventions and working plans, which will continue to evolve over time.

“Past approaches to digital development and innovation in the sector have been fragmented,” Cathy Barr, vice president at Imagine Canada, admits. “But a fragmented approach is not adequate to meet the sector’s needs. We need an approach that brings together non-profits, grantmakers and technology experts to work together – and simultaneously – on multiple fronts including research, public policy, digital literacy and vendor relationships.”

Louise Adongo, executive director of Inspiring Communities and CCNDR advisor, adds to this sentiment, noting that a “sectoral approach is necessary to optimize for best results in terms of incremental and transformational shifts in funding service delivery and design to support necessities for digital inclusion in the sector across (and inside) organizations.”  

Rather than multiple organizations working on the same problem independently, CCNDR will gather leaders in each field to tackle the different facets of the problem together, producing research papers, policy positions, toolkits, and other shared items. 

The process will be “committing the right people, identifying priority projects, and then mobilizing people and money behind the projects,” says Gibson.

Some examples of potential interventions CCNDR could undertake include: research into the barriers to and enablers of non-profit digital transformation; guidelines on ethical and equitable implementation of digital technologies; training for executive directors and board members in digital leadership; and standards on baseline cybersecurity best practices. 

Because of the wide variety of organizations, funders, technology vendors, and consultants involved with CCNDR, there will also be diversity in the perspectives, approaches, and resources available, says Liz Weaver, co-CEO of the Tamarack Institute, another co-founder. And as the initial focus of CCNDR will be “on small-to-medium-sized non-profit organizations, many with fewer financial and technology resources,” leveraging all that these partners have to offer will help to “jump-start the capacity of these non-profits.”

Challenges ahead

Nothing demonstrated the need for digital transformation more clearly than the COVID-19 pandemic, where organizations in all sectors scrambled to adjust to the new digital normal. But while some were able to adapt and thrive, others floundered.

“During the pandemic, many charities and non-profits across the sector experienced decreased revenues,” Barr explains. “The pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technologies in many organizations, [and those] that had underinvested in technology were also pushed to update their infrastructure.”

However, despite these organizations’ best efforts, the problems of a lack of funding, a lack of technological expertise, equity issues, and others, still remain.

“Digital resilience is a huge challenge requiring all hands on deck,” says Weaver.

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