Researchers from Carleton University will begin surveying hundreds of charities across Canada on a weekly basis for the next five years, a massive project to better understand who works in the sector and the challenges they face.

Paloma Raggo, assistant professor at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration, is leading the CharityInsights Canada Project – Project Canada Perspectives des Organismes de Bienfaisance (CICP-PCPOB). She said the project was inspired by the need for swift responses by policymakers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to challenges — and a lack of quickly-available sector data on charitable workforces, diversity within the sector, and human resources challenges.

“We have a lot of information about the sector everywhere,” Raggo told Future of Good in an interview, “but this information is rarely in an aggregated and accessible form. Oftentimes, when that information is collected, it takes an average of about a year and a half to be published. By the time we get that information, it’s already almost obsolete.”

She pointed to the state of mental health among charitable workers as one example. While sector lobbyists like Imagine Canada and YMCA WorkWell – a branch of the YMCA of Three Rivers that studies workplace well-being in the sector – do put out reports on the issue, Raggo said learning about the exact need for government support to improve mental health among charitable workers “could have helped us target solutions based on geography or size of the organizations and making empirically-based policy recommendations.”

Understanding the charitable sector’s workforce, turnover, retention, hiring challenges, and diversity are all part of the CICP-PCPOB’s purview, Raggo said. So too are perceptions of government by Canada’s charities and the needs they feel are currently unaddressed by policymakers. “The goal is to have a bird’s eye view of the sector,” Raggo said. “Our goal is for this information to be helpful to the general public to understand what the sector actually does and inform them.”

Through hosting the CICP-PCBOB’s data publicly on Carleton University’s servers, Raggo said the project’s findings will be available to anyone who wants to view it – including the social impact sector. The findings from the CICP-PCBOB’s surveys could help sector leaders understand how they may be falling short, and offer suggestions for improvement.

The CICP-PCPOB will reach out to around 1,000 registered charities that represent a good cross-section of the sector, in terms of geography and size. Raggo is especially keen on getting smaller charities — she said three-quarters of all registered charities are very small operations, but they aren’t often included to the same degree as their larger brethren in consultations. In many cases, they simply don’t have the time to participate.

“Having people trying to reach them is going to be a task in itself — but we’re up for the challenge,” Raggo said.

She said the “ambitious” plan is to line up survey participants over the summer of 2022 and begin issuing surveys — two or three questions at a time — by mid-October 2022. The survey will be entirely bilingual and will especially try to reach Canada’s francophone charitable sector.

“There really seems to be not as much connection between the francophone world of charitable organization and the anglophone world,” Raggo said, “and I hope this project can really show some unity on various important themes.”

The process of decolonization, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), in the delivery of the CICP-PCBOB’s surveys is important. Raggo said the project plans to create a taskforce in its first year of operation to “tackle the state of the sector’s engagement with underserved populations across Canada.” She said any questions for it will be drafted by a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers – and the CICP-PCBOB hopes to include Indigenous-led organizations or representatives in its advisory council.

Eventually, Carleton University’s Masters of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership faculty plans on going beyond this five-year project. It plans on starting the Canadian Centre for Research in Philanthropy, a national research centre for the sector, and establish three academic chair positions — including one specifically focused on data and evaluation for Canada’s charitable and philanthropic sector.

Dr. Susan Phillips, the Project’s policy lead, said in a statement that the Project will end up complementing these latter two goals, putting Carleton University on the map as a major hub for understanding Canada’s charitable sector at large.

“The three initiatives work together and build momentum towards Carleton’s efforts of becoming a national leader in the philanthropic data space,” Phillips said.

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