Venture for Canada didn’t invest in staff professional development in its early days — here’s why you should.

In the early days of Venture for Canada, we invested very little in staff learning and development — most of our focus was on simply surviving. 

Starting a social impact organization is not for the faint of heart and for much of the organization’s first two years of operations, we struggled to regularly make payroll. Consequently, Venture for Canada (VFC) had a minimal budget to invest in learning and development. In these early years, we were a small team of less than five people, who often did not have the time to devote significant time to learning amidst many other pressing priorities. 

Flash forward four years and our priorities have shifted, with investing in learning and development much closer to the top. VFC has close to 25 employees. As part of our staff performance review process, all employees and their managers agree on annual learning goals. The organization also has a dedicated staff development budget and we have implemented numerous learning initiatives, like a regular book club series. Members of the VFC board of directors also participate in various learning opportunities to enhance their relevant governance skillsets. The board and leadership team’s participation in lifelong learning is vital, as it sends the message that learning is an important organizational priority. 

We recognize that fostering a culture of lifelong learning is a continuous journey and there are definitely areas VFC can improve. We also know that a component of knowledge mobilization is sharing our learnings with the larger social impact ecosystem. While we don’t think VFC’s approach is the gold standard, we know now that an investment in organizational learning is a crucial priority.

Here’s why.

According to a recent McKinsey report, “the call for individuals and organizations alike to invest in learning and development has never been more insistent.” Automation will have a profound impact on all areas of the economy, including the social impact sector. A 2019 study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that “should current cutting-edge technology become widespread, 32 percent of current jobs are likely to see significant changes in how they are carried out and a further 14 percent of jobs could be completely automated.” 

These rapid changes necessitate all social impact organizations to make their employees’ learning and development a top priority. A recent study by Nesta, a leading British think tank, observed that increasingly, “higher order cognitive skills” are essential in most roles. In particular, folks across all functions need to embrace active learning, which is the ability to set goals, ask relevant questions, get feedback as they learn and apply that knowledge meaningfully in a variety of contexts. To become a “learning nation,” a Future Skills Council report argues that Canada needs to have “a skilled workforce capable of adopting new technologies and business models while ensuring the well-being of communities and society.” Social impact organizations will need to invest substantial time, money, and energy in organizational learning in order to achieve desired outcomes.

 

Resource constraints

Many social impact groups under-invest in training and development because they don’t have the adequate resources — as was our situation in the early days of VFC. A 2011 report by the HR Council for the Voluntary and Non-profit Sector (ironically, the HR Council itself no longer exists, which is even more worrisome) noted that it is evident that the majority of social impact organizations “do not have access to sufficient financial resources to meet the training and professional development needs.” A study by the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) and The Mowat Centre observed that “investments in training within the sector are modest at best, with limited capacity to develop the learning opportunities that are required.” Many social impact organizations understand the importance of investing in their employee’s development but are hamstrung by funding structures that are inflexible and limited. 

To enhance the workforce development of the social impact sector, private, philanthropic and public sector funders need to further support their grantees’ staff training efforts. As Cathy Taylor, ONN’s executive director, says, “not a lot of funders invest in professional development. More and more do see the need, but not enough.” To better catalyze social impact, grant makers should encourage that a certain portion of their funds are spent on organizational learning, which can foster innovation for long-term outcomes over band-aid solutions.

To enhance the workforce development of the social impact sector, private, philanthropic and public sector funders need to further support their grantees’ staff training efforts. 

Moreover, funders should consider delivering capacity building programs that bring their grantees together and provide space for peer learning. At Venture for Canada (VFC), we’ve participated in and benefited from such learning programs. For example, VFC participated in the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation’s Social Innovation Learning Program, which supports the foundation’s grantees to accelerate their social impact through peer learning and coursework. The learnings our team gained helped grow VFC’s impact through influencing our design of new programs and re-design of existing ones.

 

Knowledge sharing

To create a culture of learning and development, it’s essential to create policies and processes that support learning. Organizations can start with creating a staff development policy, providing on-the-job learning opportunities, having a dedicated employee training budget, and requiring all employees write annual learning goals. Intentions are important, but there needs to be a formal structure in place to support a social impact organization’s culture of learning. It’s also crucial for boards to contribute to this culture of learning through supporting the professional development of social impact organizations’ leadership teams and by providing regular governance training opportunities to board directors.  

Katie Smith Milway and Amy Saxton write in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that organizational learning is “the intentional practice of collecting information, reflecting on it, and sharing the findings, to improve the performance of an organization.” They argue that the three largest impediments to organizational learning are “a lack of clear and measurable goals about using knowledge to improve performance; insufficient incentives for individuals or teams to participate in organizational learning activities; and uncertainty about the most effective processes for capturing and sharing learning.” What matters should be measured.

Organizational learning goes beyond staff training. It can also include sharing best practices, measuring the impact of programs, discussing metrics to inform decisions, and publicly sharing learnings. In order to foster a culture of learning, Smith Milway and Saxton argue that organizations need to create “intuitive processes that capture and disseminate knowledge.” Organizations need a knowledge sharing process, whereby teams identify learning needs, define how knowledge will be collected and shared, and align resources to support these new capabilities. From our experience, launching an annual impact report provides a way to do this. Through the process, organizational learning is fostered as team members collect, analyze, and present key data and learnings and reflect on these year-to-year. 

 

Prioritizing organizational learning  

Social impact organizations face a deluge of priorities, including but not limited to delivering programs, raising funds, engaging stakeholders, fulfilling regulatory requirements, and managing cybersecurity. Amongst all of these often-urgent issues — especially during a prolonged global health and economic crisis — organizational learning can fall through the cracks, viewed as important but not urgent.

Still, the greatest asset of any organization is its employees. It is social impact workers who create strategies, build relationships, and deliver essential programs. Through investing in staff development and capacity building, social impact organizations will be more effective in achieving their goals. Due to the rapidly changing nature of the world of work, it is increasingly essential for all social impact organizations to make organizational learning a top priority this year. Collectively, we need to shift the narrative in the social impact sector where spending resources for organizational learning is no longer viewed as needless “overhead,” but rather as a critical enabler of social impact.