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By Katharine Zywert, Project Officer, Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo
On September 25th, 2012, Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo will host the first workshop in its five-part SPWB Accreditation Preparation Workshop Series. The workshop series will help prepare nonprofit and charitable organizations in Wood Buffalo to apply for accreditation through Imagine Canada’s Standards Program.
Over the summer, I have been creating workbooks that each participant will receive as part of the accreditation preparation workshops. The workbooks contain explanations of the standards, resources to help your organization prepare its application, and samples of required evidence. In creating the workbooks, I have realized that the process of preparing the application is in some ways the most important aspect of accreditation. When organizations apply for accreditation, they must provide many policies, procedures, and practices as evidence that they meet sector-wide standards of excellence. Some of these policies and procedures they will need to develop while others may have been part of their organization’s practices for some time but have never been codified. If these policies and procedures become part of the living culture of the organization, it can help to avoid crisis, anticipate challenges, create clear expectations, and develop organizational structures that will transcend staff and board member transitions.
In creating workbooks for the SPWB Accreditation Preparation Workshop Series , I have also learned that fundamentally, accreditation is all about capacity-building. Accreditation builds the capacity of charities and nonprofits by encouraging organizations to develop strong policies and processes that increase their effectiveness and resiliency. In a community where high staff and board turnover is a constant reality, building a strong organizational infrastructure is even more essential and can help your organization to accomplish its mission in the face of growth and change.
This month’s featured article by Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair, “Innovation is Not the Holy Grail,” which appeared in Stanford’s Social Innovation Review, reminds us that steady improvements to an organization’s services and operations can sometimes add more value than adopting innovative practices merely for innovation’s sake (p. 46-47). While accreditation may not sound very flashy or exciting, it provides an important opportunity to improve your organization’s most vital systems.
If your organization is planning to apply for accreditation through Imagine Canada’s Standards Program in 2013 and has not registered for SPWB Accreditation Preparation Workshop Series, please contact Kim Nordbye at [email protected] or Nancy Mattes at [email protected] to participate.
