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By Dr. Megan Conway
As we re-emerge from the pandemic and assess how we want to move forward as a charitable sector, much has been made of the need for radical change. There have been calls recently for a “Ministry of Charities” within the government to better mobilize and lead direct action, financing and policy-making from inside rather than outside government. Further, there has been renewed public dialogue between major charities about the need for greater financing across the sector to increase stability as well as impact.
For communities to rebuild inclusively, equitably and in just ways post COVID-19, the charitable sector needs to be stronger. It needs to be better-resourced, more connected to key decision-makers, and more representative of the communities it serves. In sum, it will need more capacity.
At Capacity Canada, we understand capacity to mean the skills, knowledge and resources required for leaders, organizations, and the charitable sector to have the ability it needs to solve complex problems.
Over the past year, we have been considering important questions of the local — of how the geography of your charity makes a difference on the kinds of capacity resources you have access to and how well connected you or your organization is to various kinds of capacity supports. COVID19 has made things simultaneously more interconnected to broader networks in your area while also much more local. The challenges and problems you face in your organization or system and your ability to solve them depend significantly on your ability to access resources, skills, knowledge and power to generate durable solutions.
Capacity Canada is keenly interested in helping communities, the broader charitable sector and organizations to build more capacity. One of the ways we aspire to do this is by supporting organizations and broader communities to take stock and assess what capacity they have and what kinds of capacity they want to build and do so in ways that reflect and incorporate local community knowledge, assets and resources.
To this end, Capacity Canada is in the midst of a two-year learning project that is piloting and assessing how to measure organizational and charitable sector capacity. Research fellow Dr. Megan Conway in partnership with Dr. Susan Phillips at Carleton University, is working to identify, assess and refine capacity measurement frameworks and pilot and test them in three resource-dependent communities across Canada. The intent of this project is to incorporate knowledge about community differences into capacity measurement tools to support different types of communities to better understand capacity development needs and resources. Resource-dependent communities have been selected as they represent rapidly changing communities with complex social, environmental and health challenges.
Capacity Canada will provide an update on the learnings of the project as it unfolds and intends to pilot the tool in more communities moving forward.
