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Community Investment & Non-Profit Resiliency Conversation

Join CCVO and LBG Canada for a conversation exploring the impact of COVID-19 on the Alberta non-profit sector and its intersection with corporate community investment. Based on CCVO’s recent research publication, Building a Resilient Alberta Non-profit Sector After COVID-19 (released on July 21), this session will dive into some of the key learnings from this report and highlight their relevance to corporate community investment practitioners and programs.

Weaving in learnings from past crisis experiences like the Calgary flood and Fort McMurray wildfires, this presentation and discussion aims to help participants understand the exceptional transformations provoked by the pandemic within the non-profit landscape. LBG Canada and CCVO will open up a dialogue about the ways that companies need to think differently about community investment in response to the pandemic and how we can more effectively equip non-profits to build stronger communities and create social value. This session will include the opportunity for participants to ask questions and engage in discussion.

The event is open to all. And while the report focuses on Alberta, the learnings from this research are wide-ranging and we encourage participants from across Canada to join the conversation!

Thursday, August 13 | 11am-12pm MST

Register here for the Community Investment & Non-Profit Resiliency conversation.

On the Radar

• Volunteer Canada’s “ChangeMakers@Work” webinar series – access available from July 13 until September 30
• Volunteer Canada is also conducting research on the impact of the pandemic on employee volunteering and engagement – if you manage an employee volunteer program, you can contribute by completing their survey (closes July 10).
• Future of Good is looking for Canada’s top 100 recovery projects that will enable communities to build back better after COVID-19. If you know of a community partner undertaking a project that might qualify, nominate them!

Bright Ideas

Trailblazing in sustainability: Danone has recently stepped out as a leader in the sustainability space, offering lessons for other large companies that might be considering incorporating social impact into their way of operating. In June, stakeholders overwhelmingly voted to make Danone the first company to adopt the “Entreprise à Mission” model created by French law in 2019, defined as a company whose social and environmental objectives are aligned with its purpose. Danone has also made an extraordinary commitment to become one of the first multinational companies to achieve B Corp certification. Currently 17 of Danone’s entities meet that goal, translating to over 30% of Danone’s global sales. This is highlighted in a recent article from the CECP and a feature with CEO Emmanuel Faber on the Leadership Next podcast.

Under CEO Bryan Moynihan, Bank of America has steadily increased their commitment to sustainable business within the framework of “stakeholder capitalism.” Expanding beyond a blinkered focus on shareholder returns, stakeholder capitalism aims to understand and measure the ways that a company impacts its employees, customers and society. As chair of the International Business Council, Moynihan is working with the Big Four accounting firms to develop a set of metrics to measure stakeholder capitalism. Learn more on the Leadership Next podcast’s most recent episode.

Anti-racism efforts in business: The inaugural Black North summit was held on July 20, 2020. An initiative led by the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism, Black North invites Canadian companies and CEOs to sign a pledge acknowledging systemic racism in business, and deliver a statement outlining what their organization will do to combat the issue. July’s summit saw over 3000 people in attendance, with over 200 companies representing a market cap of over $1 trillion having signed the pledge to date.

Investing in Indigenous communities: Despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, many Indigenous non-profits have seen a spike in donations in recent months. Indspire, for example, which helps students access post-secondary education as one of the largest Indigenous-led charities in Canada, highlighted this phenomenon in a recent article. Upon speaking with donors to ask about their motivation, CEO Roberta Jamieson explained that “With the focus of the anti-racism movement in the country, Canadians were looking for ways to make a concrete contribution to changing the circumstances [of disadvantaged populations], which led them to Indspire.” Many (though certainly not all) organizations working with Indigenous and other marginalized groups have seen similar growth, particularly in new individual and corporate donors. This offers encouraging evidence that the recent reckoning with systemic racism has prompted changes in how Canadians invest in communities.