Bringing Business Discipline To Charitable Giving in New Brunswick
SAINT JOHN – It’s obvious that businesses and charities are two different things.
But what if a charity adopted more of a business mentality when it comes to delivering programs, and making sure donors received a good return on their social investment?
That’s an approach the United Way of Saint John, Kings and Charlotte counties started to do about two years ago.
“We had a process where the exact same charities received funding year over year, and it was a closed system,” says executive director Wendy MacDermott. “So any new charity that opened and might have been doing really cool things, we just had no way to fund them.”
This created problems. New charities were not able to get funding, but opportunities were also being missed for charities to work together. Changing this was the United Way’s first step.
“We did a big review and did research on what are the qualities or characteristics of robust charities that are very effective,” MacDermott says. “And they were things like they partner very intentionally, they’re very adaptive and flexible and innovative, they build on the strengths in the community, but also the strengths of their own organization.”
The United Way also worked with a broader strategy called Living Saint John that identified some of the community’s biggest problems: child poverty, domestic violence and transitioning people to work.
“One of the things I believe is that we actually have enough money to fix our problems, but we’re not very intentional about where we put the money,” MacDermott says.
“I think if we’re much more coordinated and intentional in how we invest charitable dollars, then we should be able to fix most of these social issues that we have.”
Owen Green, with the Saint John accounting firm Adams Green, is chair of the United Way’s Social Investment Advisory Committee. He says this new model isn’t just changing how the United Way operates, but also how the organizations it works with do.
“We’re not just fundraisers anymore, we’re getting much deeper into organizations to see what their challenges are,” Green says. “We’re not saying ‘here’s the money go work with it.’ We’re saying ‘how else can we help you beyond subsidizing your operating budget?'”
Today any charity can apply for funding from the United Way. But the process is more rigorous. This helps the United Way direct its donations where they will have the most impact in the community, but it also helps them better understand the charities and the connections between them.
“I often think of it as a bit of an orchestra. You’ve got all the pieces, and on their own they’re beautiful, but together they are phenomenal,”MacDermont says. “What it allows us to do is be much more confident that the decisions we’re making on behalf of many donors are the absolutely best social investments for them possible.”
MacDermott says one of the biggest issues people have with donating is that they have no idea how their money is being used. That’s where their new Social Investment Advisory Service comes in. It gives donors confidence that their money is being put to good use.
“We’re offering an advisory service to donors to help them match up with what they’re passionate about, what would be really effective and what’s part of that master plan,” she says. “Hopefully it will help us align the dollars in a way that they can be really effective and be much more intentional.”
Once the donor chooses a charity, they are then introduced to the people behind it. The chosen charity will then provide updates to the donor.
“For us it’s a real departure, because it’s not just ‘give money to the United Way, we’ll do great things with it,'” MacDermont says. “Now we’ll broker these relationships with you, we’ll help you find whatever it is you’re passionate about and get through the process of making the decisions. We’ve already done the legwork so there are others who can benefit from what we’re doing.”
Green says the United Way’s new approach funds the organizations that are best equipped to tackle the most pressing needs in the community.
“The most important decision I think we made was to insist on lots of face-to-face interaction, including the final interviews,” he says. “As a result I can confidently say that the organizations we support are lead by the strongest and most passionate non-profit leaders in our community.”
One of the United Way’s main goals is to make it easy for people to give to local groups. For years, this meant some money would regularly come out of your pay cheque. MacDermott says though this is still a very important part of what they do, they want to evolve the way businesses and donors interact.
“What we haven’t changed is the foundation, who and what the United Way is. We’ve modernized and innovated in how we implement that,” MacDermott says.
“It’s the next generation of us being that conduit between individuals, the business community and causes and charities in the community. It helps us direct more money into the community in a really intentional way.”