Guelph Rotary Literally "Unites for Good"

Guelph Social Services Unite for Good

Guelph Rotary Literally "Unites for Good"

With this year’s theme of Unite for Good, the Rotary Clubs in Guelph came together to organize an event to bring social service providers together. The goal was to foster collaboration and deepen relationships between the organizations. 

 

Invitations were sent out, and 44 people attended the breakfast meeting. Tessa Kampen, a Rotary member of the Guelph Trillium Club, led the group through an Open Space exercise through which people came up with the topics they wanted to discuss and then split into groups to explore the topics further.

 

What did we learn? There were some common themes throughout the discussion:
 

  • Naturally, a top concern is the challenge of fundraising with everyone competing for the same resources, and the need to develop diverse revenue streams that require a wide variety of skills and technology at an agency
     

  • Exponential growth in the community-needs being experienced by many agencies, and their concerns about managing this sustainably

 

  • The constant need for advocacy – on behalf of clients served and the agencies themselves and their needs, and how much time and effort this requires
     

  • The need for greater collaboration and co-ordination among the service providers, with the potential to be stronger together – but difficulty for smaller, limited-resource agencies to connect with other groups or have the opportunity to learn from larger groups
     

  • The vital need for data collection to support funding applications, and to prove to different levels of government and donors the need for more resources

 

  • The need to change perceptions of the marginalized as well as professionals who choose to work in the non-profit sector
     

  • The strong need for a community-hub initiative through which space and resources could be shared, especially to help the smaller organizations

 

  • The power and risk of depending heavily on volunteers, and the importance of tracking the financial benefit of their unpaid hours worked 

 

  • A few agency frustrations were also raised, such as:

 

  • Donors running grant contests that involve public voting to choose an ultimate winner, akin to “Agency Hunger Games”

 

  • Donors wanting grants to only go to direct program costs and not to admin or salary costs - yet most programs cannot run without admin and staff

 

So, to summarize, we learnt that collaboration, co-ordination and increased communication among the service providers and deeper understanding by some donors would go a long way to improving services to the community.

 

The agencies want Rotary to continue arranging sharing-events such as this, and we are working to facilitate this happening. 

 

This is Rotary in Action.

 

Submitted by:

Anne Day