September 2022

In our joint message last year, we discussed how 2020-21 was a year of firsts at CCVO. It was our first year in our roles as Board Chair and CEO, our first year offering a virtual speaker series, our first year without our annual Connections Conference and, at the forefront of it all, our first year operating during a pandemic.  

While 2021-22 was again another year of operating through the pandemic, it was also another a year of firsts for us. This past year, along with five partner organizations, we launched The Nonprofit Vote, a new collective home for nonprofit advocacy in Alberta, which hosted four public campaigns focused on community recovery and engagement in Municipal elections across the province. The Nonprofit Vote is a positive and effective tool for collective advocacy – providing a space for those from all sectors to learn about priorities to build community prosperity through Alberta’s nonprofits.  

This year we were also fortunate to be able to host our first-ever virtual Connections Conference. The two-day conference was well-received, with many attendees noting this was one of the most impactful conferences that CCVO has hosted. Thank you to our over 40 amazing presenters, supporters, attendees and staff for making it such a meaningful way to connect virtually. We look forward to creating the space for more opportunities in the coming year to bring us together for more insightful and thought-provoking conversations.  

While this was another year of firsts, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed – our deep appreciation and respect for Alberta’s nonprofits. Not only their ability to mobilize rapidly in support of our communities, but also their resilience in providing the level of support needed to address increasingly complex challenges over the past 30 months. CCVO is proud to be part of this sector and we will continue to emphasize the impacts of and on nonprofits, and advocate for crucial, substantial investment in our communities. Heading into the next year, we will continue to focus our strategy, brand, and engagement on advocating for and supporting the development of a strong provincial voice for nonprofits.

ADVOCACY

The Nonprofit Vote
The launch of The Nonprofit Vote, along with our partners CMHA Alberta, ECVO, Fuse Social, The Muttart Foundation, and United Way of Calgary and Area, was one of our biggest accomplishments of the past year. In early 2021, we hosted conversations with over 100 leaders across the province who expressed the need for a platform that supported a unified voice for the sector. The Nonprofit Vote is that platform – one that harnesses the voice and power of Albertans through advocacy support and shows the invaluable community impact and return on investment delivered by our nonprofit sector.

Community Recovery & Prosperity
We spent much of last year focused on advancing a collaborative path forward for community recovery – highlighted in our report Community Prosperity Now: A Blueprint for Community Recovery, supported by Calgary Foundation. The development of this work connected CCVO virtually with communities across Alberta, engaging leaders from the nonprofit, private and public sectors. Through research and conversations, we worked to raise awareness of the gap in our provincial recovery plan that focused strongly on economic recovery without proper supports for community recovery.  The leaders we spoke to strongly endorse our recommendation that the Government of Alberta direct a percentage of its recovery plan investment towards strategic community recovery supported by nonprofits.   

Alberta Budget 2022
CCVO submitted our pre-budget submission with a specific request for a Community Recovery Fund of $350 million targeted to four key priority areas. Following the budget release, CCVO released initial analysis and in-depth analysis of Budget 2022 for nonprofits. In the in-depth analysis, CCVO provided a breakdown of the specific increases and decreases made within each of the ministries by program to better understand the impact of this budget on the sector overall. We coupled this sense-making analysis with a Nonprofit Connections panel discussion featuring leaders in government relations and advocacy from across the province.

EVENTS & PROGRAMS

We were grateful to have the capacity and support over the past year to host multiple opportunities to convene virtually. We remain focused on creating more regular opportunities for engagement around topic that matter most and to opening space for nonprofit professionals to connect with and learn from one another. In addition to our first virtual Connections Conference and Nonprofit Connections speaker series we convened nonprofit professionals through our Communities of Practice, focused on human resources, evaluations, and communications. These groups provide a space for collaboration, learning, sharing of resources and experiences, opportunity to create new practices, and build capacity collectively.  

BOLAND SURVEY & REACH HIRE

CCVO is committed to building the human resource capacity of the sector by offering tools to support organizations’ recruitment and retention. One of the main goals within our 2021-24 strategic plan centres on growing and improving our current social enterprises, the Reach Hire job board and the Boland Survey of nonprofit compensation & benefits practices. To support enhanced user experience across these tools, CCVO has invested in an upgrade to the Reach Hire platform and undergone an in-depth review of the Boland Survey. We convened an HR Working Group comprising of human resource professionals with Boland Survey experience to provide specific insight, experience, and expertise regarding survey content and database functionality. We look forward to finding ways in which these tools, and potentially new ones, can support nonprofits in their human resources needs.

THANK YOU

CCVO is grateful to have the ability to advocate for the nonprofit sector and all of the organizations and people within it. Thank you to all those across the province who are working and volunteering to support our communities day in and day out. Your dedication, energy and compassion are what keep us moving forward.