Funders have been wringing their hands for years over inability of NGO's to demonstrate smart growth practices that incorporate mergers, outsourced services, revenue generation models, and focus on outcomes over structure.

Recently, Joanne Laucius of the Ottawa Citizen painted a gloomy picture for Canada’s non-profits, quoting the prediction of the Wellesley Institute, a Toronto based think-tank, that as many as 12,000 of Canada’s non-profit groups will “fall victim the current economic downturn” because they refuse to change organizational structures and strategies.  Read full article.
 
I believe the economic downturn we are dealing with is a rich opportunity for transforming the global and economic assumptions which brought it about.   The social change sector knows the transformation is essential.  We know there will be great challenges and real suffering in the both the macro and micro transitions involved.  But, this may be our best chance for a relatively peaceful transformation to a more just and sustainable way of being for humans on this planet. 

 The Renewal model of bringing together the best practices of business and philanthropy, and our conscious and deliberate program of collaboration with independent and entrepreneurially minded organizations, was designed to enable innovation.  We hoped the model would increase our collective leverage, and the pace of change.  We hoped one plus one would equal five. It appears that the timing of this downturn may mean it equals three, but we have made progress.

Through Tides Canada, Hollyhock, Renewal2, the new Tides Renewal Centre, and many other initiatives, Renewal has built a long-range strategy that has resulted in the further development of social enterprise charities with earned revenues, real estate ownership, a rich vision and a strategy for systemic, viral and positive change, and program dynamism that is unique and profound.

Hard times call upon everyone engaged in social change, in whatever capacity, to find creative ways to turn the period of crisis into a period of transition toward a just and sustainable world.  This is a moment of great opportunity.  This is our moment.