March On, Sheriffs
We’re unraveling the current situation with policing downtown, where the province has deployed 12 sheriffs to the already heavily policed Chinatown area and self-identifying “liberal” politicians are more openly pro-police than ever.
We also got to talk with an anonymous worker in the nonprofit sector, who shared some thought-provoking insights about the ways that organizations are set up to fail and why he will ultimately be leaving the sector.
All Roads Lead to Police Funding
🎵 Intro Music – “Not Alone” by Melafrique
Oumar Salifou (Host)
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Is This For Real? Thank you for tuning in to our first episode of 2023. We’ve had a bit of a hard time starting up this year and yeah, I’m just really happy and grateful to be back recording with you, Nicholas. How’s it going?
Nicholas (Producer)
Yeah, not too bad. I definitely, you know, tune out a little bit just around New Year and around like the start of the year. I think part of it is fatigue. Part of it is just, you know, getting busier with the new year. And once you kind of like stop paying close attention to some of this stuff that’s happening, or to the news, or you kind of get used to stuff being covered with maybe less intensity because that’s also kind of how it goes during that season too, it is tough to commit to getting back into it.
Because there is a stress that comes with that. There is a toxicity. And especially at the start of the year, there’s kind of a sense of dread. You know, we were talking earlier about just repeating cycles of the same news, same kinds of incidents, same tragedies. And this has happened, you know, every year. And yeah, it can just feel really bad to get into a new year thinking about that.
In 2023 so far, we’ve already seen tragic shootings, police murders. That can be pretty demoralizing, just that idea of okay, it’s another another year of this. How are we going to make it through that?
Oumar
Mm-hmm. That feeling of here we go again. It definitely sticks with me. And because what we’re talking about is violence and systems really lashing out and punishing people, it’s not very enjoyable. But I feel like not getting lost in individual events or the cycle is super important, and it teaches a lot of different lessons, at least for me, when I’m able to sit back for a little bit and then piece together everything that’s happened and see a little bit of why things are going the way that they’re going.
Nicholas
Yeah, for sure. So I guess in the spirit of not getting swept up in those same kind of news cycles this year, we wanted to take this episode to trace the journey up to where we are now, starting with the police. And you may have seen a bunch of news about police in recent weeks. You may have noticed a bit of a shift in sentiment of politicians becoming a lot more friendly or approving of police. You might have noticed news about the province getting more directly involved in policing.
Last Year’s Unprecedented Police Budget Increases
Nicholas
Taking it back to last year. This is something that we, I guess, really tried to hammer home throughout the last season as it was happening. But city council raised the police budget several times. We went into 2022 with a police budget of $384 million and ended the year with a police budget of $418.5 million.
On top of that, city council at the end of the year, during the budget discussions, approved another $77.6 million for police infrastructure, equipment and expenses over the next 3 years. So we’re coming into 2023 with this huge momentum of increasing police funding and liberal spending on police from our city council.
Oumar
And the messaging, I feel, is also a bit difficult because since 2020 there’s been a pretty solid acknowledgment from most liberal councillors and politicians generally that the root cause of the reasons why police exist — violence, disorder, a number of crimes — is poverty, is addiction, is mental illness, mental health. And all of those points are brought up pretty frequently when police are brought up as well, in budget talks to say that we need investment.
Deflecting to the Province on the “Root Causes” of Disorder
Oumar
And in Edmonton specifically, that cry for help has been placed at the feet of the province. Like we mentioned last season, the city has been deflecting to the province a lot on these responsibilities for social issues that are at the core of problems, but then throwing money at things that arguably make these problems much worse. At downtown business development that increases gentrification, and throwing more money at police, but also collaborating now with the province to increase funding for addictions and homelessness, specifically in Edmonton and Calgary.
This was announced in October, and the province’s approach to mental health and addictions has been very specific. And it doesn’t take a harm reduction approach, it takes a recovery first approach that further undermines the message that is often put out by, I’d say, our more “liberal” councillors around treating these basic social issues that are now basically being treated with more police.
Nicholas
Yeah, this is a really interesting dynamic because the city and province have kind of positioned themselves as diametrically opposed, at least ideologically, on how to address homelessness and mental illness and addiction, and the so-called social disorder downtown. Yet they kind of also need to, I don’t know, celebrate that funding as like a collaborative win or something.
So you definitely had a bit of this confusing moment in October where the province announced this $187 million towards addiction and homelessness supports throughout Alberta. And this was celebrated by the province and by local politicians as a big collaborative win. You know, you had Amarjeet Sohi, councillors who were the same people who were saying, “all we need is this funding from the province for addictions and homelessness, and that will solve the root causes of these issues and allow us to get to a spot where we can, you know, potentially defund the police or stop giving them these ridiculous budget increases.”
And then the funding came. And it was celebrated as a win because, like all politicians, they want to show that they’re doing something and take the wins that they can get to show people that they’re making progress and getting things done. Yet now they’re in this spot where they’ve gotten the funding, but it’s like in the hands of the province that isn’t obviously going to spend it on the things that they supposedly want the province to spend it on, that they’re saying is out of their jurisdiction.
Oumar
A recent change that we were talking about before is how a lot of the social issues umbrella, or social issues management is now dictated by police themselves. Where this connection between police becoming more politicized and police having more influence in things like data creation and tracking for social disorder or addictions, being the direct connection through third party organizations like HelpSeeker Technologies out of Calgary to really set the precedent for how anything is going to happen.
It’s really head-scratching to to think of how there’s the two sides of the same coin of having police being seen as a solution, but then having social services being seen as another solution when the money that’s being said that’s going into social services is just going into the police, and the police are dictating how social services are being managed, or at least the future of provincial spending and city spending. Pretty high amounts in that kind of sector.
So it doesn’t really make sense, especially given the messaging during elections and how things have turned out so far.
The Chosen Councillors
Nicholas
Mm-hmm. Yeah. The police definitely have a firm grasp on these levers of power. And I guess we see that pretty clearly in this idea of the Public Safety and Community Response Task Force, which was just formed in December as the province’s way of utilizing some of that $187 million that was set aside for addictions and homelessness supports.
And there were two Edmonton city councillors who were appointed to be on this task force. And wouldn’t know it, it’s two of the councillors who are the most vocally in support of police. You’ve got Tim Cartmell who is actually, to his credit, very ideologically consistent. He’s always — him and Karen Principe. They’re just like, “yeah, we don't care. We’re super strongly in support of police no matter what they do. And that’s just the line we’re sticking to.”
And then you’ve got Sarah Hamilton who, as you might remember back in 2020, said “march on, I’ll be in your ranks tonight. Black Lives Matter.” And then, throughout her term as a city councillor, proceeded to gaslight Edmontonians as she continuously voted for successive police budget increases. Sarah Hamilton is also on this Community Response Task force.
Oumar
The appointments of Sarah Hamilton and Tim Cartmell came as a surprise for the rest of council. And a lot of the maneuvering that has been done after by these two councilors has been done almost to make them stand aside or apart from the rest of council as a state of exception in a more liberal or, some might say, anti-police kind of council. That Cartmell and Hamilton are reasonable and are able to work with the province.
And the statement that was put out by Sarah Hamilton as a quote after her appointment in a position that, quite frankly, if it was a different situation, it might be the mayor or different collection of councillors that would be in this position. But because of the circumstances, we’re here now. And this statement says we have to “rise above our differences for the betterment of our city. It’s why we’re called to serve publicly. Our egos cannot get involved in the work.”
But by standing apart and by trying to create this difference in a council that has been different, maybe in wording or in kind of optics, but in voting and in budgeting and how money has moved has been almost completely similar, I think it just goes to show that a lot of it is really about ego. And making it seem like certain councillors are able to work with the province and enact this very conservative, very pro-police action, while others have to kind of catch up or be viewed as like separate from that, despite the fact that, again, we’ve seen a lot of support for police, both in an optics kind of sense, but also in where it matters the most, which is in the budget and in how resources are decided to be allocated and ultimately given out.
Edmonton as the Province Gone Wrong
Nicholas
Yeah, what you mention right now is really interesting because again, council voted over and over again last year to keep raising the police budget. They’ve demonstrated that they are very pro-police, very generous to police. There is almost no question about that. And if I were someone in the provincial government, I would definitely see that like, “oh, hey, we have a city council up in Edmonton that is entirely willing to continue voting for continuous budget increases on the police. That actually aligns well with our mandate of a police friendly or police driven approach to managing crime and disorder and drug use.”
But there’s also this interesting dynamic where the UCP are heading pretty soon into a provincial election. Currently, the UCP don’t have much of a foothold here in Edmonton. It’s pretty much just our main man, Kacey Madu up here. And it’s very useful for the UCP to cast Edmonton as their example of, you know, the province gone wrong. “We don’t have power in this area of the province, and look what happened.”
So from that sense it’s actually very useful. Although the UCP in policy is actually very aligned with the actions of our city council in continuing to raise the police budget, it’s very convenient for the UCP to continue to cast Edmonton and Edmonton city council as kind of an enemy, in order to show the rest of the province that they’re going to take the correct approach. A more, you know, tough on crime approach to this disorder.
Oumar
Part of the task force and one of the first decisions that they’ve made, and in line with what you were saying before Nicholas, is adding a dozen sheriffs that are going to be deployed in Edmonton’s downtown. This issue has continued to compound itself for a few years now, where originally after social disorder downtown, police redeployed and added more of their own people to solve that issue.
City council then stepped in again and decided to increase funding after it was requested for the Healthy Streets Operation Centre, specifically in Chinatown to address tragedy that was happening there. After that, there was even more investment happening from the province for the same issue to add in 12 sheriffs to, again, police the same areas, Chinatown and downtown Edmonton.
And this is all happening at the same time that we are having real open and honest admission that the root of these problems doesn’t lie with less or more policing. It lies with access to stable housing, access to mental health treatment, to addictions treatment, to even things like safe supply that aren’t really talked about or acknowledged in Alberta, but has been shown empirically to help people, to decrease the problems that we’re solving with more police.
So it is again, really head-scratching and very difficult to be in this position, because it’s the double juggling where the only solution that’s being given is more police. At the same time, we talk about other solutions, but we don’t invest nearly as much into them.
Nicholas
Yeah, exactly. It shows you how all roads end up leading back to police funding. And I think that is just a really good example of how firm of a grasp they have on those like levers of power, where the city can say that they’re giving more money to support the community through the Healthy Streets Operation Centre — “we’re giving more money to Chinatown. Look what they’ve been going through.” But actually that money is just going directly towards police. You know, the province can say “we’re putting more money towards homelessness and addiction supports.” But, it turns out that money is actually just going towards police.
Liberal Councillors are Grateful for More Police
Nicholas
I thought it was really interesting. There’s a tweet here, just after the announcement that the UCP, through this task force, was deploying 12 more sheriffs to downtown. This tweet is from Anne Stevenson, who has typically been one of the more… I don’t know, not anti-police, but she's been more hesitant or against the budget increases. I think there was one budget increase in particular where there were only like 3 councillors who voted against it. And I think she was one of them.
Gotta get the hashtag in there. And I’m just going to read one of the responses here from an Edmontonian that I think just sums it up really well.
So yeah, that sums it up really well. And I think what I mentioned earlier about the dynamic that the UCP finds themselves in approaching their upcoming election and how that makes it convenient for them to cast Edmonton as an enemy. That also triggers this response from local politicians where now they feel a need to prove that they aren’t the enemy, or they aren’t as they are being cast.
“No, when we’re not soft on crime, we’re not being antagonistic to the police. Look how friendly we are. Look how embracing we are of having more police downtown.” And I think there is also a bit of that dynamic that you mentioned earlier, Oumar, where it’s a bit awkward that these 2 councillors were appointed onto the [task force], specifically because they don’t really align ideologically with council.
But there’s almost a need amongst the rest of the council to still kind of awkwardly seem like they’re maintaining a unified front. So that’s where you get this kind of tone here from councillor Anne Stevenson, where it’s like, “oh yeah, I’m also in support of that. Cool, yeah.”
Oumar
Yeah. Despite running a campaign and having very open conversations about freezing or diverting some of the police budget in Edmonton, mayor Sohi is now making blog posts that have very specific, detailed points about how much money and investment has been put into increasing police resources and just making officers more available downtown.
And just to quote some of this from the blog post, it says:
To improve public safety, we have increased funding to the Edmonton Police Service by $7 million for 2023 and transferred them $22.3 million to make up for the provincial government’s reduction to Traffic Safety Automated Enforcement Revenue, provided $15.2 million to the Healthy Streets Operation Centre for 2023 and 2024, provided $3.9 million to the Transit Safety Plan, provided funding to increase cleaning in the downtown core as well as increase the number of police officer and peace officers presence in the area…
And this continues, I haven’t even gone through the entire listing here, but this is the same blog post that has a section at the beginning that again acknowledges the social determinants of disorder, that mentions the importance of tackling a mental health crisis and addictions crisis.
So it goes back to the confusion and, I guess, the importance to posture for the conservative province and to ditch previous promises or acknowledgments, or just be open about both things happening at the same time when there are very clear finite pools of money. And it’s clear that one issue is being neglected and the other one is being heavily, heavily invested in. And with an angle to also show the public and be very visible about that investment.
More People are Calling it Out
Nicholas
Yeah, one thing that has been, I guess kind of funny and a little bit hopeful to see is just some of the comments on Amarjeet Sohi’s Instagram here. On the same day as this announcement of the new sheriffs that the province was sending in, Sohi posted a photo with a bunch of transit officers and said “it was great to have coffee with officers from the Transit Community Action Teams and Edmonton Police Service this morning. The team has deployed 22 transit police officers and two sergeants who serve our transit network. I deeply appreciate the work of these teams and the role they play in addressing social disorder in our city. This is part of an evidence-based approach to enforcement that focuses on hotspots and increasing the visibility of officers.”
There’s a bunch of comments underneath this post kind of calling out the inaccuracy or even hypocrisy, you could say, in how it was written. And it looks like the post has also been edited and comments on it have also now been limited. So I guess there is a little bit of evidence there of perhaps walking something back or walking back part of the post as well as the Office of the Mayor’s tried and true approach of limiting critical engagement.
So yeah, I really encourage you to check out this post and look at the comments. I guess you won’t be able to leave one yourself, but you can certainly like the ones that you agree with. And I’m just going to read out one here by gladue_rachelle, which I think sums it up pretty well. It says:
The only evidence I see here is the high recidivism rates that these officers are contributing to by further marginalizing folks who already can’t afford to pay for the (often multiple) fines they receive from these lovely peace officers. The real evidence shows the perpetual harm caused by the increase of these very officers. Increase in officers does not equate to safer spaces. Instead, it equates to an increase in fines to folks who can’t and most won’t pay, and only further marginalizes folks. Folks who are frequently ticketed (ex. multiple fines for seeking shelter) now face more barriers making it more difficult to exit homelessness/poverty; this can be due to unpaid fines, not being able to get a job, etc.
Their main goal is to hand out fines (to folks who can’t pay for said fine), the more fines a person receives the better because it, “makes them arrestable so they can be banned from property” (quoted by a ‘lovely’ female PO).
The only evidence here, Sohi, is your ongoing support for the criminalization of homelessness. I’m disheartened.
Teams like this will keep this cycle ongoing. The evidence-based approaches needed are long-term solutions, affordable housing, SCS’s, shelters spaces, drop-in shelters, social sector job security to address worker burnout, MORE outreach positions with more services to refer folks to…
And then I guess there’s probably a second part of this comment, but you probably need to scroll a bit in order to see it because they have all been randomized. Yeah, I think that comment is pretty spot on. Something that’s especially encouraging is that Sohi’s kind of circle — you know, the people who are likely to follow him and see his posts and want to engage with him are typically more of the, I don’t know, like neoliberal types. And it’s encouraging to see the tide kind of shifting there, or I guess it getting ridiculous to a point where even they are willing to call it out.
Oumar
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think a lot of people saw how vocal a lot of politicians were about trying to change how some of the core societal problems are approached or solved, and moving away from heavy investment into policing. So to see what’s happened in 2023 so far, I think has a lot of people willing to go out and comment and say things that they may have not said before, which is nice to see.
Nicholas
So that’s basically the journey to where we got to the point that we are now with police. Just a real quick update, because I guess it took us longer to talk about that than we thought.
2022 saw city council increase the police budget multiple times. The province announced millions of dollars in funding for addiction and homelessness across Alberta. They formed this Public Safety and Community Response Task Force and appointed 2 of the most police-friendly city councillors onto it as a way of kind of getting around the city and also framing the Edmonton city council as kind of an enemy in order to posture ahead of the upcoming provincial election.
They then use that task force to deploy additional police into downtown with that very money that they supposedly committed to addictions and homelessness supports. And then the local politicians, especially those who ran on platforms of decreasing or freezing the police budget, are now activated in order to affirm their support for police and oppose how the UCP is trying to cast them.
And I think it’s getting to a point where more Edmontonians are recognizing that this is getting ridiculous and calling out local politicians, as we all should be.
How Nonprofits are Set Up to Fail – Interview
Oumar
With overlapping social crises happening across Edmonton and Canada, there is a lot more attention being paid to nonprofits and the charity sector, and mission statements and the purpose for the sector being driven to really solve or at least alleviate a lot of these problems.
So different examples like food banks, there are organizations that focus a lot on child care and making sure that there are options for communities to have access to sports, or healthy food, or parenting or child care programs. There are services for new immigrants and resettlement housing, but all under the larger umbrella of the nonprofit or charity sector.
So I was lucky enough to be able to talk to someone who’s been working for almost a decade in the sector and has a lot of very unique insights into the shortcomings and the inherent flaws that happen in our current system in Canada, specifically in the nonprofit sector.
I’m really excited to play this interview and share it with everyone. Please excuse my low energy for the interview. I promise that my questions are pretty fast, so you won’t have to hear me for very long. But I hope you enjoy the answers, and we’ll be back after that conversation.
🎵 Intro Music
Oumar
So I have a few notes from our last conversation, but I feel like it’s worth maybe starting with an intro, talking a little bit about how you might struggle with having this kind of conversation. Or maybe, what brought you to where you are today in the nonprofit sector, but also in your own personal life? What factors led you to this conversation today?
Nonprofit Worker
Well, I’m a person that has always wanted to have a career that centres around helping other people. Never have had a talent or interest in the sale of goods and services, and have always preferred to have employment in something much more people-focused and those sorts of things with a social mission behind it, essentially. And I have pursued that career, and it has been largely fulfilling. And it has been the way I have earned a living, and the way that I have gotten to the place where I am at now, which is generally good.
But the issues that I’ve seen with working in the nonprofit sector have only been magnified. The more that I continue to work and move up in these different institutions and it all kind of centres around the nonprofit sector not being equipped to do the things that it says it wants to do, which is very troubling if you’re a person who similarly goes into the sector to make a difference, to change the world.
And I say that non-derisively. I think it’s lovely that people want careers that have this deep social purpose, especially looking at the world the way it is right now. It needs help. But unfortunately, from what I’ve seen from the nonprofit sector or from a bunch of different levels of it, there is a definite limitation in what can be accomplished with this sort of framework, what can be accomplished within the sector, nearly across the board.
I haven’t worked at every institution, I haven’t worked at every organization, but they all have very similar systemic limitations and issues to them. And it makes it so that you often squander a lot of the resources, both the human resources and the actual resources that come into this sector, and they ultimately don’t reflect the outcomes that people would expect come out of this sector.
So I suppose the reason that I’m speaking with you is that, as things have gotten a lot harder socioeconomically in our city and as things like food bank shortages, and and Galen Weston getting in the news more and more often, houselessness, especially as it pertains to like the visibility of houselessness on things like public transit and the recent response of like policing as opposed to social services…
I just feel like things are coming to a head where this kind of needs to be said, that like the nonprofit sector is not going to be the thing that helps or saves or fixes these larger issues. It really does need to come from a more resourced, centralized, moneyed policy place. And in the meantime, the nonprofit sector kind of spins its wheels, tries its best. But ultimately, I don’t think it’s the fix that we’re kind of looking for right now.
Funding Challenges in the Nonprofit Sector
Oumar
You mentioned systemic issues in the sector. Do you want to touch on a few that you’ve experienced or things that you’ve worked through during your time in the sector?
Nonprofit Worker
Yeah, absolutely. Where to begin? So I suppose one of the big ones that I’m sure people outside of the nonprofit sector are at least passingly aware of is funding. Nonprofits ultimately are supposed to have some sort of purpose, attach them.
Well, I guess I’ll make a differentiation. Charitable organizations, which is a different thing according to the CRA, have a social mission attached to them. That’s why they’re able to gain their charitable status. And we often see those working towards different things like poverty reduction or poverty elimination, supporting of unhoused people, public safety, those sorts of things.
But the funding behind them never is enough to really address these issues, at least in the long term, because the way that nonprofits and charities are funded is often through funding that comes from the private sector — corporations and those sorts of things — and the public sector, through government grants programs and those streams of funding.
And there seems to be a chronic underfunding of nonprofits. It’s almost like a running gag, a meme at this point that the people that work at these organizations are pretty considerably underpaid when compared to people that are doing equivalent work in the private or public sector.
And then even when it comes to the operational funding, never mind the fact that you have to pay people. The funding that comes to do programs that would eliminate poverty, that would help vulnerable populations — it has strings, honestly. Depending on the funding source, you need to ensure that the program that you intend to run, the initiative that you intend to run with the funding that you receive is often stipulated by the funder as opposed to the organization.
Sometimes there is a connection there, and that’s great. You get to do the thing that your organization wants to do, the funder gets what they wanted, and that’s great. But oftentimes the power dynamic is just that the funder’s requirements for the funding trump what the organization wants to do, which means if the outcomes attached to the grants aren’t 1 to 1 what you actually need to do with the funding, unfortunately, you need to change your program.
And that could be a less effective program, or it could just be a program that is not actually required or needed by the community that you wish to serve at the time. Which again begs the question like, what is your organization doing if not addressing the need that you said that you would. And that’s a big part of it.
The other part of it is timelines, especially when it comes to funding from federal organizations — if you’re getting grant funding from any external source, this is often the case. Your funding is typically tied to a fiscal year and there are very few impactful long term social interventions that can be made on a fiscal schedule. If you are given 18 months to implement a program that is going to, by some measurable degree, reduce houselessness or support X number of children, youth, seniors, whatever.
Best of luck in doing that in any long term way. Best of luck in having a quantifiable way to even track your measurements of this. Perhaps quantitative information like number of people served by this funding isn’t even an effective way to measure the impact of what you are doing. There’s not a lot of leeway for depth of impact when it comes to funding like this.
And then again, 18 months or whatever amount of time you’re given, is simply not enough. Like we talk about social changes in terms of generations often. And very rarely — I haven’t seen it — will you receive funding that allows you to run a program for much more than 5 years, much less a generation.
We talk about the poverty cycle a lot in nonprofits, and it is a cycle that falls upon generational lines. I’ve never seen a program that runs for an entire generation. I’ve never seen a monitoring structure that runs for an entire generation and actually lets the program run its course, because funders have their own agendas and they have other things that they want to go and fund, and they cannot wait for an initiative like this to take effect and take hold and actually move the needle forward.
So it all just is kind of set up to fail in that way when it comes to the funding of it all. So that’s one systemic kind of aspect of it and that’s not even touching upon the staffing component of it.
Culture Issues in the Nonprofit Sector
Oumar
I guess now might be a good time to jump in with a question on that point about the staffing. What kind of culture do you think contributes to… you mentioned funding before as a systemic issue, but how does culture fit in, and how is that represented in what you were mentioning?
Nonprofit Worker
It’s funny in nonprofits, because from what I’ve seen, nonprofits are predominantly staffed and informed by people who would never see themselves as the recipients of the nonprofit’s outputs. So if you have a nonprofit that is meant to support marginalized children, let’s say low income families that need… maybe a simple one is nutritional support, food security.
In some instances, you can absolutely have a crossover where your staff are people who formerly or currently experience food insecurity in their own lives, and they do this for the love of that mission. There are many people who used to be in care — in foster care, in group homes, and those sorts of things — who then become social workers, because that’s what they want to do.
But very often what you’ll find is that people come to the nonprofit realm because they like the mission. But they have no experience, lived experience in the clients that they are meant to serve. So you get these organizations that are pretty well-to-do, middle class, predominantly white, or at least in this part of the world, predominantly white, serving BIPOC, low income, marginalized groups, that often even just geographically don’t live anywhere near them.
So if you have a nonprofit that has like a brick and mortar location set up in one part of the city, often the people that work there are going to commute in. And they won’t have any connections to the clients outside of a professional lens which, when you talk about culture, I think is very dangerous. Because now you are looking at a certain group of people only through the auspices of client-caregiver relationships. You kind of dehumanize these people, or at very least you have no context for what life for them is truly like, other than someone who is seeking a service from you.
And I don’t know what that looks like for the rest of your life. When you leave your workplace and you go to your own area of the city where there’s perhaps… you perhaps have a more homogenized friend group, you live in a community that does not experience the same issues or concerns as the one that you work in. It just creates that skew within the people that make up these organizations, and that has an absolute effect in informing the culture of these organizations.
So if you have a culture of the ways that you communicate, the ways that you hire and refer people to your organization, and it is all built in this very homogenous way that is not reflective of the clients of your organization, then I don’t think you’re going to hit the nail on the head when it comes to how you inform the outputs of your organization, because you have no idea. What is the need? I don’t know.
You might only be informed by theory, and you might only be informed by academic experts. Maybe you have selected a handful of models or academic theories of change and those sorts of things, and that’s how you run your organization. But those often become outdated, or didn’t take into account a client perspective in the first place.
So you get kind of stuck in culture and it doesn’t grow, it doesn’t adapt, and it’s just not reflective. And that’s kind of a bigger issue of nonprofits when it comes to culture, in hiring and these sorts of things. There isn’t enough of the people that are supposed to be the recipients, the benefactors of your service, actually facilitating the service, because nonprofits over the last bunch of years have also become incredibly bureaucratized and professionalized, where there’s lots of folks with very advanced degrees doing this job when, in reality, I think lots of nonprofits just want to create community, want to bring resources to bear for their clients.
Why does that require a master’s degree? Why does that require accreditation through the college of such and such? I don’t know. I think that we’ve just kind of built it that way. And again, it's just that extra layer of keeping these organizations from being as effective as I think they could be.
Does Government Have a Role to Play in Overseeing Nonprofits?
Oumar
This is especially difficult today given the situation with the economy in Canada and in Alberta, especially in Edmonton as well. We have the situation with Loblaws and the Weston family. There are a lot of pressures when it comes to wages being very stagnant for most people and the government not stepping in for any relief. And the relief that is given out is very means tested and there are a lot of hoops to jump through.
So now really seems like the time that this mission that a lot of organizations have is kind of being put to the test. And city hall, for example, in Edmonton has gone through and done an audit of End Poverty Edmonton, a local organization. And what’s come out of that kind of looking behind the curtain is that a lot of poor people just aren’t spoken to, don’t have representation in the process, and are kind of being dictated what should be proper policy. The ball isn’t really rolling.
And it’s a similar but different situation with “end homelessness” and how that was a big banner in politics for the past 20 years in the city. So with missions failing consistently, do you think government intervention to regulate the sector is the answer, or are there different answers? Because that kind of was the beginning of the conversation, what the answer might be.
What do you think is the answer, or at least moving in a direction that is closer to what the missions of a lot of these nonprofits are? A little of a rambly question, but yeah.
Nonprofit Worker
No, I get it. I would be hesitant to say that a government entity would be the solution, or at least oversight from government would be the solution. Because as I understand it, the government is a large part of why this structure is the way it is right now. Nonprofits used to very much be grassroots, local… like you wouldn’t even really call them nonprofits. Like we didn’t have this like business accreditation, those sorts of things.
It would literally be groups, largely non-secular groups, like things coming out of churches and those sorts of things that would see a need, a social need, get together, address the need, and then disband. And then throughout the mid to late 1900s, we saw this bureaucratization and this creation of like a proper capital-S Social sector.
And that was a pretty intentional move to offload a lot of these social missions and social aspects of what a government is meant to do, and put them on to nonprofits and charitable organizations. So they have built this infrastructure that we see right now that is just constantly not addressing the needs. So I wouldn’t I wouldn’t say that their oversight would be the thing that we need.
But like I had said earlier, I do think that we need a more centralized take here. Perhaps it is a closer partnership, or perhaps it is just a recognition that if we are truly trying to reach these missions, we need to think in a longer term lens. And although that is expensive and inconvenient, it has to happen.
Because you were talking about these missions earlier. A lot of these missions, at least as far as I can tell, are metaphorical at this point. I don’t think that there are many nonprofits that are truly looking to work themselves out of a job anymore. There are lots that have ingrained themselves in the way that the social sector even just functions.
There are lots of these backbone organizations that take in money directly from government and corporate donors and then disperse it to other nonprofits, like there’s a real sophisticated system of funding and recipients and marketing and communications at this point where it’s like, if we really did end poverty in a generation — I believe that was the mission of that organization — I don’t know. Would the board of directors like that? Would the staff at that organization…
Like, I can’t read their minds and know what their intentions are, but at least based on this last investigation, I suppose, or this audit that they were under, it doesn’t seem like they pointed their outputs in that direction. And it might seem like a no-brainer to me because I’ve just been in this work for so long and I do not have all the answers, but to say that you want to end poverty and then not speak to people in poverty I think tells me everything about how serious you are about achieving this mission.
So in terms of what the solution is, I guess I would have to say that it depends. I think a lot of the work that needs to happen or a lot of the work that social sectors wants to take on is very local and context-specific, and even depends on the nature of the need. Like if we’re talking about food security, well that is ideally a multi-level multi-sectoral solution that does absolutely involve the government and does implement things like caps on how much things cost.
Like, I mean, in my ideal situation, certain kinds of food are just free. You just give the food away because people need to eat. But at the very least, how come there isn’t a cap on how much rice could possibly be priced at. Or potatoes. Like these basic needs that people would immediately see a benefit from.
That is not something that a food bank can do. That is not something that food banks are even here for. They are the first to say that they can’t fix food insecurity. They are there as an aid. So it does require a more centralized government solution. But then there are other aspects and social issues that I think would require a much more complex solution. So things like… I don’t know, we can talk about housing.
There needs to be multi-level governmental communication in how we are actually going to bring housing to bear in some aspects. In some parts of the country, it is an issue of supply. There are literally not enough houses. In other places, that is not the case. It’s more about zoning and whether or not people are accepting of things like short term solutions, like shelters, or longer term solutions, like mixed housing units, even going up anywhere around them.
There’s urban planning at play. In the meantime, the social sector. Absolutely. We need to find the people that are looking for housing, communicate with them, work with them, and share what their needs are so that when they are housed, they are able to stay housed.
But yeah, it truly does depend. But the way that things are right now seemingly downloads a lot of the responsibility to a sector that was never set up to be able to fix these massive issues. So I guess it kind of results in a scapegoating effect of like, “the social sector isn’t doing enough” or, “the social sector is ineffective” or, “the social sector is irresponsible with its money.” In a vacuum, if you look at it you might be able to say, yeah, that’s all true. Yes, but what did you expect?
How else would we be able to address these issues single handedly? We simply can’t. And that is disheartening. I have hope that we can get to this place because I think, as you had said, things are getting worse. I think we’re going to have to at some point, and I hope we get there soon.
But right now, it seems as though we’re just kind of spinning our wheels. And any time there is a massive rise in social issues like we’re seeing right now, I don’t know… All of the things that seem to be approved pretty quickly involve policing. I mean, we’re entering a 15-week sheriff thing in the city of Edmonton here. We’re just going to have more Alberta sheriffs walking the streets to address safety concerns?
I don’t know what a sheriff is going to do to help people that live in an encampment. I have a pretty good idea of what they’re going to do. I don’t think it’s going to be very helpful. But that’s what we get when clearly the need is a bit more nuanced and requires a lot less police.
But I don’t know. We need, I guess, political will. Political and economic will, because it is going to cost money. It is going to fundamentally challenge the ways that capital works in the city. What happens when everyone can actually afford food? What happens when we de-commodify at least a little bit of the housing market to make it so that people can get off of that ground level and actually have some stability to build other aspects of their life out?
I don’t know. It sounds awesome for me, but I know there are lots of people that have vested interests in maybe not seeing that come to bear.
The Future of Nonprofits
Oumar
A very good answer. And I feel like the vested interest in keeping a worsening situation going is definitely something I think we’re going to talk about more with the podcast. But where do you see yourself going with the sector at least?
Do you feel like things are going to continue to grow or needs are going to increase while the sector stagnates? Or do you think that lessons are being learned and things are being adapted to better serve people? But like you said before, it's kind of a planned obsolescence, sort of a planned futility. So is there anything that brings you hope, or where do you kind of see things going in your own kind of personal direction?
Nonprofit Worker
Well, personal direction? I am probably going to leave the sector. It is a lot to go to a job where you want to do well, you want to make social impact, and you want to help the people in and around your community. But between a lack of funding, between a bureaucratic structure, this, that and the third, it is very difficult to continue to do that just again and again and again when you don’t see that impact actually come to bear.
And then also on top of that, you know that some of the most impactful changes that can be made, at least on an individual level, are outside of conventional charity, outside of conventional nonprofits, in more things like mutual aid. Being able to just take whatever resources you and your community can amass, no bureaucracy involved, just the collection of resources, identifying where the needs are, dispersing those resources.
There’s no means testing. There is no administrative overhead, there is no communication or marketing that needs to be done as part of this. You just see the need and you fill the neet. That seems like the way. It seems like the way that individuals can more effectively and directly meet the needs of the people in their community without involving these massive apparatuses as part of the process.
So that's kind of my personal thing. Like I think that I might be better served in a different sector, in whatever that looks like with perhaps a bit more structure to it, more funding attached to it. You may or may not be doing something that has a very social outcome to it, but at the very least, if you yourself are more secure and you still keep that intention to contribute to social benefits, you can use your security and your resources and your privilege to help the people around in your community.
I’m not trying to say that this is an individualistic exercise, but we need individuals who are well, who are not burnt out, who are secure financially to help everyone, because if you are also struggling, it’s very hard to help anyone. You know? So that’s me personally.
As far as the sector goes, I don’t know. I am leaning towards being a bit pessimistic and saying that… Earlier, to what you had said. Like the sector, the structures around it aren’t going to change overnight. The best hope that we could have would be like an injection of public funding to address these rising social needs and then maybe that would help.
But I think a lot of the folks that work in the sector have been on the front lines, so to speak, of this social crisis throughout the entire COVID pandemic and before that. And they’re getting tired. We’re also just seeing that there is a generational gap in a lot of nonprofits. Like the directorial and executive directors of a lot of nonprofits are older and reaching retirement age. And then there’s a kind of large gap between them and the newer staff that are involved in these organizations. And what is that gap going to look like in terms of leadership?
I don’t know. It’s not looking great. It might lead to some pretty, for lack of a better term, messy transitions. So I’m not sure what that’s going to end up looking like. And if we’re talking about private funding coming into these organizations, I have seen nothing but private corporations laying people off, raising their prices, whether they need to or just because they wanted to. And I think that’s going to be reflected in their donations to charities.
More organizations are also trying to create their own charities, like lots of private sectors, private organizations now have charitable foundations attached to them that ensure that more of their money stays in their control and can go towards the outcomes that they want. Which, I mean I’m all for anything that is going to help people in need. I just don’t trust private organizations that profit off the system as it is to be able to fix the system.
So to answer your question: personally, I think I need to make my leave from the sector. And system wide, I have no idea but it doesn’t look great.
Oumar
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Is there anything else that you want to add that we didn’t touch on or that you think listeners should know?
Nonprofit Worker
Yeah, just one thing I want to add, because I want to ensure the listener knows that I’m trying to come from a constructive place. I have enjoyed a career in the nonprofit sector, in the social sector for many years, and it has been inclusive of some of the best jobs that I have ever had and some of the best experiences I’ve ever had.
And that isn’t just from a personal perspective, but I really do think that in my time here and there, I have been able to witness some actual changes — in individuals, very seldomly on a systemic level. But some of the experiences and the people that I have met along this way have been lifelong, life-altering experiences, and they have been wonderful.
But again, talking about that systemic level. The reason that I want to kind of highlight the sector is because I think systemically it is not what we need. I think nonprofits, by and large, are making the most of a bad situation in terms of where they are situated in the economy, how they are funded, their access to resources, staffing, etc. And it’s not always the fault of the organization itself for not being able to meet those needs. In fact, if we’re talking on a system wide level, it often can’t be the fault of the organization for failing to meet those needs.
But I just think that we need a critical reassessment of the way that these organizations are funded, structured, and how they play their role and what the governments, particularly government bodies, can do to actually address the needs, the missions that these organizations set out to do.
Because as things get more difficult, and as we see rising costs of living across everything, it is simply not enough to expect that the donations made typically around the holidays to your nonprofit of choice are going to keep this thing afloat. Because they’re not. And that is what I’m hoping is the takeaway of this conversation. Not to vilify the sector or the organizations within the sector, but to optimize. We just need to collectively do better.
Serving Generational Timelines – Interview Debrief
🎵 Intro Music
Nicholas
All right. Welcome back. I think that was a really great interview, Oumar. What are maybe some of your thoughts listening back to that?
Oumar
Yeah, one thing I definitely wish I approached differently in my questioning at the end was that I kind of asked a question that was mostly focused on assuming that there is a solution to some of the built-in obsolescence for the nonprofit sector and that that solution might be found in more government regulation or oversight.
But I think that approach to a question is almost misguided, because if there was a solution, I think there would be some action around it, or at least people would be mobilizing or talking about it more. But that doesn’t necessarily exist. So I think asking questions from a space of more openness, and acknowledging that there is an answer, and trying to think of alternatives or things that can subvert our current either nonprofit system or political system, I think is more constructive and I think brings out better answers or more creative kinds of answers.
But outside of that, I think it was really eye-opening and interesting to have a better understanding of the bureaucracy. But then also the problems that are very inherent with an entire industry that I think really has a very strong and very positive image, but I think really holds back progress in a lot of ways.
Nicholas
Yeah, gotcha. So I guess with that in mind, what are some questions that you would want to pose to, let’s say, other people working in the nonprofit sector, or just leave people with who are listening?
Oumar
I think one thing is how can work be transformed to serve generational timelines, and timelines that are more honest and more connected to the struggles and experiences that people face and how needs are created to begin with? How can attention be diverted towards thinking at that scale or funding even at that scale and level? I think that definitely piqued my interest.
And I think also really decentralizing the sector and having things be less bureaucratic, and more at a community level and more of a local level, I think definitely interests me. And kind of asking more questions of how possible is it to deconstruct or at least remove the focus away from organizations that have been built up for, in some cases, for decades, for very long periods of time.
And a culture too, that I think prioritizes things like what was mentioned in the interview, donating during Christmas time being a tradition and donating to specific places as well. How can that attention and culture be diverted into more useful and tangible ways to solve these long term problems?
And how does the government, large funders — how do they play a role in that kind of change? Some difficult questions, some that are very up in the air, but things I think would be interesting to hear more about.
Thank you for listening to our episode today. And I want to also thank Patreon supporters for supporting the podcasts on that platform. You can find us on social media, on Twitter and Instagram. And if you have any comments or you want to reach out to me personally, my email is oumar@isthisforreal.ca. Thanks for listening!
