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How charities, non-profits are coping with COVID

Volunteer programs have changed, as have opportunities for fundraising
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The Antoine family in Kamloops is one of approximately 2,000 families supported by Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon annually | Submitted

This article was originally published in BIV Magazine: The Philanthropy Issue, which can be read here.

At the end of 2019, Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon (RMH BC) completed a feasibility study with BC Children’s Hospital.

The organization, which operates a 73-bedroom house in Shaughnessy that supports and houses sick children and their families, was looking at how it could grow to support more families.

“We were planning a great year of growth and opportunity, then COVID hit and so that certainly changed our direction,” explains RMH BC CEO Richard Pass. The organization now finds itself in a position where it still needs to grow to help address demand, but also needs to get through the year. COVID and changes around fundraising have made all of the above “quite challenging.”

“Seriously ill children – as it turns out – don’t care there’s a pandemic. They still need treatment, and they still need help and support, and the family still needs a place to stay,” says Pass.

The RMH BC house sits near BC Children’s, and supports about 2,000 families in B.C. and Yukon every year. About a third of the organization’s funding comes from signature events hosted by RMH BC or from third-party events – functions that have ranged from exotic car rallies to lemonade stands.

“Those events aren’t happening this year. Our events aren’t able to happen as well,” says Pass, who anticipates restrictions on gatherings and event cancellations will lead to a deficit of approximately $1.2 million this year.

“It really has been a challenge to look at different ways to try to raise funds.”

An early impact survey on how the pandemic has affected the province’s non-profit sector found that 74% of 1,119 respondents were already experiencing reduced revenue from fundraising back in April. Another 59% reported reduced revenue from earned income, according to No Immunity, a report prepared by Vantage Point in partnership with Vancouver Foundation and Victoria Foundation.

“The overall message, I think, is that donations are down. They’re down across the corporate sector, and they’re down across individuals and their ability to give. And that’s really the big impact on us as an organization, to continue to provide the care that we provide,” says Margaret McNeil, CEO of Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.

While some donors have been able to give more, others have had to withdraw their support.

“The other thing that we have found is that some organizations that traditionally support us have shifted their donations to organizations – because there’s many needy charities out there – that provide services like food security and housing security, really meeting those basic needs for people,” McNeil says.

But a pandemic also doesn’t change the fact that families with children who are facing life-threatening illnesses are vulnerable and need support. Canuck Place serves more than 818 children and families every year and adapted to the pandemic by dramatically increasing the amount of virtual care the organization provides, including online counselling and online bereavement groups.

“To be able to reach out to them in different ways – it was a big part of our change in how we deliver our operations,” McNeil says.

This fall, YWCA Metro Vancouver hosted its largest signature event virtually. It wasn’t as successful a fundraiser as past in-person iterations.

“We do an ask in the room with one or two of the women who have been using our programs, and our revenue from that was significantly lower,” explains Brenda Ulmer, vice-president of fund development and special events.

“I would say the reason being is because we weren’t gathering in person, we didn’t have the people we didn’t know in the room…. So we didn’t attract new individuals to become new donors.”

Like Canuck Place, YWCA Metro Vancouver had to shift some of its programs online to continue to help meet the needs of women and girls in the region. It has also had to cut back.

Pre-pandemic, the organization benefitted financially from the fact that it runs two social enterprises – YWCA Hotel Vancouver on Beatty Street and a health and fitness centre on Hornby Street. Revenue from both would typically grant the YWCA Metro Vancouver some financial flexibility, and allow it to address immediate needs fairly immediately.

Both ventures continue to operate after brief closures, but are seeing “significantly decreased interest and uptake,” says Ulmer.

“We’ve completely lost those,” she says. “That revenue impact is very large for us, and so we have all had to cut back.”

According to Imagine Canada, the number of Canadian charities reporting revenue declines is more than double the number that reported decreases over the entire course of the 2008-09 recession.

“The overall size of the revenue shift is staggering, with charities reporting that, on average, revenues have declined by almost a third – even accounting for charities with stable or increasing revenues,” the organization notes in its latest sector monitor report.

In May, 30% of charities expected revenue to remain the same over the following six months, while 45% expected revenue to worsen.

While not everyone is in a position to make a financial donation to a charitable organization, CanadaHelps – which supports the country’s 86,000 charities – has published a number of creative ways for Canadians to give to charities during the coronavirus crisis.

As we head into the giving season, Canadians can donate clothing or used goods, can purchase products from companies that donate a portion of their sales proceeds to a non-profit or can donate time and special skills to an organization in need.

Raising awareness of charities’ and non-profits’ services and efforts can also help those organizations in their pivots to digital programming and online fundraising.

This article was originally published in BIV Magazine: The Philanthropy Issue, which can be read here.

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@hayleywoodin