Leadership in Focus: Michael Hall
By Elisa Birnbaum
April 6, 2009
This month in our Leadership in Focus series we feature Dr. Michael Hall, vice president of research at Imagine Canada. Having dedicated the past 14 years of his life to the nonprofit sector, Michael initiated the research program at the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy (now Imagine Canada). A leader in the field and currently focused on building a body of knowledge on Canada's charitable and nonprofit sector and the ways in which Canadians support their communities, Michael's work is especially timely considering the current economic challenges the sector now faces.
CharityVillage: Canada's nonprofit sector is one of the largest in the world and contributes substantially to the GDP, yet it seems many people know very little about it. In your opinion, what is the disconnect?
Michael Hall: I agree. I don't think Canadians know enough about the nonprofit sector in this country, and I don't think many Canadians would appreciate what a tremendous asset we've created. But the whys are a little bit harder to understand. I think part of it is because a lot of what we do is in the area of providing services and programs; it's hard to actually see the impact of the organizations. It's not like the manufacturing industry, for example. People often don't realize that it's charities and nonprofits that are providing the bulk of social and human services in our communities because the model in Canada is really for governments to contract out services to charities and nonprofits. So services are delivered, but people don't really know whether an organization is a charity or not. In fact, you often can't really tell; a building looks just like any building and when you walk in people look the same. There's nothing that would really differentiate people serving in the nonprofit sector from others.
I also think that we just take it for granted; it's so much a part of Canadian life. You can't see it unless you hold it up against a country that doesn't have as well-developed nonprofit sector that we have, one that provides sports and recreation in our communities, that has the cultural institutions, the educational opportunities, etc. When you grow up with it, it's like the air you breathe and water you drink. You don't ever ask yourself where does the air come from? How important is it to what I do? When, in fact, it's critical.
And then I guess there's a little bit of a stereotype. A lot of services come from very old models of charity and when the public hears the word charity, they tend to think it's organizations run by volunteers, with very little resources, in basements of churches etc. They don't appreciate that some of our organizations are very sophisticated and work in a very professional way to meet our services.
CV: What are the current research priorities at Imagine?
MH: Right now we're focusing on the economy, trying to get a better handle on what's happening with it and its impact on nonprofits and charities. It's quite a challenge, though, because we really don't have the research infrastructure to be able to track the impact of the economy. The best way to understand the impact is to understand how the sector was performing before the economy got hit. But we just don't have that kind of investment and knowledge in the sector that would enable us to have a good sense. So, at the end of 2007, we didn't have a great picture of how well the sector was doing in good times, which means we're ill-prepared to fully understand the impact of the economy now.
That being said, we're working to try and figure out how best to monitor the situation. Anecdotally, we're hearing many stories. It's quite obvious that if foundations were invested in the market, their investments have been hurt. We're hearing foundations are reducing their giving by necessity because of poor performance in the markets. And we know a lot of the sector relies on earned revenue from sales of good and services. Anytime spending tightens up, it'll have an impact on the sector.
"Many governments don't seem to recognize the important role that charities and nonprofits have in the economy and are, therefore, overlooking them." |
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Governments are looking to channel money to what they think will stimulate the economy. And many governments don't seem to recognize the important role that charities and nonprofits have in the economy and are, therefore, overlooking them. But what we're concerned about is that in the efforts to find funding to support other stimulus activities, they may start to eat into funding already going to the sector.
On the donations side, we certainly don't expect growth to continue. We've had enormous, incredible growth in the past 20 years. But if donors respond to the economy the same way they did in the last recession, we would expect that growth to disappear. In the past, we haven't seen that giving declines during a recession but what we have seen is that it stops growing. So if the past is any prediction of the future, that's what we're expecting on the donor side.
Any way you look at it, it looks like challenging times for organizations in the community. So we're actively exploring ways to get a good picture of this. And that, of course, requires more than simply collecting stories, though they are helpful to illustrate the problem. But we'd love to have a real sound assessment of just what the impact is. More importantly, we'd love to know what kinds of organizations are most vulnerable. That's the kind of intelligence we need to be able to shore up those weaker parts of the charitable sector.
CV: What type of information and research about the sector do we need more of? Where are the knowledge gaps?
MH: Well I can tell you right now, faced with an economic crisis, we'd love to have research that tells us what the state of Canada's charitable and nonprofit sector is on an ongoing basis. That way we would know what the impact is when things change. We did a major study of the charitable and nonprofit sector with the Government of Canada in 2000 and, for the first time, we understood how many organizations there were, where they got their resources, and what challenges they were facing fulfilling their missions. It was a benchmark study that also allowed us to fully understand just what a huge sector we have in Canada relative to other countries. That was groundbreaking work, but unfortunately we haven't been able to get the resources to repeat that kind of an exercise. So here we are now with a major economic impact and we don't have the basis to really track it. And that's unfortunate. If you look at other sectors in the economy, for example the auto or manufacturing industry, there's been a pretty good investment in collecting intelligence about the health of those industries. But there's very little invested in this country to understand and monitor the health of our charities and nonprofit organizations.
CV: Who's responsible for that, the governments? Why do you think they're not doing enough to track it; is it simply not regarded as seriously?
MH: Yes. There's a lot of government activity tracking the for-profit side of the economy. So, I would say that's absolutely the case. If you look at Statistics Canada's own work on the contribution of the nonprofit sector to Canada's economy, we contribute twice the economic impact of the automotive industry. And just look at the attention given to the automotive industry recently. And not only now but in the past there have been a number of major economic initiatives to support that industry in Canada. We have never heard of an initiative to support the nonprofit sector or to look at ways of shoring up the nonprofit sector, or encouraging its growth. It's striking by its absence, particularly when you look at its economic contribution and realize that it's such a key sector economically. And that's not even counting the social contributions, which far outstrip the economic ones.
CV: Are you involved with the CSGVP (Canada Survey of Giving Volunteering and Participating 2004)? When will we see another one?
MH: The survey is developed in the sector and is now conducted by Statistics Canada. Imagine Canada is one of the partners on that initiative, along with Volunteer Canada. The data has been collected for the 2007 version of the survey and it's in the process of being analyzed. I'm hoping there will be a report soon, hopefully before the fall.
CV: In light of Imagine Canada's recent event, New Approaches for New Economic Times, can you provide an example of a new approach the sector can adopt to effectively respond to the economic situation?
MH: First of all, our interest in the sector is not to support it for the sake of keeping organizations running. It's to deliver services to the community and to keep the quality of life we've come to enjoy vibrant. So I think what's missing in all of our approaches in this country in responding to the economic situation is the role of charities and nonprofits, both as economic players and as suppliers of key services to support people who are put into difficulty because of the economy. We're missing charities and nonprofits at the table with business and government, developing strategies to respond to the economic situation. Business and government are talking very actively but I don't see a lot of engagement with the charitable and nonprofit sector, which is kind of surprising because they are, in fact, a big part of the social safety net for those who are in trouble. They are major economic players and also embedded in their communities, and one of the first to really have a local intelligence about what's happening on the ground. So we're missing all of these assets that we can bring to the table to try and solve the issue.
On a micro level, there are also lots of things individual organizations can do to respond to the situation, but they're not necessarily new. Things like sharing services, sharing office space, etc. We know charities have been exploring those [things] and will continue to do so. But I think the major question for me when we're trying to address the economic issues in our communities across Canada is why the nonprofit sector is not sitting at that table helping solve the problem.
CV: What do you see as the main challenges facing the sector today? Have they evolved over the years?
MH: I don't think the challenges facing the sector today are much different from the ones they faced in the past. They depend quite a bit on the types of things you're trying to do as an organization. When we look at the sector, it's helpful to think of two big groups, one that's delivering services in areas like health, education, social services, often with government support and paid staff. And then there are groups providing expressive functions - opportunities for Canadians to explore their talents and interests, like arts and culture, sports and recreation, and religion. The latter rely mostly on volunteers. Half the nonprofit sector has no paid staff. Their challenge is one of engaging people in their cause, getting volunteers at the table. Whereas the challenge of the former is often around money, not necessarily having more but having good quality money that I would equate with stable funding sources and being able to understand, on a long-term basis, what the viability of an organization is and to do some long-term planning. As we know, most organizations that get external funding from government and foundations are plagued by project funding that is short-term in nature and that changes year after year and leaves an organization with no basis to develop longer-term strategies to deal with issues in their communities. So those challenges have been around for some time and I think they're just exacerbated with the current economy.
More about Michael... |
First nonprofit job: Worked in a hospital
Education: PhD in social psychology
Annual budget of the organization he works for: $3 million
Number of employees: 26
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CV: Do you think the nonprofit sector faces challenges that differ from those faced in other sectors?
MH: I've already spoken to some of them. If you're an organization delivering services and relying on external funding, there's the challenge of not having stable funding sources. Businesses, generally, over the long term, have better stability. At least they know where revenues are coming from and how they're being obtained. Definitely more so than an organization that's working on delivering government-funded services when those funding envelopes are very short-term, change from time to time, and don't allow them to offer long-term employment for staff, leading to a lot of turnover. Few businesses would rely on a lot of contract staff; they know they need stable human and financial capital. Many nonprofits really struggle around stability of financial capital, which means their human capital is unstable and that makes it hard to perform. Lastly, trying to deal with outmoded public perceptions about what these organizations are and do requires nonprofits to work a little bit harder to get the recognition they may need.
CV: Do you have any mentors?
MH: Vic Murray would be someone who's been a mentor to me over the years, though there's been a lot of people who have really helped me over the years.
CV: Do you have any practical advice on leadership?
MH: It's important to have clarity of goals and vision, to understand that sometimes you need to take the long-term way to get where you're going, and the ability to articulate and communicate where you want to go to the people you're engaged with.
CV: Any books or resources on leadership you can recommend?
MH: I would suggest Vic Murray's book, The Management of Non-Profit and Charitable Organizations in Canada, one of few Canadian resources. And I've also been reading Getting to Maybe by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton, which offers some interesting perspectives.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.
Next week:
Maintaining relationships with funders, even when there is no money to be had.
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