Pillar Nonprofit Network Public Policy Priorities, Advocacy & Actions 2021 - 2023
Our Strategy | Strategic Plan Alignment | 2021 - 2023 Public Policy Priorities and Actions | Pillar's Submissions | Pillar Policy Talk Sessions & Reports
Our Strategy
Pillar’s public policy strategy is grounded in organizing around issues to help improve the social impact sector through a heightened equity lens and to encourage a regulatory environment and broader culture that enables the sector to operate with the greatest impact. We look to our network-informed strategic plan to ground our areas of focus and to the truth that capacity building for nonprofits can no longer exist without systems transformation and issues-based advocacy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and amplified hard truths that our members and communities have long known to be true. The systems of oppression (such as colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy) that our society is built upon are the cause of unequal access to resources and rights for historically marginalized people. These groups, who already faced barriers such as unequal access to employment, healthcare, housing, resource stability, environmental racism or other forms of oppression, found their outcomes in these areas worsened by the effects of the pandemic. We have heard of these realities globally and from our own members of the communities they serve.
While the breadth and scope of institutions in the impact sector is diverse, historically marginalized groups often look to the sector to meet their needs and to advocate for improved outcomes for their communities. Many sector organizations who were already facing resource challenges have been stretched even further in the wake of COVID putting a strain on employees and communities served. For these reasons, we must call for systems change in both the external and internal environment of the impact sector. We believe it is time to turn our attention towards systems level issues of racial equity, environmental sustainability and building an equitable economy that serves the many, not the few.
It starts with us
While we focus on the external systems in our society, we must also re-evaluate the foundations of the sector itself from funding structures to how we uphold systems of oppression in our own operations. We know there are many problems to be solved within the sector such as a lack of diversity in staffing and ongoing issues of inadequate community consultation in service providing organizations. We have work to do to ensure that our sector reflects the diversity of the local community and country more broadly, and we ground our work in radical accountability for our own actions.
Impact sector organizations cannot be neutral about the systemic barriers to a just, equitable, and green recovery; taking a stand on systemic issues and following through on those commitments is a matter of building and keeping trust with the communities we serve. For nonprofits, charities and social enterprises to be most effective, we need to fix the root causes that perpetuate inequities, in our communities, in our network, and in our teams.
Strategic Plan Alignment
Pillar’s public policy priorities and actions are aligned with the themes and priorities of our 2021-2023 Strategic Plan:
Equity in Action
To acknowledge our shared complicity in anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and all intersecting oppressions, and drive ourselves and our network to action.
Change in Action
To work together across sectors and shift inequitable structures and systems to create transformational change.
Recovery in Action
To promote an equitable and sustainable recovery that addresses the inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This moment calls for us to move forward as an organization and as a sector and do all we can to shift the systems that maintain inequities, many of which have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. At a societal level we are all being called upon to confront problems of pandemic proportions, including colonization and anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, gender inequities, oppression and a climate emergency.
2021 - 2023 Public Policy Priorities and Actions
The following represents Pillar Nonprofit Network’s current focus in terms of proactive policy advocacy. We bring a cross sector approach of engaging nonprofits, social enterprise, business and government to this work. Our network, Public Policy & Government Relations Committee, Board and Executive Director set public policy direction and priority areas. Our key policy priorities are sector-focused, rather than issues-focused. The issues that Pillar focuses on are sector wide and affect more than one sub-sector (e.g. arts, education, environment, faith, health, heritage, social services, sports, and volunteerism/philanthropy).
Local/Regional Priorities
- Advocate for our network and raise awareness about its needs and how we can contribute to an equitable and sustainable recovery that addresses the inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Advocate for an Inclusive Economy, including measures that support Decent Work for Nonprofits.
- Advocate for policy that advances environmental sustainability in our network and community (e.g. London Environmental Network - Green Economic Recovery)
- Advocate for social innovation, social enterprise and social finance as tools for equity, change and recovery in action.
- Advocate for structural changes to address institutional forms of oppression showing up in funding mechanisms.
Provincial Priorities
- Advocate for our network and raise awareness about its needs and how we can contribute to an equitable and sustainable recovery that addresses the inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic across the three pillars.
- Advocate for recovery supports for nonprofits and social enterprises and the role of business in rebuilding our communities.
- Advocate for an Inclusive Economy, including measures that support Decent Work for Nonprofits, social enterprise, social finance, community-owned structures and social procurement.
- Advocate for social innovation, social enterprise and social finance as tools for equity, change and recovery in action.
- Advocate for an enabling regulatory environment.
- Advocate for structural changes to address institutional forms of oppression showing up in funding mechanisms.
NOTE: Pillar is an active member of Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) and we work collaboratively to move forward shared policy priorities.
National Priorities
- Advocate for our network and raise awareness about its needs and how we can contribute to an equitable and sustainable recovery that addresses the inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Advocacy for an equitable recovery for all (e.g. Just Recovery)
- Advocate for an enabling regulatory environment (e.g. Funding Reform)
- Advocate for social innovation, social enterprise and social finance as tools for equity, change and recovery in action.
- Advocate for structural changes to address institutional forms of oppression showing up in funding mechanisms.
NOTE: Pillar is an active member of Imagine Canada and we work collaboratively to move forward shared policy priorities, including work on federal funding reform.
Key Networks
Municipal
- London Community Recovery Network
- Local Funders Table
- London Middlesex Local Immigration Partnership
- Financial Empowerment Steering Committee
- Child and Youth Network/Age Friendly Network London Basic Needs & Essential Skills Working Group
- Child and Youth Network/Age Friendly Network London Inclusion & Belonging Working Group
Provincial
- Ontario Nonprofit Network
- Ontario Volunteer Centre Network
Federal
- Canadian Federation of Nonprofit Networks
- Equitable Recovery Collective
- Imagine Canada
- National Impact Investment Practitioners Table
- Volunteer Canada
- Federal Nonprofit Data Coalition
- Federal Funding Reform Working Group
Pillar's Recent Submissions to Government
Pillar Policy Talk Sessions & Reports
After the significant shift of resources to emergent crises from 2020-2022, Pillar Nonprofit Network is keen to co-design with network a public policy program that builds the capacity of our member organizations and community in public policy and advocacy for impact. Pillar recognizes that one of the strengths of the nonprofit sector is our ability to collaborate and share best practices. Accordingly, it is important that we hold space for our members to discuss policy so they can develop tools, partnerships, and strategies that will help further their missions.
On June 28, 2023, we hosted an in-person #PolicyChat, and encouraged people from our member organizations and the community at large to join the conversation. In this gathering, we used the City's Multi-Year Budget process as a container for identifying our shared priorities and co-creating the way we can work together to achieve our goals. As we have in the past, we reported back to the attendees, the membership, and the community what arose from that meeting, including further opportunities for engagement, including a second event scheduled for Thursday, August 10. Read the report from the June 28 event: Building the Plane While we're on the Runway: A Report on Pillar's #PolicyTalk June 2023. And sign up now to join the conversation August 10: #PolicyTalk: Defining Shared Goals.
With this work, we hope to forward, but re-focus, the capacity-building work that we've been engaged in fore years, most notably in a series of three policy conversations in 2019
- Navigating the New Economic Realities was hosted by Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN), Pillar Nonprofit Network, United Way Elgin-Middlesex, and London Community Foundation on June 18, 2019 with 88 participants. At that event we discussed the current climate of uncertainty created by the 2019 Budget and Expenditure Estimates and heard how organizations can engage in policy development and advocacy efforts. To check out this report click here.
- Beyond the Talk, Getting to Action was created as a follow-up discussion so we could start to learn from one another with 35 participants. But this dialogue isn’t limited to one event; we can take our conversation online. Pillar members are encouraged to seek advice, share expertise, and exchange ideas with like minded organizations right here on Pillar’s online community. To check out the report click here.
- Future Forward Thinking was a third Policy Conversation was hosted on September 30, 2019 with 29 participants. Andrew Chunilall, CEO of Community Foundations of Canada and Vinod Rajaskeran, Future of Good, discussed Future Forward Thinking and the trends and shifts we need to be paying attention to as a community as well as the actions we can take to prepare for these anticipated changes. To check out this report click here.