This week we bid farewell to Paul Seale, Pillar’s Manager of Public Policy and Advocacy, who is moving on after five years of fierce advocacy, thoughtful community building, and an unwavering commitment to systems change.
Paul’s journey with Pillar began as the lead of the Membership portfolio, a role perfectly aligned with his natural gift for building relationships, and brought him to lead Pillar’s Policy file, where he could pursue his deep commitment to justice and collective action. His mission has always been clear—to find innovative ways to enable, support, and amplify the work of Pillar's diverse network of member organizations toward a more equitable and just society.
Paul arrived with an idea to focus Pillar’s growth and impact on increasing access and support for small and grassroots organizations. Though the pandemic slowed the effort, we know he takes great delight that his successors have followed that vision and have announced free membership for small organizations beginning in 2025.
For Paul, the pandemic meant redeployment to crisis communications, support for urgent advocacy efforts on behalf of the sector, and an assignment to help convene and coordinate the city’s volunteer-involved organizations on behalf of the London Recovery Network. After Pillar helped to connect the London Food Bank to RBC Place toward what’s become known as ‘the homeless lunch program,’ Paul was able to assemble interested volunteers to deliver meals by bike in the summer of 2020, identifying London’s then-Bicycle Mayor to lead the operation.
The unusual circumstances of the pandemic created other opportunities for Paul’s unique ability to identify and connect potential collaborators, like the team of businesses and nonprofits that formed the London-Middlesex Restaurant Support Fund. Working together for a few frantic weeks, the group moved $1000 micro-grants to three dozen area eateries for personal protective equipment and other pandemic related needs. “I know from my history in community-building that relationships grow at the speed of trust, but that doesn’t always mean slowly,” Paul explains. “If someone does me the honour of revealing what they care about, I try to remember that. Building this team was a matter of knowing who would say yes right away and never give up.”
Paul has continued to be a masterful bridge-builder, fostering connections between nonprofits, social enterprises, businesses, and government bodies. But all because he has a deep love and admiration for people as individuals, in all our suffering and all our brilliance. That love animates his 2021 New Years message to a network still struggling mightily with cascading crises, On the brokenness of things. And hope.
Paul’s commitment to helping people find their power also extends to a passion for fostering civic engagement. A co-founder of 123London, the group that brought ranked ballots to London’s 2018 municipal election, Paul created Project 51 in 2022 to help community organizations foster voting habits in people who rarely or never vote, a project Pillar hopes to continue.
Paul’s influence across the sector deepened when he transitioned fully to a policy leadership role at Pillar. In this capacity, his visionary mindset, ability to understand interconnected systems, and his skill in articulating complex ideas with clarity have re-defined and strengthened Pillar as a policy-driven network organization, deeply engaged in creating a more enabling environment for nonprofit impact.
Paul has been representing Pillar on national tables like the Federal Nonprofit Data Coalition, the Federal Funding Reform Working Group, and the Canadian Federation of Nonprofit Networks, where he brought Pillar into a pilot partnership with the nonprofit social enterprise Boland nonprofit compensation and benefits survey.
Provincially, he works with the Ontario Nonprofit Network’s Regional Partners and the Ontario Volunteer Centre Network. And locally, he identified opportunities to advance nonprofit workforce priorities through the Health and Homelessness Whole of Community Response and to promote volunteerism and engagement through the Age Friendly London Network and Child and Youth Network.
In search of information to fill a persistent nonprofit data deficit and track the health of the local sector, Paul forged an alliance with the Elgin Middlesex Oxford Workforce Planning and Development Board to daylight information from nonprofit employers captured in the annual regional Employer One survey. This year, with three years of data available, our organizations produced a longitudinal analysis, showing that regional nonprofits are still experiencing a human resources crisis that urgently requires investment.
Work like this, combined with persistent advocacy, have secured a commitment from Mayor Josh Morgan that Pillar will be at the table to help shape an overarching economic development plan, “because not-for-profits need to rightly take their place and recognition in the city as significant contributors to the economic prosperity of the City of London,” he told Pillar members at this year’s AGM.
In his final two years at Pillar, Paul mounted a #PolicyTalk series aimed at helping local organizations build and flex their policy muscles. This year’s series culminated in The Big Picture and The Bigger Picture, the first an event focused on data and storytelling, and the latter informing policy priorities for Pillar and partner Imagine Canada. Paul takes special pleasure in knowing that there are even more allies who “say yes right away and never give up,” joining in collective advocacy on issues from Canada Summer Jobs funding to the protection of London’s Community Grants program. In both cases, Pillar helped unite nearly three dozen sector leaders to co-sign advocacy letters and, in the last, Paul piloted the use of organizing tools, drawing participation from nearly 400 people.
As Paul moves forward, his impact at Pillar remains undeniable, shaping and supporting our mission, but also inspiring broader conversations around the role of nonprofits in contributing to vital and thriving communities. For Paul, that’s a personal mission, too, and he continues to shape the future of nonprofit advocacy in his role as instructor of Public Policy in the Not-for-Profit Context for Western Continuing Studies nonprofit management course.
In his time at Pillar, Paul has fostered an ecosystem of collaboration and innovation, leaving a mark on countless individuals and organizations. From building connections as a membership manager to building advocacy muscle as a policy lead, Paul’s legacy is one of integrity, thoughtfulness, and unwavering commitment to justice. As we bid farewell, we celebrate Paul’s contributions and look forward to seeing how his curiosity, compassion, and leadership will continue to shape the world.
Thank you, Paul, for showing us the power of words, action, and an unrelenting belief in a better future.