Executive Summary

Based on our on-going conversations with leaders of Canada's nonprofit and voluntary sector, there is growing agreement in the rise of professionalization of paid-staff. While no one is disputing that 'raising the bar' is a good thing, healthy discussions around what type of professionalization do we want? is becoming more of a focus.

Specialization is emerging for a number of reasons; increasingly competitive fundraising campaigns, burn-out of skilled volunteers, staff turn-over and the rapid growth of programming needed to meet urgent human needs, to name a few.

As the number of charities in Canada continues to proliferate, so to does the rise of people with certain skills who are able to help individual organizations fulfill their mission. For instance, Imagine Canada reports that the number of charities has doubled in the past 20 years from 42,000 to 84,000.

Upon reading Colleen Kelly's A People Lens: People are the Competitive Advantage of the Nonprofit Sector, a hypothesis emerged: "while most leaders in Canada's nonprofit and voluntary sector community agree that people - staff and volunteers - are an organization's most important asset, most post-secondary curriculum focus more so on other capabilities such as fundraising."

This hypothesis led Framework Foundation to conduct independent research of Canadian Post Secondary Institutions offering certificates, degrees or certifications within the nonprofit/charitable/social good space.

Two volunteer researchers examined 29 programs and 232 unique course offerings. The researchers read through each course description looking for explicit language that would allow the course to be tallied in one of the three categories below. For more information regarding the methodology, click the following link.

1. Money and/or Fundraising
2. Time and/or Staff-Volunteers
3. Internal Operations (e.g. IT) or External Skills (e.g. Advocacy)

The study revealed that approximately 27% of all courses researched explicitly explored time and human capital, including the management of paid and non-paid staff; while the remaining 73% explored either financial capital or internal/external capacity and operations. A complete summary can be found by clicking here.

Our initial analysis of the results suggests that course curriculum will need to be adapted significantly to teach the types of skills that 21st century NGOs will require to work better together for greater impact. A deeper analysis of the course offerings suggest the types of skills that are being taught will reinforce the proliferation and competitiveness in the sector at a time when the demand for volunteer time and donor dollars becomes scarcer.

These results will be shared with the institutions examined, plus other stakeholders. The goal is to engage in high quality discussions about re-envisioning the types of skills we need to teach in Canada's rapidly changing nonprofit and voluntary sector.