I have been thinking of my Dad a fair amount lately. It has been 8+ years since he died – he would have been 76 today. Dad loved a good debate. He raised me to constantly seeking new knowledge, to read everything, to work to deepen my understanding of the world, and to question.
Anyone who ever had dinner at a table with my father knows that good debate was at least as important as the food (and dad was a foodie). Politics were most definitely discussed at the Simpson dinner table. I don’t think there was ever a topic that was off limits – though there were times when my mother (considerably less enthusiastic about debate) would simply pick up and leave. I have fond memories of our dinner debates, but this isn’t to say they didn’t at times get out of hand. We had a strategy for that though – strategically issued dinner invitations to friends and neighbours who served as buffers, helping to keep us (somewhat) civil.
One of the ongoing debates I had with my dad, was over my choice of career path and the value of the nonprofit sector. He thought I should be a banker, a “merchant banker” specifically. I didn’t. Had I wanted to go that route, I could have. An undergraduate degree in Economics, an MBA, jobs within development finance institutions and more recently a credit union. If I wanted to be a banker, the opportunities were certainly there for me. But I chose to work for, and with, nonprofit organizations, something he repeatedly told me was wasting my education. He was wrong.
The fact of the matter is, he didn’t see value in the nonprofit sector. He was wrong. He felt that the nonprofit sector didn’t contribute to Canadian GDP. He was wrong. And, that the nonprofit sector didn’t pay people what they were worth. He was right on this count; but failed to see how his own beliefs were a major contributor to that issue. To him you volunteer for charities, you didn’t work for them.
I’ve been thinking about his thoughts on the sector throughout the pandemic, because honestly where would we be as a society without the nonprofit organizations that have been ensuring that those who are out of work can access food, that those struggling with isolation can access the mental health supports they need, that those without adequate housing could safely isolate. And really who do we think has been doing the advocacy to government around stopping evictions, or working to help government understand how to reach hard to reach communities? And yet, public sentiment and government support for the sector has been somewhat lacklustre, an afterthought. When the Federal wage subsidy was fist announced last year, it took a few days before there was clarity as to whether or not nonprofit organizations qualified for the program. And while dollars have flowed to select area of the nonprofit sector – food banks, women’s shelters, homeless – this was in response to crisis situations, there hasn’t been much in terms of direct supports to the sector as a whole. The nonprofit sector has largely been lumped in with small business, but the economics, finances and realities of the sector are not the same as small business. Admittedly, the recent Federal budget shows some promise, however the devil will be in the details, and there is still a lack of action on many of the Special Senate Committee on the Charitable Sector.
There was an article that popped up in my LinkedIn feeds earlier this week (originally published in September 2020). The title was “Investing in Women Isn’t A Fucking Charity.” The article goes on to argue the importance of investing in women owned businesses, and highlights just how entrenched the male dominated status quo is in the venture capital space. I agree with everything said in the article (and encourage you to read it). But I found the last few lines to be triggering “Invest in women. We’re not a fucking charity. We’re a $3 Trillion Opportunity.” Dad would have agreed with the article – despite his misguided ideas about the sector as a whole he generally came down on what I would consider to be the right side of most social issues. And in fairness to the author, the article does call out the need for continuing to fund charitable activities. For me though, the idea that investing in charity isn’t also an opportunity is thinking that needs to be shifted, and I’m not talking about social finance (that’s a debate for another day), but the recognition that part of the ability for businesses to thrive comes from the social supports that nonprofit organizations provide. We invest in society through nonprofit organizations, those investments create opportunities. Yet we only value the financial return, and we don’t dig deep enough to understand that often those financial returns rely on the supports provided by the nonprofit sector – as a society we continually underestimate and undervalue the ways in which we have benefitted from nonprofit and charitable organizations (from ensuring that the workforce is housed and fed, to the provision of childcare, supports for employee mental health, as well as research and policy work (that often gets adopted by business to further their interests)).
As a consultant I get to work with lots of different organizations. In the past year I have worked with groups looking to help ensure that the voices of women are heard in public discourse, that women fleeing domestic violence have a safe place to go, that people facing barriers to employment can access the support they need to find opportunities, that women entrepreneurs are supported in developing their ideas (that the venture capitalists can then invest in), that Indigenous communities can use their traditional knowledge about how to best protect their lands, that workplaces have the knowledge they need to be truly inclusive, that lower income senior women can find affordable housing, that people living with disabilities can access the arts, that Canada’s oceans and biodiversity are protected, that municipal governments understand the needs of their community, that we have a secure food supply, and that students in low-income communities are supported when learning from home. I have worked with people with all sorts of degrees in both paid and unpaid positions. What I can say without a shadow of a doubt is that none of them are wasting their educations.
The problems that the nonprofit sector deals with are complex, and need people with a variety of skill sets, including the ability to think strategically. In fact, I think the strategic challenges faced by nonprofit leaders are often far more complex than those faced by private sector leaders – when the bottom line isn’t dollars and cents, and when the necessary resources to address the issue aren’t readily available, the right answer can be harder to come by.
Yet, parents don’t encourage their children to pursue careers in the nonprofit sector – well maybe as doctors, but you certainly don’t hear stories about how people were pressured to become a social worker or a housing advocate. The education system largely doesn’t even present it as an option – outside of certain disciplines. I guess what I am grappling with, and why I never won the debate when he was alive (or perhaps in my own way I did, cause I’m definitely not a banker, and I don’t feel he disrespected my choices – he just didn’t understand them), is that while it is clear to me that my father was wrong, I am not wasting my education, I am still struck by how poorly understood the sector is, and at a bit of a loss as to what to do to change that reality.