Funder Focus: Marlene Deboisbriand and the United Way of
Canada
May 6, 2002
by Nicole Zummach
This month in our continuing series of interviews with
some of Canada's
leading funders, we feature the United Way of Canada, one of
the country's oldest and most recognized charitable
institutions. CharityVillage
spoke with acting president Marlene Deboisbriand about some of
their recent initiatives and how the national office is working with
local chapters in order to improve services and strengthen
communities
across Canada.
CharityVillage: Perhaps you could begin by explaining the
structure of the United Way in Canada.
Marlene Deboisbriand: We are not like a lot of
national organizations.
Our action happens at the local level and each of our 124
United Ways/Centraides
are completely locally autonomous. We are like a
federation; we do provide
some leadership and lots of services to our members but we
really don't
have provincial or even regional structures. The
relationship with local
United Ways is direct to the national office and those local chapters
vary widely in size and numbers.
If I were going to take the two opposite ends of the scale,
the largest
United Way in Canada is the United Way of Greater Toronto. Last year
they raised more than $70 million. That is a big United Way
with about
100 staff, thousands of volunteers and amazing community support. At
the other end we have a United Way in Slave Lake that raises $18,000
a year. It has no staff and no office. A few volunteers get together
in the fall, raise some money and allocate it to the agencies in the
community and then almost literally go away until the next fall. The
range is amazing, people think of United Way as being 'the
big charity'
but in fact, there are probably 30-35 that have no staff at
all. I think
it is important to note that because in some small
communities it really
is a grassroots, close to the ground organization.
CV: What role does the national office play, given that each United
Way is autonomous?
MD: We are a registered charity with a 24-member
national board
that is made up of volunteers from local boards across the country.
There is also a policy board that focuses on policy issues of United
Way Canada and the United Way movement. For example, we
might establish
cost of fundraising policies or the statement of principles for the
rights of donors. Those are policy level issues that the
national board
grapples with and takes position on. In addition, we provide a very
wide range of services to our members, including training
and conferences
for volunteering staff, and we do a lot of federal
relations and a bit
of provincial government relations from the national office.
CV: Does the national office help local chapters
build capacity,
and in turn, do local chapters help their member agencies
build capacity?
MD: I think the answer is yes, depending on the
definition we give
to 'building capacity'. For example, we have a fairly sophisticated
intranet for our member United Ways and all of the
training, conferences,
and resource materials help them build capacity of their volunteers
and staff. It's not a funding capacity relationship but it
is very much
a building capacity relationship. At the local levels there
are a wide
range of relationships between local United Ways and there
member agencies
but in essence, although mostly seen as a funder of local agencies,
in that role of funder there is often additional support
given to agencies
beyond dollars.
CV: What are you doing to promote transparency
and accountability
at the national level?
MD: We've take a greater role in the last four or five years
in really looking at how, as important players in the
nonprofit world,
we have a responsibility to be accountable and transparent not just
to our donors, but to all of our stakeholders. We take that
very seriously.
The statement of principles for donor's rights was passed about four
years ago at one of our annual general meetings and at our
most recent
annual general meeting we passed a new membership agreement that was
adopted by our members. It's a pretty extensive list of
roles and responsibilities
for both the local and the national levels and includes an
ethical framework
on how to operate, a piece on 'the cost of fundraising', transparency
in terms of the cost of fundraising, etc.
CV: What do you think is the United Way's greatest strength - the
secret of its success and longevity?
MD: I think the number one thing would be the United
Way's depth
of knowledge of community. Because they are on the ground, operating
right at the grass roots level, they know the community and
the agencies,
the donors, the leaders and the labour people, the teachers
and principals.
I think another strength is that we are seen as a very neutral player
in terms of community. We have the ability to bring together people
from academia, from the corporate world, from the labour community,
the social services world, and health services to look at community
issues. I don't think a lot of organizations can do that
but I believe
we do it really well. Sometimes we come in as a low-key convener and
sometimes we actually lead the discussion on issues. It
depends on the
capacity of the United Way, the community, who the other players are,
and everyone else's capacity.
Another strength is our ability to continue to be both innovative and
accountable. I use those two words jointly because sometimes people
think of innovation as risk-taking. There is an element of that but
we are very careful because of the accountability piece
that comes with
it. I think we are able to innovate while maintaining accountability.
CV: What are you doing right now to move forward and stay
innovative?
MD: There are actually a couple of projects that are
just starting
up in various communities that I think are very innovative
and promising.
One project is called Success by Six. It is an initiative often lead
by United Way, not always but often, where the players who care about
little kids, ages 0 to 6, come together and look at their individual
assets and what they can bring to the table, sometimes its money but
not always. They look at how they can coordinate and
mobilize a community
around the importance of investing in young children.
A lot of research has been done in the last decade or so
about the importance
of the first six years of life, and a child's development
nutritionally,
physiologically, and physically, and how they are all
interlinked. Often
times in communities there are a lot of great programs being offered
on all of those fronts but they are not interlinked. There
are a number
of United Ways in the United States that have very successful Success
by Six programs and in Canada it is a growing innovative initiative
that United Ways are starting to really pay attention to and to see
some successes locally.
The other initiative I wanted to tell you about is 211. If you think
of 911, which is the emergency number that everybody knows, 211 is a
three-digit number that people can dial to get all kinds of
information
and referrals. About a year and a half ago the United Way of Canada,
Inform Canada, which is the national network of information
and referral
agencies across the country, Community Information Toronto,
and United
Way of Toronto went forth to the CRTC with an application to get use
of the 211 number and we were successful. It will be
launched as a pilot
project in Toronto within the next few months and we hope that in the
long term there will be 211 coverage across the country.
So, for example, I might dial 211 because I have an elderly
parent that
I care for and I am going on vacation for two weeks. I want to make
sure that there is someone there to check up on my mom.
They would refer
me to an agency that would be able to do that. Again, it’s about
that neutral table and bringing together a number of partners. We are
not taking anyone’s place, we are just systemizing or
coordinating
the services and providing Canadians with much better
access to information
and services.
CV: Tell me about your Strategic Alignment initiative. Why
do you feel it is necessary and what do you hope will be
achieved?
MD: We are locally autonomous, we are close to the community,
close to the services, close to the donors, and we've operated as 124
independent chapter units and that has worked well. However, in a world
where globalization is pushing, and where centralization is happening,
that often become a challenge to our ways of operating. I will give
you an example that occurred around September 11th. We played a key
role in the events that followed the disaster in terms of our fundraising
ability. We had a number of corporations that called us and wanted to
solicit their employees in their own workplace and then send money to
the September 11th Fund. As a Canadian donor if you send money to the
States, you can't get a charitable receipt but we had discussions with
CCRA on September 12th and they agreed to give special permission because
of the nature of the events. If the money came to United Way Canada
we could transfer it to United Way of America and give our donors Canadian
charitable receipts because we are a sister organization. We immediately
sent a message to all 124 United Ways saying, 'if you are undertaking
any fundraising, or if any of your donors call and want to forward any
money to the September 11th Fund you can do that and issue receipts,
send us the money and we'll forward it to the States'.
We had branches that wanted to do that and other United
Ways said, 'no,
that's the job of the Red Cross'. We had branches of
companies getting
corporate-wide agreement to do fundraising in their branch, wanting
to send money to their local United Way and some of the United Ways
were taking it and the one next door was saying no. So we
need to find
a way to harmonize some of our practices and it is going to
be challenging
because the local boards feel very strongly about their
roles. However,
many of our key partners in the corporate world and others
are encouraging
us to think about how we can be a little more the same.
Another area that has pushed us on this is technology, particularly
some of the recent developments like on-line auctions or solicitation
through e-mail. You get an e-mail address and it has
nothing to do with
geography, yet the United Way system is totally set up
around geography
and postal codes. It is hugely challenging for us, so on a number of
fronts we need to bring our movement together and look at how we can
align some of our strategies. In essence that's what
strategic alignment
will try and achieve in the next year or so.
CV: Keeping this in mind, do you see the national office evolving
to play a bigger role in aligning and coordinating the
different chapters?
MD: Will the United Way of Canada role evolve and change? If strategic
alignment does what it is supposed to do the answer should be 'yes'. But the
second piece, will it have a bigger role, I leave that as a question mark
for now because what we want to do in this strategic alignment process is
to look at how as a movement we can have better coordination. Sometimes that
might be by United Way Canada taking a more active coordination role. I am
not sure that will always be the answer though. Sometimes it's United Way
of Toronto taking a bigger role, or United Way of Victoria taking a bigger
role. We don't want to limit our thinking to a centralized type of model.
We need to keep those doors open and look at what will be the best way to
be efficient and deliver good services.
Marlene Deboisbriand has been with the United Way for more than
20 years. She is the Chief Operating Officer and Senior
Vice President
of the United Way of Canada and is currently its acting
president. For
more information about the United Way of Canada, visit: www.unitedway.ca.
