Lift Community Services’ annual general meeting (AGM) provided an opportunity to hear about the state of nonprofits in British Columbia, as well as an opportunity to celebrate the organization’s successes.
Stuart Clark, Lift’s executive director, said it was a wonderful AGM, with 100 community members in attendance at the Salish Centre in Tla’amin Nation. The meeting was held September 28. Guest speaker for the evening was Zahra Esmail, chief executive officer of Vantage Point, a Vancouver-based organization focusing on capacity building for BC nonprofit organizations, according to Clark.
“The organization, which used to be Volunteer Vancouver, is committed to making sure that not just the Vancouver-based organizations, but other organizations, are part of a provincial scope,” said Clark. “One of the things they did during the pandemic was survey and help track the state of the nonprofit and voluntary sector. There were lots of extra pressures, such as economic, social and community need pressures on nonprofits during that time.
“The primary thing that Zahra spoke about is what they have learned. There were the usual themes, such as a lot of overwhelm during the pandemic period and lots of resource challenges. Now, coming out of the pandemic, there are issues such as inflation pressures and staff shortages. There’s a lot of burnout and concern about stability.”
Clark said one of the positive things that emerged is strong support for the development of a provincial nonprofit network.
“It’s common in other provinces,” said Clark. “It would help us connect and pool knowledge across communities. Also, it would develop a more unified voice to advocate for what the sector really needs. It’s a very exciting project and Vantage Point has taken early steps to convene nonprofit leaders around the province and make sure all the voices and perspectives are captured. They are developing a plan to develop this network.”
Clark said he has signed up to be on the committee to develop the initial meetings around developing an approach. He said a governance committee will be set up to develop this. He added that it is important to be connected locally, as well as to a provincial organization.
In terms of the business of the AGM, Clark said there was a review of the audited financial statements, which received a clean opinion. Clark then gave an executive director’s report, giving an overview of the successes and challenges of the past year.
“There continues to be a rapid increase in community need coming out of the pandemic,” said Clark. “A lot more people are facing barriers and challenges. The pace of growing need versus the pace of being able to mobilize resources is out of sync.
“That’s a big challenge that lots of nonprofits are talking about and that’s no different for us. We can only meet the need with the people and funding that we have.”
Stuart said plans are afoot to have more community conversations. He said there is help being provided to assist the community action team that was struck to deal with the overdose crisis in developing public events, and Lift will also be organizing public events to talk more about its issues.
“The community wanted more information, the community needed more opportunities to discuss and understand the issues and the proposed solutions we have,” said Clark. “That has been a big success to try to meet that. We wanted to emphasize to our membership and the community that we need the feedback of the community to do good work.”
Clark said nonprofits are community-based organizations.
“We’re not government and we’re not for profit,” said Clark. “We’re here for the community and we’re run by the community, so we have a unique space here to be the convenor of community solutions. It’s something we love to do and have had success at, and we want to continue to invite people out and help make sure the conversations are holistic and effective.”
Also at the AGM a new board of directors was elected. There were four incumbents and six new people joining the board.
“We’re really excited about the incoming expertise,” said Clark. “It’s worth mentioning there are some people that stepped off our board and we are really thankful for the service of those individuals.”
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