May 11, 2020

TCI COVID-19 Update: CEWS Update, Re-start Guidelines, Future of Good free membership!

Hi Project Directors,

After the excitement of last week’s wage subsidy/fundraising news, today’s COVID-19 update contains quite a few operational pieces. As a reminder, you can also refer to our online COVID-19 manual for the latest and greatest information all in one place.

  • Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy– Our fantastic People & Culture team worked incredibly hard last week to finish all of the CEWS calculations for the March AND April reporting periods for all projects, and submitted our application to the CRA on Friday. We now have to wait 7-10 days for approval of the calculations and transfer of funds. At this point, we’ll confirm the final amounts with you and will transfer these unrestricted funds to NO AWARD to spend (or save!) as you see fit.
    • In the meantime, I have shared the total amount for each project with Project Specialists. If you would like to know the draft amount now for your planning you can reach out to them.
  • Rapid Response Fund for Changemakers – A reminder that we have received some very generous donations to the fund, so the decision-making committee will be meeting next on Thursday May 14. If you would like to apply for this round of ‘Mobilize’ or ‘Stabilize’ grants, please do so before end of day Wednesday May 13. You can find the application form here. If you have previously applied and would like to update your outstanding submission in any way, just shoot me an email and I’ll make the changes for you.
    • After this meeting, the application form will remain open for rolling applications and the decision-making committee will meet as needed. We’ll also be in touch in the next few weeks about longer-term ‘strategize’ grants as the fund continues to grow.
  • Health & Safety during restart – This past week has seen announcements from many jurisdictions about timelines and guidelines for re-starting schools, childcare centers and other businesses. I’m working with the People & Culture team to update our COVID-19 Guidelines to offer best practices and considerations for projects deciding how and when to re-open. I’ll share these guidelines with you as soon as they are confirmed – likely end of next week. As with the similar ‘grey period’ when the pandemic began in Canada, you are all best-placed to make decisions as to when to re-start programming or re-open places of work. At a minimum all project employees/contractors/volunteers will be expected to follow the guidelines set by your jurisdiction (including social distancing), and TCI is here to support you in implementing those.
    • We are monitoring re-start updates closely and are compiling this information from all provinces/territories in the COVID-19 manual here.
    • If you have immediate questions about re-starting programming or opening places of work for your project, please talk to your Project Specialist.
  • GIVE5 Webinar – Last week Tides Canada co-hosted a webinar about the GIVE5 Campaign. Each year, foundations are required to disburse 3.5% of assets to charities. The GIVE5 movement is a growing number of Canadian Foundations calling for hundreds more Foundations to commit at least 5% of their assets to the charitable sector; as during this historical crisis, 3.5% just won’t cut it. The conversation at the webinar was thought-provoking and insightful, with some good questions coming from the 245 attendees.
  • Future of Good Membership – I’m very pleased to share that as part of Tides Canada’s partnership with Future of Good, we have been given 65 FREE memberships for Shared Platform projects! Membership provides access to all Future of Good content, curated weekly email digests, member-only networking video calls and more. You can sign up today via this link. I will keep extending this offer to current and new projects until our 65 spots run out.
  • Canada Post delays – Please be advised when talking with vendors, donors and contractors that delivery times are significantly slowed as Canada Post is seeing above Christmas time levels of volume.  Local couriers are taking 2- 3 days and Canada Post is no longer guaranteeing delivery times even for items sent express post/high priority.

Lots of information here, so please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Wishing you all a positive week ahead,


Lizzie