June 22, 2020

Update your donation page URLs on Friday!

Hi everyone,

I hope email finds you safe, healthy and able to take some steps to take care of yourself, however that looks for you and your community. This weekly operational update has morphed slightly from a COVID-19 update to include some name change items, including a PRIORITY COMMUNICATION below about donation page URLs. You can also find an update on our next CEWS application and latest Rapid Response Fund for Changemaker decisions in this email.


ACTION: DONATION PAGE URL UPDATES

Unfortunately we have been informed by Salesforce that Tides Canada Donation Page URLs cannot be redirected. This means that we need to set up new MakeWay URLs for each donation page. If you have your own website that links to your donation page, you will need to manually add the new URLS to your website. I apologize for the inconvenience, and know that we are here to help make this a smooth transition.

  • We have scheduled the transition from Tides Canada donation pages to MakeWay pages for Friday June 26th at 1pm PST. After this time, the current donation pages will not be live and projects will not be able to accept donations through their website.
  • If your project has a donation page, you will receive an email this evening with the new links/embedded code for you to use on your website.
  • Our communications team will be available on Friday and will do their best to troubleshoot any website questions that you have via [email protected].


Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy

It’s coming up to that time in the month when our financials from May will all be processed, finalized and ready to view. Our finance team will be crunching the numbers as soon as possible to determine whether MakeWay Charitable Society will be eligible to apply for the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy for the next period of May 10, 2020 to June 6, 2020. I appreciate that many of you need to know as soon as possible for your financial planning, and I’ll share the answer with you as soon as I have it.


Rapid Response Fund for Changemakers

The Rapid Response Fund for Changemakers decision committee met last week to review applications from projects on the Shared Platform. This was our first review of ‘Strategize’ proposals. The committee awarded a total of $48,000 to 5 different projects! This means that the Rapid Response Fund for Changemakers has now awarded a total of $127,000 to 22 Shared Platform projects.

  • We received 16 fantastic applications and with only $48,000 to award, it was an incredibly difficult decision. All proposals that were not selected this time will be kept in the pool for future consideration. We are continuing to fundraise for the Rapid Response Fund and look forward to meeting again to distribute more funds as soon as we have them. I’ll let you all know in advance when we have a date for our next meeting, so that you can update any aspect of your proposals or submit new ones.
  • Foundation staff who have been involved in the implementation of both of our Rapid Response Funds are meeting in the next couple of weeks to debrief our learnings so far and recommend tweaks to processes and/or criteria. I’ll keep you updated on the outcome and any impacts for the next round.
  • I’m delighted to share the latest recipients below:

In recent weeks Organizing for Change (OFC) has become a primary interface between the BC government and ENGOs on the evolving economic stimulus opportunity. These funds will contribute to polling research and analysis, strategy and materials development for a coordinated communications campaign: “Build Back Better BC”. This will create political space for government to occupy with programs that will make BC a leader in a low-carbon transition and other environmental co-benefits to its recovery program.

Our Living Waters - $10,000

In response to COVID-19, the Our Living Waters Network has advocated for ‘a shade of blue’ in Federal green recovery plans. Their strategy includes 300+ shovel-ready projects which collectively support Canada's water security in many ways, including habitat restoration, natural infrastructure, data collection, and public education, as well as advancing planning, partnership building and reconciliation. These funds will support the continuation of this ‘blue recovery’ work, including outreach to government, creation of new resources and convening collaborative meetings to coordinate efforts with the freshwater community across Canada.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Together Project is delivering "remote social support" to vulnerable newcomers in the Greater Toronto Area. Post COVID-19, they envision a refined and strengthened Welcome Group Program that incorporates some of the unanticipated successes of "remote social support", especially those that lend themselves to scaling the program. These funds will be used to develop an evaluations framework to capture and integrate key learning from this pivot and consider how to incorporate findings into the approach to scaling.

Share Reuse Repair Initiative - $10,000

While many are emphasizing a “Clean Reset” with clean energy, Share Reuse Repair Initiative has identified a key opportunity to amplify sharing, reuse, and repair innovations in our local economies in the post-pandemic era. These funds will be used to formulate a post-COVID economic recovery strategy in consultation with key cross-sectoral stakeholders in BC. The strategy will outline hyperlocal SRR opportunities with varied models (e.g. cooperatives, social enterprises, public-sector, mission-based for-profit) focused around consumer goods and food, together with an implementation framework that identifies early, medium and longer-term actions.

Project Neutral - $7,000

As climate change has grown into a major societal concern, people want to make meaningful changes in their lives and smart employers want to support them in this. Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, a major opportunity has emerged for Project Neutral as a result of the fact that more people than ever before work from home. These funds will be used to develop ‘Green Employees’, a new employee engagement offering that will help workplaces to become leaders in confronting climate change with a data-driven campaign focused on real impact and actions that measurably reduce emissions.


As always, please reach out to myself or your Project Specialist if you have questions, thoughts or feedback.


Sending you all positive wishes,


Lizzie