6. Experiences with Existing Federal Support

Summary:

  • Participants noted the strengths of existing relationships with federal departments, such as great programs and funding that allows programs to happen.
  • Challenges with existing relationships were highlighted, including the costs of administration, inefficiencies, inconsistent relationships, funding requirements, and evaluation.

Experiences with existing federal support programs were discussed and participants shared both the strengths of existing relationships with federal departments and agencies, including Canadian Heritage, as well as the challenges faced in working with the federal level.

6.1 Strengths of Existing Relationships

Great Programs

Canadian Heritage was recognized by several organizations as a leader in creating and delivering national programs for young people. Some organizations noted that positive funding relationships have been developed through frequent and simple communications, not a lot of red tape, and not too many meetings. Funding relationships can be really positive if each party is engaged as a true partner as opposed to simply the “money” or the means necessary to do the work. Many program officers at Canadian Heritage were described as being competent and helpful. There were a few organizations or youth who did not agree with this point, suggesting that programs should be delivered regionally, and the federal role should be limited to funding.

Young Canada Works allows young people to be exposed to heritage institutions, but it was mentioned that both participating youth and institutions would benefit from a longer tenure, possibly part-time throughout the school year as well as 16 weeks in the summer.

Funding Makes Things Possible

Without funding there would be no way to deliver programs, and organizations felt this was important to recognize. Even partial funding allows for leverage when seeking private sector sponsorship, and this kind of support was commended by some participants, especially when it allowed them to leverage further funding.

6.2 Challenges in Existing Relationships

It is important to note that, when discussing challenges, the conversation became focused very broadly on funders in general rather than specifically on Canadian Heritage. It could be reasoned that this occurred because representatives of the Department were present, and therefore stakeholders did not feel it was appropriate to single out this funder. It could also be reasoned that stakeholders have common experiences with funders and challenges.

Administrative Costs

Participants repeatedly noted that high administrative costs take a share of the funds away from direct programming. The cost of formal auditing was called “prohibitive” by several organizations. The reporting burden is seen to be very high, and sometimes organizations reported needing an employee just to fill out the paperwork. Organizations are becoming “quite weary of it.” Youth-led organizations expressed this challenge in a slightly different way; they cited challenges around “middle-men” (trustees) taking a portion of their funds in exchange for the credibility of having adults vouch for their organizations.

Inefficiencies

Application challenges were expressed in terms of the complicated nature of proposals needed to receive funding as well as the slow turn-around to hear the results. Some participants noted that in certain cases the timeframe on hearing back was so long that the request was no longer relevant. Problems with getting answers in a timely fashion can be a very serious problem for organizations, especially when other funding partners have contributed and events must be paid for. A few participants also noted that it was important that young people be given fair warning if their program was going to happen or not.

Participants noted that contribution agreements can take a long time to deliver funds, while organizations are still expected to deliver programs and produce results. This was often mentioned as a significant barrier to effective program delivery.

Inconsistent Relationships

Employee turnover affects administration ability at both ends of the spectrum (both in the funding organization and the funded organization). When program officers and youth organization employees build relationships, the funder-funded process runs smoothly. When either or both of these positions experience high employee turnover, the relationship becomes a challenge.

There was interest in seeing the hiring process for program officers who will be dealing with youth organizations include a requirement for experience and expertise in youth work. Relationships with Canadian Heritage employees who have some expertise have been much better than with those who are not familiar with how organizations work with youth.

Funding Requirements

Target groups are a problem on a number of levels. It can often be difficult to meet targets for some populations for a variety of reasons that do not indicate poor program performance (such as changing demographics, etc.). Some participants said that often groups are selected as target groups because of the lack of current engagement within the group and, consequently, any improvement could be a significant improvement. Also, youth who may not be considered the target group for a particular project according to funding criteria, but are participating because the project meets their needs, are being included in ratios and putting the project’s chances of receiving continued funding at risk. The example given was of a community centre designated to serve a certain proportion of Aboriginal youth in a neighbourhood, which might serve the majority of Aboriginal youth, but if too many youth of other cultures are recorded in their attendance records, the ratio set by funding requirements would not be met.  Finally, the measurement required to track target population uptake inevitably leads to the perception of being labelled, which is not received well by many participants.

Changes in priority populations, like the recent shift from youth-at-risk to newcomers, can also cause program interruptions to groups who still need the support. Participants raised the rhetorical question of what happens to the youth-at-risk once newcomers become the “flavour of the month.” Do they simply get left behind from the last funding cycle with no continued programs? Sometimes there is a gap between what the government has established as a priority and what the community truly needs, and every community has unique needs.

Many participants remarked that short-term funding is a problem. It can lead to a revolving door phenomenon among youth participants and employees alike, and the result is a devaluing of young people who were involved in pilot projects over the long term. Because of the emphasis on pilot projects, organizational resources are redirected to writing proposals and chasing operating dollars. Multi-year funding makes it much easier to deliver projects and programs.

Some participants also noted that timing of funding processes are poorly designed. Although the early spring is fiscal year-end for government, it is a prime time for youth programming and leaves a ‘dead zone’ for organizations who are between grants.

Lack of flexibility in funding is also a challenge because “new and innovative” often means fitting outside of standard funding models and formulas, yet there is a great deal of emphasis on producing new and innovative programming.

Organizations frequently referred to the “pilot project phenomenon” where organizations feel they are not able to access funding to maintain projects that are already established, but rather are being constantly expected to produce new and innovative strategies. One participant put it bluntly, saying proposal-writers who have already established successful projects ask themselves, “What can we do to change it enough so it looks like it’s new, but still keep the integrity of it?” The desire for a shift in funding from project-based to program-based funding was repeated many times.

Some participants noted that the current funding process actually discourages partnership and collaboration by insisting on innovation and doing something unique. A policy framework that encourages competition rather than collaboration was not seen to benefit the community or organizations.

Evaluation

Government expects concrete and tangible results, but this is difficult because so much of this work is social change, which takes a long time to manifest and is usually qualitative. Evaluations should include more than demographics and participant counts. Support and valuing of case study and other qualitative approaches should be included to better capture what is actually going on in programs.

Evaluation is a challenge to the capacity of many organizations, and they expressed a need to have help (either in the form of funding or design help) to ensure that it is done well. Some participants even suggested that funding for evaluation should be separate from project funding, so that it does not reduce program resources.

Participants reflected on the amount of evaluation that gets produced in the course of their work, and wondered about where that information goes and how it gets used. There were concerns that evaluations are not used beyond a cursory check for funding accountability, and that valuable data about youth and community projects is being lost. Participants suggested that an analysis and communication strategy for sharing the lessons learned from evaluations generated by funded projects would be a good first step in making evaluation useful.

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