A Look Back at Our AGM on June 7th

We recently held our 22nd Annual General Meeting in the bright and plant-filled And-Co Forum and Member Lounge. More than 60 members of the SVP community gathered to connect and celebrate the past year. We highlighted the achievements of SVP Investees and Alumni and how SVP’s Time, Talent, Ties, and Treasure were put to work. 

Here are some highlights from the past year:

• Our Partner base consisted of 159 people 
• We worked with a network of 30 nonprofits—including 5 new Investees. This is the largest portfolio of nonprofits in the SVP global network. 
• We launched a new grant, the Capacity-Building Flex Fund, which provides agile funding to Investees and Alumni to support specific capacity-building initiatives. The Flex Fund is a manifestation of our values in action: being responsive, agile, and filling gaps in the funding landscape. 
•  We provided more than $500,000 in grant funding, including 4 Early Years grants, 3 capacity-building grants, and 16 capacity building flex fund grants. 
• SVP Partners, SVP staff, our fundraising trainer and our Social Impact Coach provided Investees and Alumni with more than 40 capacity-building touchpoints, ranging from professional phone consultations to hands-on project work

….just to name a few! Be sure to check out our annual report to learn more.

Supporting the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Families

Once the previous year’s business was wrapped up for the evening, we heard from a panel of experts about the role nonprofits have in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of families. We were joined by Dana Osiowy, Executive Director of New Westminster Family Place; Sharon Bulgar, Board Member of West Coast Kids Cancer Foundation (WCK); and Marnie Goldenberg, Senior Program Director at Take a Hike Foundation and recent SVP Board Member.

Some takeaways from the panel: Supporting the mental wellbeing of vulnerable children and youth and their families is not only the purview of the mental health profession. It is also something we can do in all of our interactions, programmatic or otherwise. If it’s a through line for the organization—not just one specific aspect of what they do—it can have significant benefits for the individuals being served and the community at large. Our three experts represented organizations that are doing just that in many creative ways. 

Working Support for Children’s Wellbeing into Our Everyday Interactions

Marnie spoke about Take a Hike’s daily Circle Time, in which youth program participants and staff rate how they are showing up that day on a scale of 1 to 10. If the numbers are on the lower end of the range, staff can tailor the day’s programs to meet youth participants where they’re at. This daily practice helps to build rapport and safety with the youth that they serve. 

Sharon spoke about her experiences as a parent who had accessed West Coast Kids Cancer Foundation’s programs prior to joining their board. She addressed the general assumption that when a family is in the hospital with their sick child, they not only have access to mental health supports, but also that they would be provided with regular meals while caring for their children. Unfortunately, neither of those assumptions turned out to be true. WCK created moments of entry by addressing basic needs – for example, bringing meals to families – at which point they also had the opportunity to inquire about the families’ additional needs. 

These moments of entry led WCK to develop a new initiative: they plan to engage mental health professionals as part of their programming, once they secure the funding for this much-needed program. 
Many systems we work within are deficit-based, whether it’s the medical system, speech pathologists, or the education system. Dana shared that the families that they serve are very aware of what’s not going right. At New Westminster Family Place, Dana and her team work hard to flex their strengths-based muscles on a daily basis. They cheer the families on and point out what is going well. “We want parents to feel empowered, so they can advocate for themselves. When the parents are okay, the kids will be okay,” she said.

Thank You for Being There!

Thank you to all who attended our AGM and helped make for a delightful and impactful evening! To learn more about our work and the work of our incredible Investee and Alumni organizations, don’t forget to check out our annual report.