News

On October 16th, a group of SVP Partners and staff gathered for an “Fostering Belonging Through DEI”  session with Eman Salem from IronSelf Consulting. It is part of SVP’s strategic plan to further embody equity in our work as a foundation, recognizing that without actively working to change the systems that hold societal inequities and inequalities in place, we aren’t fully enacting or working toward our vision of helping children and youth thrive. We want to ensure we are serving our community in the safest, most inclusive way possible.

Since 2001, SVP has done things differently. We’ve always done more than throw money at a problem. Instead, we walk alongside our nonprofit Investee and Alumni organizations, yes, offering multi-year financial support, but also providing so much more than a grant: responsive capacity-building support, access to volunteer expertise, community, and thought partnership to help nonprofits in the start-up phase stabilize and grow. 

At SVP Vancouver, our aim is to provide more than funding – to walk alongside Investee and Alumni organizations to help them get to where they want to be, respectfully and equitably. Some of our recent work with two new Investee organizations, New Westminster Family Place and West Coast Kids Cancer Foundation, illustrate our working relationship – and show why accompaniment leads to more long-term impact for the organizations we work with and their communities.

Discovery Team members: Nicole Geyer, Helen Stortini, Sohee Kim. Our SVP Early Years Innovation Fund is fuelling ground-breaking ideas and stepping in to provide critical and unique support that fills a gap in the Early Years funding horizon. Our proposed work with New Westminster Family Place (NWFP) is just another example of this in action.

Discovery Team members: Monika Garg, Jonathan Burke, Neil Duke, Helen Stortini, Sohee Kim. Pacific Immigrant Resources Society (PIRS) offers accessible, inclusive, and low-barrier programs to immigrant and refugee women and their children, fostering a strong sense of belonging, meaningful participation, and leadership.
PIRS aims to empower immigrant and refugee women and children through a comprehensive range of initiatives, which include children and family Programs, English language classes, occupational training, and leadership programs.

In 2022, we rolled out a brand-new granting stream: the Capacity-Building Flex Fund. These smaller grants are made available to our Investee and Alumni community to support capacity-building projects that are crucial to the improvement of their service delivery but that are consistently not funded by other sources.

School might be out for summer, but the learning doesn’t stop here at SVP! Our team has compiled an assortment of articles, essays, reports, podcasts, webinars, books, and more that touch on some of the most pressing and emergent issues and ideas within the sector.

On Tuesday evening, SVP Partners David Ferguson and Kathy Butler welcomed 20 SVP Partners into their beautiful home for the second in this year’s Social Dialogue Series, which did a deep dive into the topic of the Early Years.

We recently held a Leadership & HR Working Group workshop on equitable compensation structures. Check out our five takeaways from this excellent event below.