Working Alongside Our Investee Organizations: Why and How Accompaniment Works

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.

Providing “Invaluable Non-Financial Support” for New Westminster Family Place

Dana Osiowy, Executive Director of New Westminster Family Place (NWFP), describes her experience with SVP Social Impact and Strategy Coach Karen Gelb as transformative. She says, “Karen asked really hard, but really good questions that prompted me to think deeply about NWFP’s work. Thanks to this support, I now have so much more confidence as a leader, I’m more confident in the direction I’m taking NWFP, and as a result, our team is ready to jump in and walk alongside me on this journey.” 

This transformation can be felt throughout the organization – for Dana and the NWFP team, and also in the activities they do within their family programming. “We are months ahead in our progress on Bringing Family Place to the Streets, an initiative that aims to promote a strength-based approach and work towards community transformation, thanks to Karen’s support,” Dana says.

With Bringing Family Place to the Streets, NWFP strives to play a role in systems change – structural, relational, and transformative – through a shift from a deficit-based to a strength-based approach to supporting families in their community.

Dana highlights SVP’s willingness to support – and fund – such an ambitious project at its very beginning. “No one else would fund such an innovative and nascent idea,” she says, “but it’s one with potential for a huge positive impact.” To Dana, this willingness on SVP’s part is evidence of our commitment to fuelling groundbreaking initiatives – initiatives that have the potential to deliver hugely impactful results.

Building Capacity with West Coast Kids Cancer Foundation

To Shannon Hartwig, Executive Director at West Coast Kids Cancer Foundation (WCK), and Leslie Grover, WCK Board Chair, working with SVP Partner and strategic facilitator extraordinaire Bob Armstrong on operational planning has provided long-term, tangible value to the organization. This type of project-based work as an Expert on Call is available to all SVP Partners to take part in.

“In 2021, we set a three-year strategic plan, and we blew through all the goals in two years. Which is great! But we needed to dig into the operations side: how do we want to get to where we want to be?” Shannon explains. “We spoke with Karen Gelb, who helped us figure out that we didn’t need a whole new strategic plan. But we did need someone to guide the process.” 

Enter Bob, who through this short-term volunteer opportunity is facilitating WCK’s operational planning process. Shannon explains: “We’ve been through this process a few times, but I think it feels like the best one we’ve ever done. So far, it’s really clear; it feels like this is more in alignment with our vibe. As opposed to having an outside facilitator, Bob really took the time to understand us, and to work with how we present as a team. It’s been really great to have someone come in and be like, you don’t have to follow the rulebook necessarily regarding what should and shouldn’t happen. You just need to do what’s best to meet your goals and deliverables as an organization.”

Shannon says, “Bob has the expertise to be able to zoom way out and help us see where all of these pieces are coming together to continue to support our growth, which ultimately, is about helping families who are impacted by childhood cancer. It’s nice to have someone who is used to looking at a business from sort of a bird’s eye view and helping us to put things into place that are going to help us to continue to grow.”

One of WCK’s clear goals since the beginning of their work with SVP has been board development, and Leslie points to Bob’s work with her on her role of Board Chair as particularly helpful. She points to his ability to bring up questions that stay with her through her work. Bob’s curiosity is “inspiring for me as Board Chair. It’s a reminder that not only do we ask our families and our community the questions and never make assumptions, but also that it needs to transition into the work we do on the board. It has inspired me to implement more of that at a Board level that is allowing for more successful conversations at a safer place for Board members to share their thoughts and ideas. Bob’s really driven that home with his questions.”

Shannon adds, “I think like a lot of people who are in an Executive Director position will tell you that it can be a lonely place to be the one who’s liaising with the board, and being the person in charge of all the staff and all the operations; it sometimes feels like there’s not a lot of room to bounce ideas off people. But I think with Karen, it’s allowed me to spitball and be like, there’s all of these things in my brain. It feels a little bit like therapy for Executive Directors, where I just get to say all the things in my brain and then she helps me put it into piles. So in the last six months, we’ve been allowed to put things into piles, and then start to chip away at each of the piles in order to get things done, which just feels like you’ve got someone sort of walking alongside you.”