Nonprofits Are Woven Into Our Daily Lives (with Tasha Lackman and Michel Vallée)
Have you visited a museum recently? Do your kids go to daycare? Did you adopt a dog from an animal shelter? Nonprofits provide all of these services, but we don’t always think of it that way. And that’s exactly what the data reveals about how our sector is perceived.
Only 41% of Canadians said they know someone who has used a nonprofit’s services. Considering the full range of services offered by the country’s 170,000 nonprofits, that’s surprisingly low. Yet eight in ten people believe nonprofit services are essential to the well-being of their community. In other words, people value the sector, but they don’t see themselves in it.
The sector’s impact on our lives is widely underestimated, and that has real consequences across the nonprofit ecosystem: funding, public support, volunteers, staff and communities. But what would become possible if we changed that perception?
Imagine Canada’s national awareness campaign sets out to change that. It highlights how everyone benefits from nonprofits, often without realizing it, and invites people to feel connected to the sector. The message is simple: you’re already part of it.
We sat down with Tasha Lackman, President and CEO of Centraide of Greater Montreal, and Michel Vallée, President and CEO of Culture pour tous, two nonprofit leaders who see the sector’s impact on communities from different angles, to explore this.
We talk about how present the sector is in our daily lives, what’s at stake when people feel disconnected from it, and why social issues need to be tackled as a whole, with nonprofit services working as complementary solutions rather than stand-alone offerings.
This episode is available in French.
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