About the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR)

The Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR) is a national connector and ecosystem enabler working to ensure every nonprofit in Canada has the confidence, skills, and support to thrive in a digital world. CCNDR is housed within Imagine Canada, the national charity whose mission is to strengthen and support Canadian charities and nonprofits so they can better serve their communities. As a trusted wayfinder, CCNDR helps organizations navigate technology, strengthen digital capacity, and build the connective tissue that turns individual efforts into collective infrastructure. Through collaboration, co-creation, and shared learning, CCNDR is helping shape a more digitally resilient and equitable nonprofit sector.

Our work is organized around three focus areas where support is most urgently needed: data management and literacy, cybersecurity readiness, and emerging technology. We advance this work through our 4As framework, assessing where the sector stands, providing organizations access to trusted tools and knowledge, acting through co-creation and collaboration, and amplifying what works so progress travels further. By 2029, we are working toward a future where at least 5,000 nonprofits and grassroots organizations across Canada have the confidence, skills, and support to thrive in a digital world.

About the Opportunity

Across every region and subsector, cybersecurity readiness has emerged as one of the most urgent and consistent priorities facing Canada's nonprofit and community sector. Nonprofit professionals are expected to steward deeply sensitive community data, navigate an escalating threat environment, and make sound digital decisions, often without structured training, clear pathways, or adequate support. CCNDR has heard this call clearly and is responding accordingly.

CCNDR is establishing its cybersecurity programming and activating Canada's first national Nonprofit Cyber Readiness Pathway, a structured progression from assessment to awareness to preparedness to response and recovery, built in direct response to what the sector has asked for. As the Cybersecurity Lead-in-Residence, you will carry this forward across two concurrent pieces of work: expanding the current Nonprofit AI Impact Hub into CCNDR's Nonprofit Digital Impact Hub with a dedicated cybersecurity stream and designing, launching, and running the Cyber Policy Co-Lab, CCNDR's first national cybersecurity co-design cohort, through to its resulting product's release, alongside delivering the National Cyber Readiness Activation Series, adapting, mobilizing, delivering, and evaluating an applied readiness program built for Canada's nonprofit sector.

To all of this, you bring cybersecurity expertise into community-informed models where the sector helps shape the tools it uses. You will translate technical complexity into practical tools, hold relationships across a growing ecosystem of partners, and position CCNDR as the trusted centre of gravity for nonprofit cyber readiness in Canada. For the right person, this is a meaningful opportunity to shape work the sector has been asking for, at exactly the moment it needs it most. If you are someone who moves with purpose and builds with care, we want to hear from you.

What you'll do

Specific deliverables and milestones will be confirmed with the selected contractor as part of a Statement of Work.

Nonprofit Digital Impact Hub Expansion: Cyber Stream (by October 2026) — 15%

• Lead the curation and contextualization of cybersecurity resources for Canada's nonprofit sector, drawing on existing diagnostics, frameworks, and tools that reflect real nonprofit conditions
• Coordinate with the Digital Impact Hub's technical infrastructure to integrate cyber content seamlessly
• Define the resource taxonomy and curation criteria that will guide the Hub's cyber content going forward                                    

Cyber Policy Co-Lab: Design, Launch, and Delivery (Oct 2026 – Oct 2027) — 20%

• Lead the Co-Lab design process, defining scope, participant profile, co-design process, and intended outputs in close alignment with CCNDR's strategic priorities
• Carry an intentional AI innovation thread, connecting cybersecurity and responsible AI adoption as complementary priorities for the sector
• Develop and launch the public callout, then run the Co-Lab and support the release and uptake of its resulting product through to contract end
   

National Cyber Readiness Activation Series (Sept 2026 – Aug 2027) — 45%

• Harmonize existing cyber content from across the ecosystem to adapt an Applied Readiness Program for the Canadian nonprofit context, including but not limited to a readiness reflection tool, tabletop simulations, and an incident response workshop
• Mobilize the national network and recruit 20–25 nonprofit organizations, timed to Cyber Security Awareness Month, leveraging the readiness reflection tool
• Facilitate three live national webinars reaching nonprofit professionals across the country
• Deliver the harmonized 8-week Applied Readiness Program to the recruited cohort, then sustain a national peer network and coordinate program evaluation through August 2027
   

Ecosystem & Partner Coordination — 12%

• Engage CCNDR's cybersecurity ecosystem to inform the Hub, Co-Lab, and Activation Series design
• Participate in relevant sector conversations and partner meetings on behalf of CCNDR

Reporting & Accountability — 8%

• Track and report progress
• Identify and surface risks and constraints

Selection Criteria

This opportunity is best suited to a strong project manager with cybersecurity exposure. The technical delivery work is anchored by our ecosystem of partners, requiring the Lead-in-residence to coordinate and facilitate ecosystem contributions, evaluating and harmonizing content into one coherent Canadian program, and translate that complexity into practical tools nonprofits can use. When selecting for this opportunity, we prioritize demonstrated experience in the following:

• A seasoned program lead. You have coordinated programs, policy processes, resource development, or co-design initiatives before, hold multiple funded workstreams at once, manage budgets and timelines, and know what it takes to move work from concept to callout to delivery.
• A relationship holder. You work comfortably across delivery partners, funders, and community, communicating proactively and understanding that this work travels through people, not just plans.
• A cyber-fluent translator. You translate technical risk into plain language and hold your own with cybersecurity vendors and practitioners, evaluating and coordinating expert partners' work into terms nonprofits can act on.
• A community-rooted practitioner. You know that nonprofits steward sensitive data, operate with constrained resources, rely on volunteers and donated infrastructure, yet deserve the same quality of cyber support as any enterprise. You understand that digital risk falls unevenly, and that equity-denied communities deserve the most thoughtful design.
• A believer in shared learning over ownership. You build solutions with the sector rather than delivering them to it, in keeping with our CoLab model, and you make sure what's learned travels further than any single tool.
• A bilingual communicator, as an asset. You bring English/French fluency that supports this program's national scope and its delivery commitments in Québec.
• A well-connected collaborator. You arrive with relationships already built across Canada's nonprofit and cybersecurity sectors, ready for this work to draw on from day one.
   

Submission Process

We have designed a submission process that respects your time and reflects our values. Rather than a traditional RFP, we ask respondents to complete a short form with a few focused questions, which gives you the chance to show us how you think, as well as what you have done.

Here is what to expect:

• Submission: a short online form including a link to your resume, professional profile and/or LinkedIn, and scenario-based responses
• Project Discussion: shortlisted respondents will be invited to a 60-minute conversation with the review team from CCNDR and Imagine Canada, questions shared in advance.
• References: the top two respondents will be asked to provide project references for final consideration.

We believe a good engagement is a matter of mutual fit. At every stage you will have time to ask questions and get a real sense of the work and the people behind it.

We are committed to a barrier-free process. If you need accommodation at any stage, please reach out to Marie-Pier Barone at [email protected]. Shortlisted respondents will receive a $100 honorarium in recognition of the time involved in the submission process.

We particularly welcome submissions from people with lived experience of the communities we serve, including Black, Indigenous, and racialized people, 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, people with disabilities, newcomers, and those from rural and northern communities.

This is an independent contractor engagement. The selected contractor will be responsible for their own taxes, benefits, and business expenses.

Submission deadline: Sunday, August 23, 2026, 11:59 PM ET