In a previous article, I detailed Nonprofit Law Ontario’s method to provide educational supports to meet shared legal needs of nonprofits and charities. In this article, I’m sharing some of the cutting-edge ways networks have partnered with us in the past, so you know how to partner with us in the future.
Case Study 1: Rolling Out New Legislation—Charities and the Qualified Disbursement Rules
When there are changes to legislation or government policies, entire sectors need to learn, adapt and hopefully take advantage of the new rules all at the same time. We have come to call these “moments of peak collective attention.” These moments are ideal times for cost savings because of the economies of scale that come with everyone attending and paying attention at once.
For example, recent changes to the Income Tax Act allows charities to grant to non-charities through what are called “qualified disbursements.” This has a lot of nonprofits and charities asking how these new rules could improve their work. Thanks to Laidlaw Foundation’s generous support, we were able to create a suite of resources, including:
While there are other excellent resources in this area, these resources uniquely focus on the fundees and help to ensure that those least positioned to secure individual supports can make the most of this law reform the sector long advocated for.
Case Study 2: Pushing the Bounds of Charity Law—Land Trusts and Charity Law
It often happens that the most promising and cutting-edge work that charities do is also the most expensive (legally) since no clear precedents or templates exist. Individual organizations may not have the resources to bear these costs upfront even though many other organizations may benefit from following the path they create. This is the time for network participants to invest in doing the research and creating the templates, so that many organizations can save money now— and in the future, adapt and build on what has been created.
Not too long ago, the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts (CNCLT) approached ONN with just such a proposal. Dozens of community land trusts (CLTs) across the country struggle with the choice to become a charity. Although each CLT has a unique situation, they also face common questions. CNCLT was looking for someone to write a guide on charity law for CLTs and we gladly agreed (you can see the guide here).
Case Study 3: Teaching While we Learn—Legal Needs Study of the Sector
Often in the charitable sector, we separate the “needs assessment” phase of a project from “program delivery.” But there are ways to ensure we are assessing people’s needs as we meet them.
Thanks to the generous support of the Law Foundation of Ontario and the Lawson Foundation, between 2021 and 2023 NPLO carried out a study of the legal needs of nonprofits in Ontario. As part of this study, we worked with networks (funders, subsector association, identity-based networks) to circulate a survey to their members identifying their highest priority learning needs while delivering workshops. Discussion periods ensured all participants gained valuable insights and were therefore able to better articulate their needs in high priority legal areas (e.g. employment and volunteer law, governance, and privacy and record keeping).
Case Study 4: Meeting Regular Needs Together—Supporting Grassroots Groups with the Incorporation and Charity Application Process
Funders often have standards they’d like all their fundees to be able to meet, whether in financial review, risk management, or having charitable status. Consequently, public and private funder staff regularly go through the same set of questions with low capacity fundees. NPLO has seen this many times before and have worked with municipalities and other funders to simplify and streamline the process by delivering workshops, templates, and answering general legal information. We have resources ready in areas such as incorporation and applying for charitable status, financial reporting, governance, and risk management.
Partnering With Us
If you are a convenor of charities, we are interested in working with you to address high priority shared legal needs, particularly those identified in our legal needs study or those that identify with Ontario Nonprofit Network’s policy priorities.
If you are facing legal questions that seem to fall into one of the above categories and want to work with us, or just chat, please contact benjamin@theonn.ca
