Chapter Spotlight: Canada South - Building Coalitions with the Community

2024-2025 Canada South Board of Directors (L to R) Melissa Hunter, Erin Genge, Nora Romero, Anjana Jacob, Afshin Ali, Jason Smith, Sandra Presland and Mike Genge (missing from the photo Rukshini Ponniah-Goulin)

FRANÇAIS

“Our work at the AFP ON, Canada South chapter is about how we can bring the community together,” says chapter president Nora Romero. The Canada South chapter includes Sarnia-Lambton, Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex in southwestern Ontario.

“Coalition building is our core value,” she says. “For example, every year we host a breakfast and bring an expert from KPMG, one of our partners, to update the group on the latest with CRA regulations. Our members bring their counterparts from their organizations’  finance departments. It’s a great way for everyone to stay up to date and for our partners to feel truly included in our work.”

Coalition building feels natural to Romero. In her day job, she’s building partnerships on behalf of the City of Windsor as their corporate communications and partnership development staff. Her first foray into fundraising was helping her mother organize a fashion show to raise money for Windsor’s first hospice in 1979. In 2004, she ended up working on a large campaign to turn that first hospice into a hospice village. 

“One example of how we brought the community together is our chapter’s work last year on the 21-Day Equity Challenge—which originated as a United Way initiative throughout the United States and designed to be a catalyst for change, prompting individuals to examine their own roles in promoting equity and diversity within the fundraising world. We put a lot of effort into this challenge, had great uptake among members, and it gave us a reason for the chapter to reach out to immigrant women’s organizations, for instance, which was so instructional.”

As part of its 21-Day Challenge, the Canada South chapter designed an email campaign, which provided resources to educate members on how inequity, racism, and discrimination affect our lives and communities, and what we can do to improve equity and inclusion.

Throughout the challenge period, March 8-April 5, 2024, members received an email every workday. These emails contained links to videos and articles with further information about a specific equity and social justice-related topic. 

“The challenge was for members to spend a small amount of time each day to develop a deeper understanding of some ways inequity and racism impact equity-deserving groups in our communities, and specifically for our members to think about how this may relate to conversations or actions with volunteers, staff, and donors,” says Romero.

The Canada South chapter received AFP’s IDEA Champion Award in 2024 for its work on the 21-Day Equity Challenge. 

“Windsor is a welcoming city,” says Romero, “and we have an immense number of services available to ease the transition for newcomers and refugees, many of whom have faced trauma, and our chapter’s commitment to the 21-Day Equity Challenge reflected that.”

Romero wants to share more of the work they are doing in their region.

“We want to do some storytelling around the relationships we have with the business community,” says Romero. “There’s a huge connection between those relationships and our priority of inclusion, diversity, equity and access. Our community is the third most diverse in the country with more than 150 languages spoken.” 

The Canada South chapter also shares concerns about the anticipated lack of leadership created by many current fundraising leaders being set to retire in the next five years. And in true Canada South style, the chapter is turning to its community to fill the gap.

“We wanted to offer scholarships to attend AFP conferences, which are sources of great learning and networking,” says Romero. “So, we sat down with some of our main sponsors on National Philanthropy Day last year and told them that we wanted to be a centre of excellence in fundraising. And they agreed to collectively sponsor three members.”

Aside from coalition building, and nurturing leadership, Canada South’s priority over the next few years is to increase the number of members, to share its resources and its values. A monthly newsletter has been created so members can share events happening at their organizations. 

“It takes years to foster relationships with donors and the same is true from relationships in the community,” says Romero. “And that’s where our focus lies.”

Visit AFP Canada South chapter by clicking here.