2011 Canadian Business & Community Partnership Forum

New Models to Promote Civic Engagement & Non-Profit Information

Sharing

BACKGROUND

Framework is fanatical about connecting people to causes they care about. With nearly

10 years under our belt, our team has focused on delivering high quality volunteer

engagement events while innovating in other areas relating to non-profit capacity

building. Our core program is the Timeraiser. The Timeraiser is part volunteer fair, part

silent art auction and part night on the town. Throughout the evening meet with

different agencies and match your skills to their needs. Once attendees have made their

matches, they are eligible to bid on artwork. The big twist is rather than bidding money

they bid volunteer hours. If someone has a winning bid they have 12 months to

complete their pledge before bringing the artwork home as a reminder of their goodwill.

Once the auction is over we announce the hours raised and then celebrate our

contribution to the community. To date, the Timeraiser has:

Generated 87,000 volunteer hours

Invested over $460,000 in the careers of emerging artists*

Engaged 7,000 Canadians to pick up a cause

Supported the efforts of 400 nonprofits

*We pay artists fair market value from the generous donations made by our corporate

partners that include CIBC, Enbridge, First Calgary Financial, Molson Coors, Nexen, TD

Bank, RBC Bank to name a few.

CHALLENGE

We currently operate in eight Canadian cities with only 5 staff and 250 volunteers,

Framework is a small team that packs a big punch. There is always a flurry of activity in

the office that must:

Engage 125 unique stakeholders

Manage 500+ unique pieces of digital assets/event (e.g. logos)

Maintain 8 to 10 distinct work-plan components

Renew 75% of program funding each year

Respond to 200 emails/day

Evaluate requests for other Timeraiser events from all around the world

SOLUTION

Our goal is to work collaboratively with local partners rather than ‘recreating the wheel’.

To tackle this mounting challenge, we have decided to post all our non-confidential

information online and in real-time. We are able to do this by making use of the most

scalable Software-As-A-Service tools to help answer the following questions:

1. How do we work more collaboratively with like-minded organizations?

2. How do we become more transparent over time?

3. How do we prioritize new ideas against existing game plan?

4. How do we become a learning organization?

5. How do we simplify operations while scaling activities?

IMPLICATION

Framework has been prototyping this new information sharing for the past three years.

We are experiencing a remarkable level of productivity and goal setting. Additionally, this

has enabled us to better understand how this type of reporting can change how funders

and grantees share information.