Summer Projects

We all know the expres­sion “the cheque is in the mail.” And yet I have never waited for a cheque with so much impa­tience as the one that we received elec­tron­i­cally this week from Cana­dian Her­itage. Along with the mem­ber­ship con­tri­bu­tions we have received over the past six weeks, this brings us until mid-autumn, plus a con­tin­gency reserve of more than three months that we intend to keep and even­tu­ally build on. Already it’s a more com­fort­able sit­u­a­tion than we have been in the last three months, when we have been fol­low­ing the fluc­tu­a­tions in our finan­cials on a weekly basis. This gives a good base for plan­ning other inflows of money that will help to cover the two year tran­si­tion period lead­ing towards long term finan­cial sta­bil­ity. We won’t be short of work, but it doesn’t scare us. On the con­trary! The staff of the CCA has real enthu­si­asm that is good to see.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I had the plea­sure of meet­ing with a num­ber of you in Mon­treal and Toronto to dis­cuss our new busi­ness plan and projects under devel­op­ment related to our four pil­lars: lead­er­ship and net­work­ing, knowl­edge shar­ing, gov­ern­ment rela­tions, and pub­lic engage­ment. I came away from these meet­ings re-energized and more moti­vated than ever to make the nec­es­sary changes to ensure the future of a com­pletely renewed CCA.

We reviewed the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives under­way to secure tran­si­tion fund­ing for the new busi­ness model and dis­cussed eight dif­fer­ent rev­enue sources iden­ti­fied in the busi­ness plan. Amongst other goals, the busi­ness plans aims at increas­ing our rev­enues from mem­ber­ship from our cur­rent 12 or 13% to 42% of the total bud­get within five years. At first glance, the pur­suit of such a goal may seem unre­al­is­tic. How­ever, it will be achieved through three sep­a­rate ini­tia­tives: grow­ing the num­ber of mem­bers, review­ing con­tri­bu­tion lev­els for cer­tain cat­e­gories of orga­ni­za­tional mem­bers, and finally, cre­at­ing a new cat­e­gory of non-voting cor­po­rate mem­bers whose name will be asso­ci­ated with a series of CCA activ­i­ties and products.

After the full renewals, we will launch a recruit­ment cam­paign in the fall, cur­rently under devel­op­ment and which will be based in part on the coop­er­a­tion of our exist­ing mem­bers. A num­ber of mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions have already indi­cated their desire to par­tic­i­pate in this cam­paign and oth­ers will be invited to do the same. Broad­en­ing our mem­ber­ship base will respond to both the goals of legit­i­macy and finan­cial sta­bil­ity. To put access to the CCA within reach of more peo­ple, we have already reduced the cost of mem­ber­ship for indi­vid­ual mem­bers ($50) and for orga­ni­za­tional cat­e­gories 1 and 2 ($100 and $175 respectively).

We will dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­ity of rais­ing the fees for cer­tain mem­ber cat­e­gories with all inter­ested par­ties over the com­ing months, specif­i­cally cat­e­gories 4–8. Before review­ing the scale, it will of course be nec­es­sary to eval­u­ate the real­i­ties of each group, the value of the CCA and the ser­vices that we pro­vide, and what each orga­ni­za­tion can rea­son­ably contribute.

The main increase in rev­enues will be flow from cre­at­ing a new class of non-voting cor­po­rate mem­bers. This is actu­ally a form of phil­an­thropic spon­sor­ship by com­pa­nies that believe in the mis­sion of the CCA and wish to sup­port our prod­ucts and services.

In clos­ing, a word on a project cur­rently under devel­op­ment. We have begun col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa to develop a new annual report on the provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial bud­gets relat­ing to cul­ture. We con­sider it a priv­i­lege to work with Sharon Jean­notte, from the Cen­tre on Gov­er­nance, who has agreed to coor­di­nate this project; and Mon­ica Gat­tinger, from the School of Polit­i­cal Stud­ies, who along with Diane St-Pierre from Quebec’s National Insti­tute of Sci­en­tific Research (INRS) pub­lished the book Les poli­tiques cul­turelles provin­ciales et ter­ri­to­ri­ales du Canada : Orig­ines et évolu­tions et mises en oeu­vre (Laval : PUL, 2012). Con­sid­er­ing the fact that Stats Canada has aban­doned the pub­li­ca­tion of the annual report on fed­eral and provin­cial cul­tural spend­ing, the CCA is tak­ing the baton in this area. We are expect­ing to pub­lish our annual Fed­eral Bud­get Analy­sis in the fall, and the provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial one in Feb­ru­ary, just in time for a new bud­get sea­son across the coun­try. We will keep you posted on this excit­ing project that has been deemed essen­tial by numer­ous of our mem­bers and non-members as it unfolds.

You can see, we are not short on work for the sum­mer! As our Pres­i­dent said in her blog, the com­ing months will be of crit­i­cal impor­tance for the rein­ven­tion of the CCA. We need to put the new mech­a­nisms of gov­er­nance into place to ensure greater involve­ment of mem­bers.  We need to expand our ranks and our rev­enue base. We must plan the chang­ing of the guard and pass the torch to the lead­ers of tomor­row. This great chal­lenge can only be done with your sup­port and com­mit­ment. You can count on ours!

–Alain