The New CCA: A New Style of Governance

Sep­tem­ber 26th, 2012

Like I wrote in my last blog, we are work­ing very hard to iden­tify what the new CCA will be. We are work­ing to ensure it will be a CCA the entire cul­tural sec­tor can be proud of and one that responds to the needs of its mem­bers. We are sys­tem­at­i­cally exam­in­ing our model of gov­er­nance to ensure the sec­tor feels a sense of belong­ing and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the deci­sions we make as was rec­om­mended in the Five Year Strate­gic Plan adopted by the board last March.

When we learned the fed­eral gov­ern­ment would not be giv­ing us the tran­si­tional fund­ing we expected we ini­tially placed an exam­i­na­tion of our man­age­ment style on the sec­ond rung of tasks for the CCA. We had to ensure there would be an orga­ni­za­tion to man­age before we could exam­ine the way it was going to be man­aged in the future! That is the rea­son why, over the course of the past six months, we con­cen­trated all our efforts on build­ing our mem­ber­ship and devel­op­ing projects that would appeal to poten­tial investors. And it appears we are headed in the right direc­tion: renewals have been strong, the direc­tion of key projects is becom­ing clearer and, in their ini­tial phases, projects have been attract­ing inter­est. All of this to say, as long as the momen­tum con­tin­ues, there will cer­tainly be an orga­ni­za­tion to man­age. The moment has come to high­light how the CCA of tomor­row will be dif­fer­ent from the CCA of the past and it starts with the review of our gov­er­nance model.

Over the course of the upcom­ing weeks we will sys­tem­at­i­cally exam­ine the orga­ni­za­tion. We will review our rules, the size of our board of gov­er­nors, its make up, and selec­tion process. We need to imple­ment the man­date and orga­nize the four strate­gic com­mit­tees rec­om­mended by the Strate­gic Plan. Each com­mit­tee will be com­prised of one mem­ber of the board and four to six CCA mem­bers with author­ity over the activ­i­ties and projects. The com­mit­tees will work to ensure the CCA’s work reflects the four strate­gic axes iden­ti­fied in last winter’s meet­ing; Lead­er­ship and Net­work­ing, Knowl­edge Shar­ing, Gov­ern­ment Rela­tions and Pub­lic Engage­ment. The projects and activ­i­ties that fall under more then one of these axes will be exam­ined by more then one com­mit­tee to ensure cohe­sion and the finan­cial via­bil­ity of the over all project. Finally, we need to assure the orga­ni­za­tion con­forms to the reg­u­la­tions out­lined in the new Canada Not-For-Profit Cor­po­ra­tions Act. The bot­tom line is: we need to have every­thing in place before the gen­eral meet­ing in late June 2013 (but there is lit­tle doubt a spe­cial assem­bly will need to be called prior to the pre­vi­ously men­tioned date to deal with urgent issues).

The new changes for mem­ber­ship incor­po­ra­tion will not end on the for­mal level. We are devel­op­ing new forms for feed back on spe­cific issues, putting in place com­mit­tee direc­tors for research projects, advo­cacy, etc. And on top of all this, there will be a series of ini­tia­tives to increase and diver­sify the com­po­si­tion of our membership.

In sum­mary, there are a lot of balls in the air, espe­cially when we con­sider the work that needs to be done to develop our projects and main­tain our reg­u­lar activ­i­ties. We need to con­stantly scru­ti­nize our pri­or­i­ties and use of resources. I can tell you that the sec­re­tariat is for­tu­nate enough to have a loyal and devoted team but we can’t push our mem­bers to the point of burn­ing out!

And with that been said, I must return to the task at hand!

–Alain