PASSION AND COMMITMENT KEY TO WORKING IN VOLUNTARY SECTOR

· There is a higher per­cent­age of women than men work­ing in the non-profit sec­tor;  as a result, the par­tic­u­lar needs of female work­ers are usu­ally met through ini­tia­tives such as flex­i­ble work sched­ules. [Nei­ther the Cre­ative Man­age­ment project nor the Com­pen­sa­tion Study specif­i­cally iden­ti­fied the male/female ratio in the cul­tural sec­tor.  How­ever, a num­ber of par­tic­i­pants at the 2002 Chalmers Con­fer­ence offered the pre­pon­der­ance of women in admin­is­tra­tive func­tions as an expla­na­tion for the under-valuing of this work, given that even today women tend to earn less than men in com­pa­ra­ble jobs.]

· There is more tem­po­rary work (asso­ci­ated with reduced job secu­rity), more con­cerns about train­ing, and fewer oppor­tu­ni­ties for advance­ment com­pared to other sec­tors. [While Face of the Future points out that the cul­tural sec­tor “has not yet devel­oped ‘an HR cul­ture’”, the in depth reports and stud­ies released more recently by CCA and CHRC go a long way towards pro­vid­ing the sec­tor with a set of sen­si­ble rec­om­men­da­tions to fur­ther HR development.]

· While express­ing over­all job sat­is­fac­tion, older employ­ees in the non­profit sec­tor also stated they were “dissatisfied/very dis­sat­is­fied” with pay and ben­e­fits.  Although the work in the sec­tor is gen­er­ally viewed as stim­u­lat­ing and inter­est­ing, com­pen­sa­tion lev­els become increas­ingly impor­tant as older employ­ees draw nearer retirement.

· Some non-profit orga­ni­za­tions, par­tic­u­larly the smaller ones, may be caught in a squeeze in rela­tion to recruit­ment and reten­tion strate­gies.  This is the vicious cir­cle of low com­pen­sa­tion and lack of sta­ble fund­ing on one hand, and the loss of tal­ented staff and dif­fi­culty in replac­ing them on the other. [One com­ment from the Cre­ative Man­age­ment project summed it up thus: I’m increas­ingly aware that con­di­tions of employ­ment in our sec­tor are a major hin­drance.  When we’re young, we get into this field because we love the arts so pas­sion­ately we’re will­ing to forego ordi­nary rewards.  As we get older, it’s more obvi­ous that our skills are not val­ued in any of the ways oper­a­tive in the out­side world … so peo­ple come to their senses and leave.]

· Project fund­ing makes it dif­fi­cult for non-profit orga­ni­za­tions to invest in capac­ity build­ing, and weak­ens the orga­ni­za­tions’ abil­ity to engage in long-term plan­ning.  The very nature of project-based fund­ing, with mul­ti­ple fun­ders, results in dupli­ca­tion of paper­work and an oner­ous bur­den of report­ing.  [In its pre-Budget sub­mis­sions, the CCA has fre­quently iden­ti­fied the require­ment for a return to core fund­ing to ensure sta­bil­ity and long-term plan­ning for cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions as a key mes­sage from the sec­tor.  With the new pro­grammes unrolled under the Tomor­row Starts Today fund­ing, the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage rec­og­nized the need of cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions for capac­ity build­ing and stabilization.]

The full Cana­dian Pol­icy Research Net­works’ report can be accessed at: www.cprn.org.

The other reports men­tioned above are avail­able at:

www.ccarts.ca (Cre­ative Man­age­ment in the Arts and Her­itage: Sus­tain­ing and Renew­ing Pro­fes­sional Man­age­ment for the 21^st Cen­tury, A Pro­posed Action Plan for Cre­at­ing Win­ning Con­di­tions)

www.culturalhrc.ca (Face of the Future: A Study of Human Resource Issues in Canada’s Cul­tural Sec­tor; National Com­pen­sa­tion Sur­vey for Man­age­ment and Admin­is­tra­tion in Not-for-Profit Arts Organizations)

CCA con­tin­ues its active involve­ment with the vol­un­tary sec­tor through the mem­ber­ship of the National Direc­tor in the var­i­ous iter­a­tions of the group, from the Vol­un­tary Sec­tor Round­table through the Vol­un­tary Sec­tor Ini­tia­tive to the cur­rent Vol­un­tary Sec­tor Forum.  The asso­ci­a­tion with the broader non-profit sec­tor has proved ben­e­fi­cial to the cul­tural sec­tor.  CCA con­tin­ues its work on the Cre­ative Man­age­ment project (now under the guid­ance of con­sul­tant Sibyl Frei) in part­ner­ship with DCH, CHRC, and the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts.