Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

To the best of our knowledge, we are the only not-for-profit corporation that offers on-going operational support in Canada. There are non-profit consulting organizations that might help tackle a specific project and there are for-profit back office teams that serve clients from all sectors at a high cost. By focusing on the social purpose sector we are able to deliver services that are:

1. Tailored to the unique needs and challenges of the sector
2. Cost effective by leveraging the benefits of being a not-for-profit ourselves
3. Accessible to all social purpose organizations that are making our communities better

Most importantly, you should choose Purpose Forward because our mission is to move the Canadian social purpose sector forward – it’s right in our name! We are not here to generate profit for shareholders. We are here to serve our communities by serving you.

Purpose Forward provides services to any Canadian social purpose organization that has a mission that strives to make our world better. This includes both non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Our focus is on supporting and accelerating the growth of grassroots organizations. We target clients that have 50 employees or less at the time of engagement, although we have the capacity to support the growth far beyond that once we have already started building a relationship with you.

If you are not sure if your organization qualifies for our services, please contact us and we would be happy to explore how we can best serve you.

As awareness continues to grow for many important causes, the lines between the traditional for-profit/not-for-profit business models become more of a continuum with a variety of hybrid organizations that both serve a social good and, in some cases, earn a profit. While the term social purpose organization (“SPO”) is relatively new and there is not consensus on the definition, we take a very broad meaning of the term, defined as:

“An umbrella term to describe the wide variety of organizations working for a social purpose, such as nonprofits, foundations, and social enterprises.”

Impact Management Project

We work with each client early on to determine how we can maximize the impact for your team. Our team is geographically dispersed to recruit and retain the best talent and we prefer to deliver services remotely where possible. Once it is safe to do so after the pandemic, our team will travel to attend meetings in person when the attendance is critical. For example, if we are providing strategic finance support and board meetings return to in person for your organization, your Strategic Support Lead will attend those meetings in person when it is expected.

Clients will have 2 or more Client Experience Leads (“CEL”) to act as the primary points of contact for all of the needs of them and their staff. Clients with a limited engagement scope will have, at minimum:

A Strategic Support Lead responsible for operational and strategic matters

A Transactional Support Lead that manages the day-to-day operations such as paying vendors and staff or setting up new users in an IT system

Larger clients may have additional leads that are more specialized in nature. These Leads will be senior experts in their function that will oversee the coordination of all of the activity required for your organization. They can attend your team meetings if you want and you can think of these Leads as part of your staff.

Behind the scenes, we have specialists that coordinate regularly with the Leads to address any upcoming issues and manage most of the work for your organization. Examples of these roles could be Project Managers, Data Analysts, Communications experts, etc. that can be leveraged to support multiple clients. This way grassroots organizations can have access to these specialists at no additional cost – part of our commitment to making support services accessible to all social purpose organizations!

We are a not-for-profit corporation registered federally in Canada, but we are not a registered charity. As a non-profit, we can pass along many benefits to our communities that for-profit businesses just can’t provide.

Our goal is to make this expertise accessible to even the most financially insecure social purpose organizations. We want to serve you to get on stable ground and make our world better.

As a not-for-profit we do not pay income tax, we do not need a large mark-up to profit owners, and we are eligible for discounts on technology and some infrastructure. These savings get passed back directly to our clients. Surplus funds are used to provide short-term subsidies to clients that cannot afford our services while we help them develop a strategy to ensure the sustainability of this expertise.

Our support services are provided using a licensing model, with pricing based on the number of employees on your team that we support. This ensures transparency in costs and is easy to plan for and scale. As your team grows we offer volume discounts to further reduce the overhead costs. Check out our pricing calculator to know your pricing based on the number of employees.

We aim to maximize social impact, not profits. Contact us to learn more about how we can provide an exceptional experience at a low cost.

While we do leverage some similar benefits as a shared service organization (“SSO”), there are some important differences about our mandate that avoid some of the pitfalls of these organizations.

SSOs have been a model used in the social purpose sectors with mixed success. These organizations are created to provide back-office services that help drive the efficiency of the organizations that they support. This can be as simple as a few family physician practices hiring a shared receptionist and office space or as complex as an agency like Plexxus that is responsible for most of the supply chain and some technology for the Ontario hospital sector. These SSOs are always created with a mandate of driving efficiency through economies of scale – rather than multiple organizations requiring the same experts and infrastructure for back-office functions, one group can do that for cheaper on behalf of all the partners.

While Purpose Forward recognizes the advantages of the economies of scale and anticipates some of the benefits for our clients in the future, our reason for existing is different. Our mission is not about efficiency, it is about access. This difference has major implications on our decisions, our structure, and our people.

Yes! Your donations are used to subsidize the cost of our services for clients that might not be able to afford this expertise. These are the clients that often could benefit most from our work and with your support, we can ensure they have access too!

Donate here.

We are always looking to collaborate with dedicated individuals and organizations in our common goal of making our communities better! Partnerships and volunteerism is the lifeblood of the social purpose sector and we value these relationships very much. Contact us if you have an idea about how we can work together in the future!