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FuseSocial survey shows impact of the wildfire on the social profit sector

Last Updated May 18, 2017 at 7:41 am MDT

FuseSocial published their third out of five surveys done of the impact of the wildfire on the social profit sector.

This survey focuses on financial and staffing issues within the sector nine months after the wildfire.

It was one of the major areas of concern identified by the first survey.

A total of 70 social profit organizations participated in the survey with various budgets and staff.

The major findings from the survey are that respondents need more financial, volunteer and human resources.

Most of the organizations are operating with one to 10 paid employees and 70% of the organizations said they had experienced changes to their traditional revenues.

Financial Problems

In fact, 21.2% have received no additional financial support and those that have had to wait a considerable about of time for the funding.

Barriers to accessing funding include not enough staff to complete application forms, not meeting eligibility needs of the funders, unable to source funding to meet unique needs and previous donor base unable to support them any longer.

Human Resource Impact  

With staffing being a huge component to the financial problems identified it was also noted in the survey that more than half of responding agencies indicated that they had employment vacancies.

Staff either didn’t return after the wildfire or were lost due to health issues.

Agencies also had problems recruiting new staff with a lack of qualified applicants and the inability to offer an appealing salary.

Other issues included staff being “compassion fatigued” or spousal relocation.

Outcomes

More than half of the respondents cannot meet the demand of community needs as they would like to due to the funding problems and staffing issues and 10 are considering mergers to increase service capacity and 24 are partnering to increase delivery.

FuseSocial will use this information to support agencies’ community responsiveness.

The fourth and fifth surveys will be conducted and released at appropriate intervals to monitor the impact of the wildfire on long-term recovery.

You can download the survey here.