1. Sector Sustainability: Growth,
Mergers, Partnership and the
Pursuit of Excellence
Comments by Rob Howarth
October 23, 2012
OCASI Executive Directors Forum

2. Organizational growth
 Growth is about continual change,
engagement with environment,
learning and reflection.
 Organizations can grow in their
understanding, expertise,
relationships, and in their
capacity to act.
 But what about their growth in
size?

3. Is bigger always better?

4. Popular assumptions
 too many nonprofits
 the language (and reality?) of
scarcity
 consolidation can deliver greater
impact

5. What’s efficient?
 “Efficiency in general describes the
extent to which time or effort is well used
for the intended task or purpose” –
Wikipedia
 Do we have evidence that larger systems
are always more efficient?
 Is there a lot of excess effort (“waste”) in
our organizations?

6. The need for evidence
 Is there an optimum scale for
community organizations?
 We need to know when mergers
work well, and work poorly.
 And we need criteria to judge this.

7. Case studies
 Is the City of Toronto merger (the
"megacity") working?
 Is Toronto too big, too small, just
right?
 How should we assess this?

8. If it’s about service impact…
 Client-centred services require good
relationships
 As well as communication across
and within organizations
 What organizational forms are best
to achieve this (networks,
integrated services, collaborations,
mergers)?

9. Will one size ever fit all?

10. Many roles for our organizations
 Resident engagement
 Local control and democratic
process
 Stewarding community assets
 Service delivery
 Local problem solving and
innovation

11. Fewer roles now?
 Previously relied on government
funding to support many
community-led objectives.
 Now government focus is on
delivering large service contracts.
 How can we sustain diverse
organizations and activities?

12. Is there an alternative?
 Can individual organizations decide
not to grow in size?
 Can we support a diverse "ecology"
of community organizations?
 What is the financial model going
forward to sustain this vision?

13. Our best alternatives will be generated
together