CHARITABLE GIVING
THE MiX
Picking up the Stitches Sara Neely
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ourdough bread. Raised gardens. Planting from seed. Nature walks. Music-making. Making bubbles. Being in a bubble. Zoom meetings. Facetime connections. Sewing masks. Banging pots. Smiling with our eyes. Pivoting. The list goes on—ways some of us have coped, adapted, and connected during this last year since the COVID-19 pandemic began—ways we have used to try to maintain some sense of our lives as we knew them “before” and those of family, friends, and coworkers around us—and the larger family of people in our community that we help through our donations and our volunteer support as they deal with the impact of the pandemic on their lives. One of the things I did personally was to start knitting again . . . not the sweaters or blankets of years ago. By the end of a day of remote work and online meetings, my hands want to be creative, but my mind can only muster creating a dishcloth. It reminds me of the hours I spent knitting and often “unknitting”
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©iStockphoto.com/Danil Bukharov
as my family used to call it . . . a missed stitch or more; an incorrect count and I would be unraveling my work and picking up the stitches again! Whatever your art, craft, or passion, the process of making something shows us how all the ingredients, tools, and steps are interconnected and how, when they work together, the result works. And when they don’t—well, the whole thing unravels.
In February 2021, the Victoria Foundation released “Unraveling: Nonprofits, COVID-19 and the Fabric of BC Communities” (Unraveling). That thought came to mind on the recent release of a followup study on the impact of the pandemic on the charitable sector in British Columbia. In Spring 2020, Vantage Point, in partnership with Vancouver Foundation, Victoria Foundation, and the City of Vancouver, conducted a study to understand how the pandemic was impacting the operations and program delivery of nonprofit organizations in BC. From that study of over BC Notaries Association
1000 nonprofit leaders, the report, “No Immunity: BC nonprofits and the Impact of COVID-19,” told us that no subsector, size of organization, geographic region, or community served was safe from the impact of COVID-19. At that time, • 1 in 5 nonprofits anticipated closing their doors; • 51% expected job layoffs; and • 23% were planning to lose their primary operating space by the end of 2020. Thankfully, many of those dire predictions have not come true, but the fabric of our communities is damaged. In February 2021, the Victoria Foundation released “Unraveling: Nonprofits, COVID-19 and the Fabric of BC Communities” (Unraveling). The report compiles survey results of over 900 nonprofits in BC, including 123 organizations from the Capital region, and was released in partnership with Vancouver Foundation and Vantage Point. The report highlights how the vital charitable sector has managed to pivot services and keep doors open in many cases, but also points to alarming warning signs about the days ahead. Volume 30 Number 1 Spring 2021
