It’s official. Today marks the launch of Imagine Canada‘s new Standards Program.

The initiative, which was in a testing phase from last year into early 2012, now goes full steam ahead with a set of requirements, funding partners and participating charitable organizations all centered on a trustmark that will let donors – and, unofficially, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) – know that any organization that displays this symbol has met Imagine Canada’s stringent criteria for items such as ethical fundraising, financial transparency and adherence to the CRA’s guidelines on matters charitable.

For more background on the specifics of the program and its pilot phase, read CharityVillage®‘s prior stories on the subject here and here.

Organizations participating in the new Standards Program are accredited with Imagine Canada after evaluation by a third-party peer review panel made up of select members of the sector – Marcel Lauzière, Imagine Canada’s president and CEO said he will reveal the makeup of the panel shortly – and after paying a modest fee for buying into the program.

The program is also overseen by what Imagine Canada calls a Standards Council. That council, while not directly involved in the peer review process, sets the policies that the panels use to review their subjects. Lauzière said Imagine Canada is still building a pool of peer reviewers to handle an expected influx of organizations who want to apply to the program. One panel, comprised of between nine to 11 people, can handle around 25 applicants.

Imagine Canada expects to have its inaugural intake of new applicants in early November this year, and hopes to have at least two review panels ready to go by that time.

There are 17 inaugural program participants; all of them received accreditation by undergoing review during the pilot phase of the program throughout last year and ending early 2012. They are:

Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada
Daily Bread Food Bank
Food Banks Canada
Frontier College
Frontier College Foundation
Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides 
Niagara Community Foundation
Plan Canada
Sarnia Lambton Rebound: A Program for Youth
SickKids Foundation
Tides Canada
United Way of Burlington & Greater Hamilton
United Way of Winnipeg
United Way Toronto
Vancouver Foundation
Victoria Foundation
World Vision

A unique nonprofit sector model

Imagine Canada, and its partners on the project, Volunteer Canada and the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector, say the program is “designed to strengthen public confidence in the charitable and nonprofit sector…[and] is one of the first-of-its-kind globally at a national level.”

“We’re one of the very few countries in the world doing this on a national level. We’re not simply following what others have done, we’re playing a leadership role and I think there’s going to be a lot of interest in what we’re doing,” Lauzière said.

Seed funding for this initiative is courtesy of Great-West Life, London Life, Canada Life, BMO Financial Group, The Printing House, futureInnovate.net and KCI (Ketchum Canada Inc.). The rest of the funding to run the program stems from fees paid by participants: at least for now.

Lauzière said he envisions the program becoming self-sufficient, aka angel investor-free, within about five years. It should become wholly funded through fees by 2017 if all goes according to Imagine Canada’s estimates.

In CharityVillage®’s October 2011 initial story about the standards pilot program, Jan Belanger, Great-West Life’s assistant vice-president of community affairs said she “shares an interest” in supporting Imagine’s program.

At the time, Belanger revealed that Great-West had invested some $300,000 over five years to help Imagine Canada get the program off the ground.

Belanger also told CharityVillage® at the time that her organization makes “well-considered decisions on how and where to allocate our corporate giving in the infrastructure of our communities. We also have great confidence in Imagine Canada’s vision. That’s why we have built on our support for the Ethical Code Program and committed multi-year funding for the standards program. In sponsoring Imagine Canada’s development of broader standards for charities, we’re committed to helping Canada’s charities strengthen relations with their donors, use resources efficiently and responsibly, and position themselves for long-term effectiveness,” she said.

She did not answer why her organization has taken such a keen interest in this program specifically, though a company spokesperson indicated Belanger would elaborate on that in the future.

For the people, by the people

Lauzière points out that it was important for this program to be solely undertaken by sector organizations without government funding.

“This is much better done by the sector, for the sector, rather than being done to us by government, the CRA or anyone else,” he said.

The aim is to demonstrate that the sector can take matters into its own hands and demonstrate to the public, as well as to all levels of government, that it is serious when it says it wants to gain back the public trust after years of negative press (and certain charities who have indeed abused the system) that created the impression that the whole sector lacks a responsible and ethical ethos.

That said, Lauzière cautions that it’s unlikely that the trustmark will prevent CRA from auditing organizations, as it does so at random and with its own internal determinations. However, what organizations in the program will have is an advantage in knowing that they’ve prepared themselves to be compliant across an array of areas that will undoubtedly help them should an audit occur.

“The strength of the standards is that it ensures your organization has in place the policies and procedures to make you effective, transparent, well-run…all of that would help for any kind of audit that may come down the road,” he said.

In nonprofits we trust

Symbolically key to the whole standards campaign is Imagine Canada’s newly minted trustmark. Accredited organizations will earn the right to slap the mark on all their material which will give a visual clue to donors that their dollars are going to an organization that is on top of their affairs.

According to Imagine Canada, charities and nonprofits that can demonstrate excellence in five key areas will be allowed to sign a licensing agreement to use the trustmark throughout their accredited term. Those five areas are: board governance; financial accountability and transparency; ethical fundraising; staff management; and, volunteer involvement.

Asked if the CRA had signed off on the program, Lauzière said that while the agency didn’t officially play a role in the creation of this new set of foundational standards for the sector, nevertheless they are “very happy” with what has been produced.

“We had numerous consultations and made presentations to the CRA all along the development of the standards program,” he said.

But just because an organization is accredited through Imagine Canada, doesn’t mean they have five years of clear sailing. Lauzière states that all participating organizations are aware that there will be random spot audits during that period, to make sure that all nonprofits continue to take the program seriously.

An audit can also be triggered if Imagine Canada receives or hears of complaints about one of its program participants.

All for one and one for all

In a statement on the program released today, Imagine Canada affirmed that they aren’t just looking to impact organizations who have paid to join the program. The organization also notes that accreditation is only one part of the overall program. Much of it is also dedicated to improving the sector at large as part of a grand capacity building movement.

“The Standards Program is equally designed to be a capacity builder by providing resources and opportunities to provide continuous learning and development for all of our country’s charities and nonprofits,” it said.

Lauzière adds: “The information about how to comply with the standards as well as the tools and resources to help organizations continue to strengthen their governance practices is available free-of-charge. Our philosophy is one of open access, so that even if an organization does not wish to go through the formal accreditation process, it can still make full use of the program information to improve its practices in these key areas.”

Evolving the global nonprofit sector

Like all standards everywhere, this new program will evolve with time and according to circumstance, Lauzière said. Meaning that after the five-year accreditation period is up for an organization, it has to re-apply and go through another intensive peer review to prove it has continued to uphold standards set out by Imagine Canada, some of which may have changed in the time since the accredited organization first received its trustmark.

“But for those organizations reapplying, it’s likely you will have most of the systems in place and it would make it a lot easier than it was the first time around,” he said. “Still, they will have to go through the process again. It’s the only way to make it rigorous.”

For those interested, Lauzière notes he will be making a presentation about the standards program at the CIVICUS World Assembly in Montreal in September at a session dedicated to standards and governance models.

“My hope is that we’ll get a lot of interest in how we’ve done this and how sectors in other parts of the world can do the same.”

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.

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Photos (from top) via Imagine Canada. All photos used with permission.