This week, we launch PHILANTHROPY IN ACTION’s first English episode! A new Philab Podcast series hosted by Kim Fuller. To kick-start this series, we talk about running a women’s shelter, philanthropic leverage, and funding obstacles regarding women’s homelessness.
Our guest is…
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
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PHILAB
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PHIL
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PRODUCTION TEAM
Suggestions, comments, questions? Let us know what you think at philab@uqam.ca !
This week, we launch PHILANTHROPY IN ACTION’s first English episode! A new Philab Podcast series hosted by Kim Fuller. To kick-start this series, we talk about running a women’s shelter, philanthropic leverage, and funding obstacles regarding women’s homelessness.
Our guest is…
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
---
PHILAB
---
PHIL
---
PRODUCTION TEAM
Suggestions, comments, questions? Let us know what you think at philab@uqam.ca !
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good coffee, everyone. In today's episode, I have the honor to introduce a project we've been working on for some times now at feelab philanthropy in action. You might ask yourself, what is philanthropy in action? Well, Philanthropy in action is a brand new series from the Feelab podcast. Our goal is to offer you a total of two episodes per month. Now, without further ado, I would like you to give a good round of applause to your new host, Kim Fuller. Hi, everyone. It's such a pleasure for me to host this podcast. I've been active in the field of philanthropy for over 25 years. At a young age, I was drawn to the sector, and when it came time to choosing my career, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make an impact with my work. My company is called phil, and we're dedicated to supporting the charitable sector in Canada and abroad. As a host, I hope to use my hands on experience in the field and combine it with my keen curiosity to create useful and engaging content for our listeners. Philanthropy in action aims to promote Canadian philanthropy through interviews focused on its practical and concrete applications. Together, we will meet with various actors in the philanthropic space to learn about their relationship with philanthropy and the future of our sector. In today's episode, we'll talk about the challenges of running and funding a woman's shelter. We're having a conversation with Marina Bulos, executive director of Shay Doris, who's a charitable organization that offers a range of services and programs to meet the most basic and immediate needs of vulnerable women and homeless women. Shadoras is the only women's shelter in Montreal offering 24/7 service. Let's chat with Marina. Hi, Kim. Hi, Marina. Really excited to have you on our podcast. Marina and I go way back. And I can't remember the year exactly, but I remember the fateful day when I got a call from you and you had just taken on the interim role of executive director at Shaydoras, and you were beside yourself because things weren't going as planned and you had to close the shelter on weekends. Do you remember that? Yeah. So that was in August 2014, I think. July or August 2014. Yeah. So almost ten years ago. So that's what I was thinking, was that that call happened almost ten years ago, and it just amazes me to see how far things have come in the last ten years and how fast those ten years have gone by. But I remember that you were in a situation where Shadoris was having to hold back on their services close for a couple of days. You'd always been seven days a week. You had to cut back to five. And we worked really hard together to get the visibility of the organization out there and get you some tools and get things up and running. And then, lo and behold, six months later, you are back to seven days a week. And from there on in, I think that, you know, as they say, the rest is history. But everything has been going really on the up and up since those darker days, and it's really exciting to see how far the organization has come and it's evolved so much. And so I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about that evolution and how things have moved along since you've been in that role over the last decade. Certainly. So Shay Dorse has never had an operating budget of more than, let's say, $950,000. So when I came, actually, its operating budget was 750,000 because it wasn't operating on the weekends. There were only eleven employees and still did quite a bit in terms of food security by offering breakfast and lunch and personal care like emergency clothing, showers, hygiene products, medical services, psychosocial services, and is also quite well known for its money management program. So when I arrived, the weekend services were already closed, and then we reopened. And so the board made a conscious decision in 2017 to start thinking about becoming a 24/7 service and purchasing maybe a building. And by some miracle, this man who I was introduced to by his accountant, it was also my accountant, and he said, I have a donor. I'd like, you a potential donor for you. Could you give me a proposal for $10,000? So I sent him a proposal, and then he asked, okay, give me a proposal for 25,000. I sent a proposal for 25,000. Okay, no, make it 250,000. All right, here's a proposal for 250,000. All right, Marina, it's going to be far greater than 250,000. Why don't you come meet him? So I went to meet this gentleman by the name of Andrew Harper. He lived in Westmount Square. He's now deceased. But I met him at this I don't know, it must have been a bridge table or something in his living room. And he says to me, saw, how much do you want? Like, he's going through my financial statements and asking me questions and asking me questions on how much I make as well. And I said, I'd like $1,250,000. And he goes, I'll give you a million. Okay, I'll take it. And that was a transformative gift for Shay Doris. It was a record breaking gift, especially from an individual. Yeah, that changed a lot. Like, it it put wind in our sale. Then in August of 2018, we purchased a townhouse that became that came up for sale across the street from us. To do transitional housing, to open up. A shelter to shelter. Okay. Yeah. Because we were a day shelter, strictly day shelter for many years, and we also wanted to open up a night shelter. And we figured, okay, let's buy this other building. The market was really hot. We bought it for a million,$25,000. But then we didn't have money to really operate it. So then we took two years to figure out a plan. Like, okay, so what do we do with this building? Like, can we convert our existing day shelter into a night shelter? Do we use the residence as a night shelter? And then we figured, okay, well, we'll build an extension and we'll use the townhouse as a night shelter. So his million dollars ended up being leveraged for more than $16 million in the end. What is the difference between, let's say, a donation from an individual or from, let's say, a grant from the government? Well, so grants from the government can tend to be larger, especially if it's bricks and mortar. So the government did contribute over $5 million towards the campaign, but having a million dollar gift from an individual is seismic, really, because then it can be leveraged to encourage other people. Like, it makes people enthusiastic and hopeful that what you want to do to solve a social problem is going to make a difference. And it raised so much awareness in the media. You had some media coverage. It also lent to the credibility of the organization, because one single individual trusted you so much with a million dollars that he knew it was going to be well invested and that you were going to take good care of it and do good things with it. So that's a game changer for sure. Since then, we've had other million dollar gifts from foundations and individuals as well. So it's a game changer for us. And just to give you an idea of the size of Shay Doris now, so before the pandemic, so we went from being eleven employees. When I started before the pandemic in 2020, we were maybe 24 employees with a budget of 2.4 million. And we're now currently 83 employees with an operating budget that may be between 7 million to $8 million. The reason why we're so many employees, so every year we've jumped by about $2 million in terms of an operating budget. Why? Because we had three shifts of people working. So our plans to become a 24/7 service actually happened two years early because of the pandemic, because we saw how dangerous it was for women to be outside during lockdown where no restaurants are open, and we were giving them bus tickets to stay warm and be somewhere. But you stick out like a sore thumb because you're not supposed to be out, right? Yeah. And so they were often preyed upon by drug dealers, pimps, et cetera. And the type of women we see now have also really changed because they're mostly homeless. So when maybe 20% of the women we used to see before the pandemic were homeless, now it's 80% of the women we see are homeless. That's a huge shift. It's a huge, huge shift. Women's shelters in general are a lot less known publicly than we hear about shelters for men in our city. And we also know that women are willing to compromise quite a lot to avoid being homeless in the first place. And they put themselves in difficult relationships or difficult situations, situations of abuse, because it's better than being on the street where their fate might be even more in danger. They stay in domestic violence situations. How do you see women's homelessness as an invisible cause? Because it does seem that it's not getting the same level of visibility as some of the other causes around. To be perfectly honest, I think that the large men's organizations or larger organizations have more resources to toot their own horn. Right. And they are not inclusive of certain organizations, especially if they're up and coming because they see us a detriment, maybe, like they don't want to share the space. I think that the sad thing is that it's competitive. It's extremely competitive. Competitive for donor dollars, competitive for government funding, I imagine. Correct. So, I mean, if you look at our operating budget, maybe 20, certainly not more than 30% of our operating budget comes from the government. So that means that we have to be on a treadmill every single year to make sure that we raise money and we don't have an endowment. Right. So you're certainly competing for dollars. And the piece of the pot, especially from the government, is too small. The government came to charities such as us to homeless charities, to create the social housing. So we're going to be seeing more charities like Shay Doris, both for men and women opening up buildings that were once commercial buildings like hotels or whatever that are now shelters. But the government money being offered is not sufficient for the operating income needed. So they'll give you enough money for one person to operate this building like five days a week, nine to five. And sure, you'll get maybe the revenues from the rent, but a lot of these people need 24/7 service because what we've noticed is that and I'm sure that to the naked eye, when you go downtown, there's a lot of people with mental illnesses that are around, and those are the people who need these residences the most. So it's a pretty expensive proposition to continuously go to private donors to see if they will help fund a 24/7 service for maybe 20 apartments or 36 apartments. Right, that was my next question, because if you're saying that 30% of your operating costs is covered by government funding, where are you getting the rest of the 70? So how much of the rest of it is private foundations, public foundations, individual donors? How are you getting to make the ends meet? It really requires us to have a really robust major gifts program. So it means that, let's say you carve out proposals that are related to your services for indigenous women, your financial administration program, your food program, your social recreational activities. And so you kind of like design you break up all your services into like, let's say ten pieces, which is what we've done. So with foundations, it could be anywhere from 20% to 30% of your revenue, and then you've got individuals as well that can be 20% to 30% of your revenue as well. Planned gifts are, I think, the way to go as well. So people who put us in their wills, we're starting to see the benefits of planned gifts, and those could be. Some very large donations. More often than not, we get gifts from people that we never knew. So I don't think we ever seen a year where it's been more than $650,000. But the last three years, there's been certainly a progression. Do you think there's a perception, though, that homelessness is the state's problem, it's up to the government to help us fix this and that it's a barrier for your fundraising efforts? Or is that a perception that we have here specifically in Quebec, or are you seeing this with your colleagues in other places? Is that a reality for you? I think grassroots, like, even though our size is much larger, grassroots organizations feel the mistakes of the governments, of their governments. So I'm going to give you a perfect example, is in 2017, more than 20% of our clientele who would come to our day shelter were asylum seekers. Why did we have so many asylum seekers in 2017? It's because President Trump was in power and he decided not to renew Haitians visas that were on seeking asylum in the states. So they were coming and then through word of mouth, then we had a lot of people from Nigeria coming to us, lots of women and children coming to us using the Roxam border. Right. So we were overwhelmed with asylum seekers. We're also charities right now are, and this is everywhere, are overwhelmed by the fact that social housing has not kept up pace with the growth of populations, the growth of poverty, an aging population. The average age of our clients is 58 years old. So you're seeing people who are sometimes not well enough to go back to the job market. You also see people who will come to Shay Doris because we guarantee a bilingual service. So 56% of our population has their mother tongue is English. So demographics, and they're also affected by decisions on welfare. So if the welfare rates for a single person is $740, let's say, and the average rent now for a one room apartment is $1,000, so it's decisions made by the government that affect our work, and we end up picking up the pieces. Right. What do you think the role for advocacy is and how does that play out in your role running this organization? Well, we certainly have the ear of elected officials, but I think the city's hands are tied because they depend on funding to trickle in from the Feds. But the feds have to trickle their money. Then to the province, and then the province decides what to do with extra monies. I think that the province of Quebec is in a unique situation in comparison to other provinces. We're always like maybe two years late in terms of innovative ideas, because any money related to housing, social service is usually money given from the Feds to the province. And if the federal government has a new initiative, the province has included an extra layer of approval process before announcing it. And they announce the money as their own, or the city announces the money as their own, but it's really federal money. So the fact that we're creating housing and it's the city that's announcing it, we did not work directly with the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation. They had to negotiate with the Society de Saunt Quebec and then the Society de San Quebec, then negotiates with the City of Montreal how to get the money. So it's a slower process in Quebec. And how do you feel about that speed? So the fiscal year of the government is similar to ours. It's April 1 to March 31. But the problem is, is that the province never gets the money on time. So they may announce it halfway through the year or in the last quarter, and then you have to spend it by the 31 March, which is super irritating. Right. It doesn't give you time to plan and think things through. It's crazy. And it has happened to even give us money with one month's notice. Oh, we have this money. Here's a letter. It's. Like what? Here's $300,000, spend it. Yeah. That's crazy. How do you even plan long term for these situations? And the worst thing is, the worst thing about government money, it's use or lose. Right. If you don't spend it, you lose it. Right. So I'll give you a perfect example of user lose money is that we had money to purchase furniture and household equipment for a residence that we're supposed to be opening. But it was supposed to open three years ago, quite frankly. But it's been late to one problem after another. But we had the grant. We got the grant. It's use or lose. So we purchased the furniture. We had no idea that it would take three years, but we had to put it in storage. But the time it took to get the building that this is a building that would be launched in September. The cost of storage has surpassed the cost of the grant. What we got as a grant and the guarantees on the on the equipment yeah. The washer dryer dishwashers have expired. So it's it's ridiculous to have these use or lose rules because they don't work. They're not in the best interest of the organization or the beneficiaries that you serve. Correct. Yeah. And that's why I think over the coming years, we're going to have to see if many organizations like yours band together. And you don't want to bite the hand that feeds you, but at the same time, you have to explain to that hand that they think that they're helping you, but in fact, it's actually hindering your operations. Because you're not given an ample time to plan. You're not given ample warning to build a scenario out properly from start to finish. And this threat of losing it if you don't use it could make you poor choices or lose out, like you just mentioned on this warranty issue. Right. So I'll give you another example. We dealt directly with so two government funders for our night shelter. One was the city of Montreal and the other was with the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation. And because the federal government has a user lose policy, and they gave us a grant worth more than $1.6 million for the construction, they never gave us the$1.6 million until the construction project was finished because of a user lose. And it was a construction project that should have taken twelve months, it took 19. So we would have lost the grant. Another problem with working with governments is the city of Montreal only give us their grant, which was over $1.5 million increments of $250,000. So you'd have to spend your $250,000, you'd have to prove that you spent it, but it takes them three months to verify your books. And so you're left with spending your own money before you get the next installment of$250,000, right? Wow, that's insane. So you always have to front your. Own grant, you have to front your own money. So you have to be really financially healthy or obviously have loans that are interest bearing. So it ends up costing more on the charity's back to have these construction projects. Right? And that's where you're really fulfilling the need of the community is by creating those extra spaces because your current shelters are overloaded. So it's discouraging to hear how convoluted and complicated that the government granting is. And I really hope that we can find a way in the future to get the politicians to realize that there's got to be a better way to do this and to work with organizations like yours to create a better path forward so that the money that is invested is put to the best use possible and not creating more stress on the organization or having you pay interest for things or lose out on other opportunities. I want to switch now into the kind of rapid fire questions that we love to ask guests. So what do you see as the greatest threat to the sector right now? So I see four things to the philanthropic sector which provides poverty relief. I can talk about that. So I already mentioned that 80% of the women who seek our help are homeless, whereas a few years ago it was 20% more. I think a threat to the philanthropic sector is that there's not enough access to mental health services half of our clients, I would say, have either addiction or psychiatric problems. And so we're seeing the fact that the hospitals are overstretched, have a lack of resources. It's affecting poverty relief organizations or homeless serving organizations. So we don't necessarily have the expertise in helping people who have psychiatric problems like schizophrenia. We already talked about lack of social housing and affordable housing. So social housing is where people pay 25% of their income to rent, and the rest is subsidized by the government. Given the chronic shortage of apartments and staffing shortages, I think the philanthropic sector is also affected by labor shortage and burnout and turnover. So I think this situation will make it dangerous for people experiencing homelessness, because those who work with the homeless don't stay long, have very little experience as well. So increasingly, we're seeing a young labor market that moves around a lot and doesn't have much experience. And I can imagine that working with people experiencing homelessness, being able to count on seeing the same faces when they come in and having that consistency, especially for people who are also facing mental health issues, being able to retain staff and have those same friendly faces that greet them on a regular basis is just so comforting to them. And it's a shame that we are in this situation right now with so much turnover in the space, and we see it across so many charities right now. So if we flip it and we say and we look at the sector again, but from a perspective of hope, what gives you hope for the philanthropic sector? What gives me hope is that the grants have become much more participatory and they are shifting the decision making power to the organization itself and the community being served. So increasingly, I've noticed that funders are trusting community organizations for knowing what's best for itself and experimenting a little. Like to say, okay, we think we need a clinical director or a clinical coordinator. Will you give us money for that? Or we need more money for our case workers mental health. We actually have donors who trust us and give us money for that, even though we then have to tweak it some more because it might not quite be the right formula, but at least. They know that you recognize your own needs because you're on the ground, you're working day in, day out. And that has been a shift over the last 1015 years. We didn't see that. It was always very prescriptive before, and now we're seeing a trend where the grants are coming in and there's more flexibility, still not enough, but it's getting better for sure. Definitely. And so what would be the best advice or a lesson that you've ever received? I think the best advice that I can impart on somebody is to be upfront about your shortcomings. I think that if you're upfront with your imperfections, that funders will trust you more and they will want to work with you. And I think that vulnerability is something that organizations don't always feel comfortable in front of funders and others because they want to make sure that everything's perfect all the time, because otherwise that people won't give us money. But by saying, like, yeah, we don't have everything figured out, or can we work together on this and think about it? And I'm starting to see more and more grant makers be involved from an advisory standpoint and from just being a sounding board or maybe looking into their networks to see who else they know that could help out in this situation. And I'm getting the sense that it's getting more and more collaborative as time goes. And it's not just simply transactional of like, you need money, here's a check. Good luck type of thing. I'll give you an example. At the beginning of the pandemic, and funders were interested in hearing about this is as much as 9% of our clientele suddenly were transgender women because they suddenly had nowhere to go, especially if they were homeless. They didn't have a couch to go on or couch surf or whatever. And so for us, it was new and also new. I think we were probably some of the first people to offer transgender women a bed in our shelter. Right. We're also the only women's shelter that takes in pets, so everything's new. Right. But it's also trial by error. Like, great. So what do we do with the pets first? Since when? They have to go get some ID and can't bring their pets, right? Or what do we do if their pets aren't neutered? So everything's new, so we're up front with our problems. Yeah. That's important. That's important. Well, listen, Marina, it's been absolutely wonderful chatting with you. I really appreciate the time that you've taken with us today and can't wait to see where Shadoris goes from here. I know you have quite a lot of hurdles to get over in this line of work, but I always admire how you tackle each and every one of them. And the work that you're doing for the women of our city is just outstanding, and we wish you all the success. Well, thank you to the both of you. I really enjoyed the conversation. That's our show. To continue the conversation around invisible causes and philanthropy, join us on our different platforms for more content and please share your comments. We'd like to thank Marina Bulos for this wonderful conversation and Felab for hosting this educational podcast. I would also like to thank the amazing production team without whom this podcast wouldn't be possible. We have Katherine McDonald as head of production, leonipule as coproducer researcher and editor, and Joey Macintosh as co host and co producer. A big thanks to all our listeners. We'll see you next time.