Posted on Monday, 27th September 2010 by chris wignall

In recent months I’ve been able to be a part of two pioneering events in which people from across the country gathered to push the boundaries of how their fields generally operate. Stronger Together 2010 saw 8 significant donors combine efforts to provide capacity building grants totalling over one million dollars to Christian charities. The [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 17th August 2010 by chris wignall

One of the major new challenges I’ve taken on this year is chairing the board with Absolute.org (one of our strategic partners). Having been on boards of a few organizations before, and with a sudden need for someone to accept the chair, I agreed to the role in February. It hasn’t been an easy time [...]

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Posted on Friday, 13th August 2010 by chris wignall

When we launched our organization in February of 2008 one of the first decisions we made was that we wouldn’t offer grants to churches. It was actually a very easy decision and one made with very little debate. On our website’s FAQs we put it this way: 5. Does Catalyst support church-based projects? Not at [...]

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Posted on Wednesday, 23rd June 2010 by chris wignall

MoneySense magazine recently published The Charity 100, a series of ratings of Canadian charities based on several factors with the intent “to be a tool for potential donors researching which charities to give money to”. In the nonprofit world this is the kind of thing that fires up the blogosphere and even earns a twitter [...]

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Posted on Friday, 18th June 2010 by chris wignall

I didn’t get much accomplished from a work perspective last week. I spent several hours dealing with my first ever “at fault” car accident, shopped for a car to replace the totalled one, fulfilled an old promise to take my nephews to the zoo, and celebrated my son’s 4th birthday at least three times. But [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 15th June 2010 by chris wignall

This morning the results of the Stronger Together 2010 collaborative granting project were released (Complete list of grantees here.) Having invested a significant part of the past ten months in the process it is a satisfying thing to be able to notify the successful applicants (selected from a total field of 131) and anticipate the [...]

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Posted on Tuesday, 15th June 2010 by chris wignall

My friend and mentor Fred Smith recently posted an insightful article about the tendency for givers to support active programs but resist funding the administrative and supportive costs those programs require. In part he gives this example: It’s like a business manager in a school where I taught years ago. He had a closet full [...]

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Posted on Monday, 1st March 2010 by chris wignall

I haven’t made it public before now, but I recently accepted the role of Board Chair at Absolute.org. It’s an organization with phenomenal programs and a demonstrates desire to develop top level leadership and governance. It is my privilege to be entrusted with the responsibility of guiding our board and management team through this next [...]

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Posted on Monday, 1st March 2010 by chris wignall

Mark Petersen offers these comments on the Stronger Together project: Last night at midnight, the application window for ST2010 closed.   Here’s some stats: We received 131 applications. The total amount requested in the 131 applications was $3,619,268. The average ask was $27,628.   Very high for a permitted range of $5,000 – $30,000. Now let’s do [...]

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Posted on Friday, 19th February 2010 by chris wignall

Kiva.org is one of the best innovations in poverty work I can remember. Taking the impact of microfinance and tying it to the power of the internet for awareness and individual engagement is nothing short of brilliant. Unfortunately, along with the massive exposure have come several misconceptions about how Kiva actually works. On the Social [...]

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