Charitable organizations are struggling to retain employees who are looking for better pay and working conditions.
By Camila Lewandowski
What was supposed to be a temporary job to gain experience in the field of psychology, turned out to be a life-long project. William Delisle fell in love with Club Ami on his first day as a social worker just over ten years ago.
“There was such a warm welcome that I fell for it,” said Delisle with a broad smile. Today, he is the director of the alternative mental health care organization.
William Delisle has been the director of Club Ami for the past four years.
However, employee retention rates in non-profits are very low. Delisle is an isolated case; few people stay with the same organization for so many years. According to a Statistics Canada report, over 71 per cent of health care and social assistance organizations have difficulty retaining staff.
Delisle explained that during his time at Club Ami, he had around twenty colleagues. “I had one year's experience and the most seniority,” he said with an incredulous voice.
This instability was detrimental to Club Ami's operations, said Delisle, who tries to have employees stay with the organization for the long term. He explains that social workers, through conversations and artistic activities, alleviate the suffering of Club Ami beneficiaries who have diagnoses ranging from autism to schizophrenia.
Retaining qualified employees is a recurring complication in the non-profit sector. Nearly a third of staff working in charitable organizations leave their jobs in search of better pay and working conditions, according to the national survey conducted by the social economy and community action workforce committee (CSMO-ESAC).
These mass departures are detrimental to the smooth running of non-profits. Such was the case of the Comité d'action des citoyennes et citoyens de Verdun (CACV), which saw four of its employees resign almost at the same time in 2021. It was a major setback for the borough’s residents in terms of access to housing rights, according to CACV coordinator, Nicolas Lavaine.
“A single employee held the ship steady for several months,” explained Lavaine, who did not rule out the possibility of it happening again.
Nicolas Lavaine is part of the new cohort of employes who are fighting Verdun’s housing crisis.
This growing problem of retaining qualified employees is closely linked to the lack of charitable organizations’ funding, given that the wage gap between the non-profit and private sectors is substantial.
For example, a human resources manager earns, on average, close to $74,000 a year in the non-profit sector – according to the OBNL+ survey – while this figure rises to $100,000 for the private sector – according to Randstad.
Charitable organizations struggle to offer competitive salaries. “We don't always have the financial means we'd like to have to allow our employees to be paid for what they contribute,” explained the CACV coordinator.
Employees in the community sector are also exhausted as workloads increase, with more and more Canadians turning to non-profits. However, overtime work is unpaid in 88% of the organizations polled by OBNL +.
Lavaine explained that housing advocates are under tremendous stress with the increasingly complex cases, as a growing number of tenants are facing eviction due to “renovictions” and gentrification. “It takes a lot more time and a lot more energy too,” he added.
Both Delisle and Lavaine noted that non-profits lack both proper funding and government support impedes optimal service to their members.
With hindsight, Club Ami's director observed that the different branches of the Quebec state hinder the flourishing of non-profits. “There's an instability in the network that makes links with the community sector more difficult,” Delisle explains.
“We need to create links,” he added, “Otherwise, we're all in our own silos; it doesn't work.”
Learn about Delisle’s and Lavaine’s long-term objectives for their respective organizations here.