As a community-led group, NFFTT does not have its own, independent non-profit or charitable status. Yet, it has secured support and funding from the likes of the Peter Gilgan Foundation, the RBC Foundation, and the Toronto Foundation.
Access to this philanthropic funding would not have been possible without the support of the MakeWay Charitable Society, said project director Julia Girmenia.
Rather than registering or incorporating as an independent organization, NFFTT is a project of the MakeWay Charitable Society’s (MWCS) Shared Platform. Girmenia, one of only two staff members at NFFTT, receives financial management support, insurance access, and grant management support from MWCS, alongside 60 other organizations.
“Most of the [grant] applications I was seeing, you needed to have a charitable number,” Girmenia said.
“You need to have some sort of status. That’s where MakeWay comes in: we need that charitable number so that we can be awarded these funds.”
As the project is part of MWCS’s shared platform, NFFTT staff are also MWCS employees. For a grassroots or unincorporated group, and even for small non-profits, these infrastructural supports can be challenging to put in place without consistent funding.
Read the rest at Future of Good
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