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Organizational principles
Early in 1999, concerned agencies, community members and groups came together to discuss the growing needs in East Scarborough. The primary concerns of this group were how services and supports could be brought to the people in this community, especially to those who have been marginalized and living in poverty. Two years of consultation and discussion resulted in this unique collaboration.
With lots of co-operation and enthusiasm, the Storefront opened its doors in Morningside Mall in February of 2001 with the following aims:
Over the next few years, the Storefront became a unique community hub. The hub began to be known as the “Storefront model”: a model that co-ordinated the work of agencies from various parts of the City to bring services to a “high risk” neighbourhood. In this model Storefront programs and services are all provided by partner agencies, each agency bringing its expertise to the people of East Scarborough on a particular day at a particular time. Storefront staff link community members to the services and ensure that the agencies have everything that they need to offer the community high quality and effective resources and information.
In the first month of services in 2001, as we looked for furniture, co-ordinated the work of more than forty agencies, and began to build relationships with local residents and businesses, we provided direct service to 43 people: three years later, in March 2005 we saw more than 5400 visits to the Storefront.
Despite having built a thriving “hub” and a new model for effective service delivery, in 2005 a policy change at the federal government meant that the Storefront’s funding was threatened. For a while, it looked as if the Storefront would not be able to carry on. Thanks to its community partners, however, it did:
Community members staged a march to bring attention to the need for services in East Scarborough. Agencies from across the City wrote letters and formed delegations. As funders heard about the Storefront through media, letters and personal interviews with many supporters, they too were excited about the collaborative work happening in East Scarborough and formed their own collaborative approach to funding: five funders committed to supporting the ongoing work of the Storefront.
The struggles faced by the Storefront in 2005 were, however, not yet over. With the demolition of the Morningside Mall slated for the following year, the Storefront was forced to relocate. Again it was the collaboration of community members, agencies, politicians and City Staff that made it possible for the Storefront to move into its new home in the old 42 Division substation at 4040 Lawrence Ave E.
It is impossible to capture all the different facets and elements that have developed at the Storefront. The following gives a brief outline of what we are doing. The Storefront is ever growing and ever changing working with the community as it changes and grows.
Community Building
The Storefront is committed to community building. To that end, the Storefront staff facilitate groups of community members to voice their visions and concerns, to work together to improve their community and to connect with other groups, politicians, agencies and bureaucrats to get what they need for their community. The following are some of the ways that the Storefront works with people to help improve lives in the community:
Community Resources: Storefront staff have a wealth of knowledge about what services, programs and supports are available to community members to help them, their families and their friends meet their needs and reach their goals. At our community resource centre, community members meet Storefront staff who listen to them and link them to the services that they need.
Community Speaks: Every three months or so, community members gather for dinner, fun activities and facilitated discussion on topics relevant to the community. From these discussions come recommendations which guide the Storefront’s community building activities in the following months.
Community Volunteering: Volunteers make things happen. The Storefront helps them to do so by recruiting, training and supervising groups of volunteers to support events that strengthen the community. Volunteers handle registration at job fairs, organize children’s programs, henna application and barbeques at picnics and celebrations, pitch in at community clean ups, markets and anything else that makes East Scarborough a better place.
Civic Engagement: Community members need ways and means to influence the political forces that shape our City. Storefront staff organize focus groups, voter education, community surveys and issues based campaigns to help community members’ voices to be heard.
Guiding the work of the Storefront: All community members have a voice in guiding the work of the Storefront through Community Speaks. It is, however, the Storefront Steering Committee that, through policy development and capacity building initiatives shape the direction of the Storefront on an ongoing basis. Seven community members, along with seven agency members are nominated and elected to the Steering Committee.
Collaboration
The Storefront is committed to working collaboratively in everything that it does. The Storefront itself is a partnership of the service providing agencies, community members and other community stakeholders all who have a role to play in making the Storefront a vibrant community hub.
Storefront service providing partners ensure that the people of East Scarborough have access to their programs and services, by offering them at the Storefront. Agency staff are scheduled to be at the Storefront on specific days, at specific times. When they are at the Storefront it is their place of work. Each agency is provided with an office, phone, computer and anything else they may need to provide high quality service to the people of East Scarborough. Storefront staff ensure that community members get connected with the right agency to meet their needs.
Agencies do more than provide individual services, they work together to form and shape the Storefront as a whole. Quarterly, the agencies gather together to share ideas and information about how they can work together to effectively serve the community. The agencies elect 6 representatives to make up 50% of the Steering Committee which guides the ongoing work of the Storefront through policy development and capacity building initiatives.
The East Scarborough Storefront has been a pioneer in developing governance structures that support its unique collaborative structure. In the early years of the Storefront partnership, the East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club acted as “Trustee” for the project. Ever mindful of the need for good governance practices, the Storefront and its partners researched and published a handbook which looked at the challenges and best practices surrounding the “trustee” model, “The Partnership Trustee Journey”
In 2006, although it continued to function very much as a coalition, the Storefront began to take on the responsibilities of an organization with financial commitments and obligations. The policies of some of the funders would no longer allow funding to flow to the Storefront through a trustee agency. It was important to the Storefront partners, however, that the Storefront remain true to its roots and continue to be led by a group of agencies and community members who invested in the collaborative model that had proven to be such a success. East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club had been a positive, respectful trustee agency/partner, providing a strong administrative foundation upon which the Storefront was built. The Club agreed to work with the Storefront to create an innovative model of governance for the Storefront that would keep both the solid foundation of the Club and the creative collaboration of the Storefront.
The East Scarborough Storefront and the Boys and Girls Club of East Scarborough began a new journey to redefine our relationship. The result was the development of a “Delegated Community Leadership” model.
In the Delegated Community Leadership model the Boys and Girls Club Board of Directors has governance responsibility for the Storefront; the Storefront is legally a program of Boys and Girls Club. As such, the Boys and Girls Club Board sets out governance parameters within which the Storefront will operate. The Board then delegates the task of directing the Storefront in its work to the Storefront Steering Committee. The Storefront Steering Committee is accountable to the Boys and Girls Club Board for legally, ethically and financially sound management of the Storefront.
Over the course of the past seven years, the relationship between Boys and Girls Club and the Storefront has grown and developed, as it will continue to change and grow in the years to come. With the help of Leslie Wright from the Agora Foundation, the Storefront and the Boys and Girls Club have had an opportunity to look at community need, organizational structure, organizational culture, policies, procedures and mechanisms in a new and unique way. Today the Storefront continues its work in looking at various governance structures that can support innovative community initiatives in the non-profit sector.