Federation of Canadian Municipalities

“Working with several leading experts from across the country was an absolute pleasure. The work highlights how we can advance change when partnerships are built. Thank you Shift and Build for the efficient coordination, insight and collaborative engagement with stakeholders from across the country."

~Bowdin King
Product Development Officer, Federation of Canadian Municipalities

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Green Municipal Fund wanted to understand sustainable procurement as a potential tool to advance sustainability. FCM contracted Shift & Build, ECPAR, CCSP, and RCO to research opportunities to better support the capacity building and funding needs of municipalities in the area of sustainable procurement.

Shift & Build led the 5 month collaborative project. The undertaking included conducting over 45 interviews with municipal leaders and stakeholders as well as 4 focus groups to explore interview findings. The research provided insights on the challenges, barriers and possible opportunities associated with advancing sustainable procurement within municipalities. Leveraging the insights, the team provided phased recommendations for FCM’s Green Municipal Fund to support municipalities in advancing sustainable procurement.

The team very much appreciated the collaborative and thoughtful commitment to this work in advancing municipal sustainability.

Government of Canada

Government of Canada

“It was a pleasure working with Monica on this initiative, I really appreciated her strategic thinking and approach, her initiative and her insights and ability to build collaboration among key partners.”

~Nick Xenos
Executive Director, Centre for Greening Government, Treasury Board Secretariat, Government of Canada

The Centre for Greening Government (CGG) is leading efforts to transition to low-carbon and climate-resilient operations within the government of Canada. Recognizing the potential impact of procurement as a tool for advancing these goals, the CGG wanted to engage existing champions in collaborating to advance sustainable procurement.

Shift & Build recommended and convened 6 champion organizations to collectively explore a roadmap for a goal-oriented community of practice to advance sustainable procurement at scale. Over a 9 month period, the team built a foundation for strategic collaboration, outlining a potential draft vision, potential indicators of success, a theory of change and core components of what a collective strategy could be including priorities, possible collaborative projects and a design for a goal oriented community of practice. The team has started collaborating and submitted a number of joint funding proposals to funding organizations.

It was a genuine pleasure to work with the CGG team and champion organizations.

GOCO

“It was sheer luck that I was introduced to Monica, her reputation as a creative thinker was obviously well known to others and thankfully our introduction happened. Monica understood me - and my desire to affect social change. Her confidence in me and her well developed strategic approach kept our work focused, produced measurable outcomes, all the while in her uniquely relaxed style. Monica's incredible wealth of knowledge is truly the reason GOCO has such a solid foundation from which grow. Monica delivered timely advise and clear direction, she understood when I felt overwhelmed but was able to gently guide me toward success.”

~Lesli Gaynor
Founder and CEO

Lesli is a community activist at heart. She envisions catalyzing co-ownership of housing as a way to build community. I see enormous potential for meaningful impact in her vision and as such, this project was more truly fun that work.

We started by outlining what would help her accelerate the growth of her business. This included setting specific business goals, outlining the customer journey, identification of market segments, characteristics and mechanisms to engage customers, as well as the marketing strategy including the creation of key messaging and a website for GOCO.

Over 7 months, we completed this work, designing the GOCO service, re-launching the website with capacity building content as well as hosting 2 launch events for over 150 prospective clients.

Miles Nadal JCC

“Shift & Build came to us at a time of transition for the Miles Nadal JCC. We had just hired a new Development Director and also had a major capital campaign to complete. The Shift & Build team were the perfect partners to help us through this process. They enabled us to focus on the goal while at the same time developed our fundraising strategies. We were delighted to work with them and they became a crucial adjunct to our in-house team. Their observations and input both informed and strengthened our goals and assisted with Board buy-in. We enjoyed the entire experience.”

~Ellen T. Cole
Executive Director

MNjcc's passion for impact was clear from our first meeting. The more we learned about the work Ellen and her team were leading, the more excited we became about the opportunity to collaborate. MNjcc was completely focused on creating and delivering impact and as such they had spent little time strategically developing their fundraising efforts. There was a significant opportunity to increase their potential for impact by building and implementing effective revenue generation strategies.

We were initially brought on to develop and support the implementation of a fundraising strategy for the Freddie Shore Aquatic Centre. We completed this and our scope expanded to include strategy development and support to grow overall fundraising capabilities. In the five months we worked with MNjcc, we developed fundraising strategies and implementation plans. In order to create momentum, we created processes for refining program strategies and engaging potential donors. We also provided a breadth of foundational support ranging from prospect identification, research and prioritization, to recommendations on board engagement mechanisms and the creation of fundraising tools for the board.

TNC Canada

“Monica is an excellent strategic thinker and project manager who brought much needed capacity to our team. She took full ownership of the project, gathering and analyzing stakeholder perspectives to build the foundation for collaborative and constructive dialogue. Working seamlessly with our internal team and external experts, Monica designed and facilitated a workshop that ensured full participation and developed a meaningful final report that we are using to advance environmental, community and economic sustainability in northwest Manitoba. Her energy, professionalism and commitment to our success from beginning to end made her a valued team member.”

~Hadley Archer,
Executive Director

TNC Canada, the Canadian affiliate of the world’s largest conservation organization, needed capacity to move forward on a critical opportunity in a priority region, Manitoba’s boreal forest. Their goal was to bring together a range of rights holders and stakeholders to explore possible futures for a sustainable forest sector, amid rapid changes on this landscape.

To support TNC Canada, we led the planning and implementation of a multi-stakeholder workshop and final report. This included full planning of the workshop, interviewing rights holders and stakeholders, preparing briefing materials, facilitating during the workshop, and designing and writing the final report. The report put forth long-term goals for northwest Manitoba's forest sector, opportunities and pathways for advancing those goals. It is currently being used to help advance a sustainable forest sector in northwest Manitoba, as well as inform TNC Canada’s strategies.