Community organizations are on the verge of suicide. This is what emerges from the open letter published on September 6 in The Duty. Although the image is strong and provocative, it is nonetheless false. If underfunding can give a glimpse of the “agony” of certain organizations, it must be recognized that in the vast majority of cases, community actors are fighting fiercely for the survival of the community movement and the recognition of their practices.
The open letter deserves to be reframed in order to avoid spreading a misunderstanding of what the community movement is. Moreover, if, as the author suggests, the objective is to protect the “mental health and motivation of employees,” the most recent studies conducted on management practices and employment conditions in community organizations lead us to believe that the proposed solutions risk being counterproductive.
The autonomy of the community movement, a fundamental aspect
Community organizations, although partly funded by the State, are free to determine how to carry out their missions. This is essential since the needs and the responses to them are determined collectively by and for the community. The State cannot therefore impose a service offering or the means to be implemented to meet the mission of a funded organization. This respect for the autonomy of the community movement, which, moreover, is beneficial for the participants of the groups and the populations with whom the organizations intervene, is at the heart of the government policy “Community action: an essential contribution to the exercise of citizenship and the social development of Quebec.”
Tighter accountability practices or the imposition of governance practices by government actors would necessarily undermine the autonomy of organizations. This would even go against the latest guidelines of the Government Action Plan for Community Action 2022-2027, which instead aim to simplify administrative procedures.
It should also be remembered that community organizations, despite their autonomy, already perform accountability reporting and their financial statements are presented publicly at general meetings. In cases where management problems exist, sectoral and regional groups as well as organizations whose primary mission is training can support organizations that need it. Other options have also been put in place by the community movement for organizations that would like to think about and evaluate their practices.
Beyond the issues of autonomy of the community movement, it has already been widely documented that the burden of accountability requirements would have the effect of contributing to work overload in organizations while reducing the flexibility of organizations to adapt to emerging needs. The lean management logic denounced for contributing to the loss of meaning at work in the public sector cannot, and must not, be transposed to community organizations.
Community action, beyond the provision of services
Community organizations must act with a view to social transformation, which means that their actions cannot be limited to offering services, but must instead be thought of from a social justice perspective where collective solutions are offered in response to collectively targeted issues. At the heart of this conception of community action are a strong associative life and the recognition of democratic practices that promote the participation of members and the community in decision-making.
This requires time (and resources) and the deployment of popular education practices to train and support people who choose to get involved. If people on boards of directors play the role of “houseplants”, as the author of the open letter suggests, it is possibly because the organization has not put in place the essential mechanisms to support board members, to make their roles and responsibilities known and to take the time to inform and support them before essential decisions are made.
Again, training provided by and for the community movement exists. It should be noted, however, that implementing such practices requires, once again, time and resources, which can be difficult to implement in organizations where teams are overloaded, needs are urgent and resources are more than limited.
Rather than demanding the establishment of accountability and governance monitoring mechanisms to supervise community action, should we not offer all the resources necessary for organizations to act with a view to social transformation, develop a strong community life and contribute to the training, with a view to popular education, of participants and managers of organizations?
To do this, however, we must move away from a conception of the community movement as a subcontractor of the State for the provision of services at a lower cost and fully recognize the practices and specificities of the community movement. Rather than demanding surveillance mechanisms that promote “excellence”, let us ensure that we put in place all the conditions allowing organizations to fully play their role of social transformation and recognize the importance of their practices.
This inevitably involves respecting the autonomy of the community movement and providing considerable funding for the mission.