The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has hit non-profit organizations particularly hard. Thus, there is a need to help non-profit organizations develop and exhibit resilience so that they can in turn help Canadians in the coming recovery. Should non-profits struggle or fail, many of the Canadians that depend on their services will be negatively impacted?
We have partnered with Social Impact Advisors (SIA), a for-profit consultancy that helps non-profit clients achieve greater impact. As a trusted consultant to the non-profit community, SIA has received requests from their clients as to how to build and exhibit resilience throughout this challenging time. The research that we do in this partnership will help SIA develop specialized knowledge regarding how non-profits should build and achieve resilience to this and future crises.
This study employs a matched-pairs comparative design. With this method, the team will interview multiple respondents from 10 non-profits that have exhibited strong resilient responses and 10 non-profits that have struggled or are struggling. We will analyze this data inductively, building narratives that help us understand how each non-profit has responded to COVID-19. Our aim will be to better understand both the characteristics that helped non-profits exhibit resilience in the immediate onset of the crisis but also, over time, how non-profit organizations develop and exhibit resilience.
The Non-Profit Resilience in the Context of COVID-19 letter of information for respondents.
DownloadLalonde, E., McKnight, B., Robinne, François-Nicolas (2023) Does Wildfire Exposure Influence Corporate Disaster Preparedness? A Study of Natural Resources Extraction Firms in Canada, Organization & Environment, 36(4).
Read paperThis is an ongoing study. Reports, podcasts, and other published work will be posted here throughout the study and upon its completion.
Please read the report on Assessing Non-profit Resilience – Interim:
Read report
The research team has recently published this Conversation piece entitled How COVID-19 could transform non-profit organizations. Dr. Brent McKnight was a guest on Stirling Faux’s morning show on Global 980 CKNW out of Vancouver discussing this piece and this research.
Brent McKnight is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University. Dr. McKnight studies how firms and organizations address complex societal problems. Currently, this research has led him to research organizations’ resilience and adaptation strategies in response to disasters.
Emily Lalonde is a graduate of the Masters of Science in Sustainable Business and Innovation program at Utrecht University. She received a bachelors degree in Integrated Science from McMaster University, where she majored in Earth and Environmental Science. Emily is interested in sustainable transformations and has experience with topics like plastic pollution, wildfires, food security, and carbon abatement technologies.
François-Nicolas Robinne is a geographer with a specialization in risk and disaster management. He has been working on wildfire-related issues for over 15 years. He did his PhD at the University of Alberta, where his researched focused on wildfire risk on drinking water supply. He his now an analyst at the Pacific Salmon Foundation.
