Maytree has published Five Good Ideas: Practical Strategies for Non-Profit Success. Featuring a collection of the best ideas from their Five Good Ideas sessions, it's sure that you’ll find the book a handy quick-reference guide.

About the book

It’s no secret. Managers working in the non-profit sector wear many hats and have to be awfully good at doing many things. One day you’re asked to be a communications expert, the next you’re handling the HR duties of your organization, and then, without blinking an eye, you balance the books.

But how can you even begin to learn so many things in a time-effective way?

Five Good Ideas book as your go-to non-profit management handbook. Whether for a deep read, or quick reference, keep it handy in your top right desk drawer.

Read an excerpt from the book (PDF)

Visit Maytree to find where you can buy the book.

BY Peggy Taillon, President and CEO of Canadian Council on Social Development

Some have said that Occupy isn't about anything. That convenient and short-sided response is missing what has led to this unprecedented movement. Occupy is about all of us, its about the fact that we have become a have - have not society, this is the new global pandemic, and our governments are not ramping up their rapid crisis response systems.   This is about the reality that prosperity and opportunity will soon be out of reach for our eroding middle class.

This is about people, people and their economic structures that are not meeting their needs; people and their governments who do not understand their needs; and people bumping into systems that are not designed to meet their needs. This is about fear, real fear that shortsighted policies are reaping havoc with our future.

This Occupy "Thing" continues here

Read the Ottawa Citizen article, Occupy challenges all of us

By Annette Francis, APTN National News

The federal Aboriginal Affairs department has been spying on a high-profile campaigner for First Nations children, documents show.

The department has amassed a large file on Cindy Blackstock, who heads the First Nations Child and Family Caring society.

The file contains emails and notes about Blackstock’s personal information and critical briefings on her activities.

“They have found it necessary to not only put one employee onto tailing, but if you look at the records there are numerous employees on the government payroll who are being asked to comment on what I am doing or to violate my privacy by going on my personal Facebook pages,” said Blackstock.

Blackstock has for years been pushing for equity for First Nations children caught up in the welfare system.

John Stapleton of Open Policy Ontario has produced the following articles comprising of a mediation of our living standards, EI and socail assistance, and the cost of food to the poor.

TRADING PLACES: Single Adults Replace Lone Parents as the New Face of Social Assistance in Canada (PDF)

From 1990 to 1996, dramatic changes to Employment Insurance (EI) legislation profoundly altered the face of those on welfare in Canada. Equally important cutbacks to social assistance across Canada were made from 1993 to 2001, starting first in Alberta and ending in British Columbia. EI has become a much smaller benefit program than in the past. Read more ...

Turn out the Lights: A compelling, anti-tax narrative is fuelling a grand dismantling of our living standards. Is there a progressive narrative to counter it? (PDF)

Stephen Hayward recently analyzed an American city’s close brush with the cancellation of basic utilities – the things that define our collective standard of living. This was in response to a powerful local tax cut movement, and a popular narrative that championed the notion of public scarcity. This narrative takes as an article of faith that the return of resources to individuals is so superior a notion, that even the loss of public utilities such as streetlamps could be seen as a public good. Read more ...

Less on their Plate: Canada’s poorest people facing a frightful food crisis

It took us far too long to realize the connections between the actions of the U.S. Federal Reserve to the riots in Yemen and Tunisia, and between the immense political gift to Canada’s richest people and the food crisis facing our poorest residents. It goes something like this:

• The U.S. Federal Reserve System, facing very low interest rates after the crash, began the practice of “quantitative easing” — essentially printing U.S. dollars — and reducing the value of their currency to avoid another Great Depression.
• Commodity prices — the flip side of the dollar devaluation — started their almost uninterrupted journey higher.

Read more ...

By Jim Day, The Guardian - November 8th, 2011

Canada’s top statistics man for more than 20 years offered some remedies to the federal government’s much maligned decision to scrap the mandatory long census.

Ivan Fellegi, Canada’s chief statistician emeritus, says he wants Statistics Canada to remain a regular part of the government but he also wants to see some additional protections built into the model.

One concrete change proposed by Fellegi is to embed the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics in an amended Statistics Act.

The first principle emphasizes the need for impartiality, but provides no guidance on how to achieve this goal, he said while giving the Symons Lecture on the State of Canadian Confederation Tuesday in Charlottetown.

The second principle, he says, would be used to retain trust in official statistics by Statistics Canada using strictly professional considerations, including scientific principles and professional ethics, on the methods and procedures for the collection, processing, storage, and dissemination of statistical data.

Airs Thursday, November 10th on CBC's Doc Zone (9pm, 9:30 NT)

Patrick Lermitte's time is running out. His parents say he has to be out of the house by the time he's 25. He is 24 and his birthday's coming up....

Patrick is part of a new majority: more than half of Canadian adults aged 20-29 still live with their parents. The number's even higher in other parts of the world.  Is it the economy? Have their parents made it too comfortable? Or is this a new stage of life?

Patrick's story is just one of several we follow in GENERATION BOOMERANG. With humour and insight, we open the front door on families from here and abroad and ask the experts why this generation just keeps coming back - or never left in the first place.

GENERATION BOOMERANG website

View the trailer

La lutte pour sauver le recensement se poursuit alors que la cause du CCDS et al vs Le gouvernement du Canada a été entendue devant la Cour fédérale le 23 novembre 2011 à 09h30. Le CCDS et 12 autres partenaires se battent pour l’égalité du droit au Canada de prendre part au questionnaire abrégé, le seul outil obligatoire restant dans le groupe d’enquêtes de recensement destinées à tous les Canadiens.

Le questionnaire abrégé (à peine plus qu'un dénombrement) ne demande que 10 questions aux Canadiens, dont aucune ne détermine l'appartenance ethnique, le patrimoine culturel, le statut d'autochtone ou d'invalidité. L'exclusion de groupes importants de Canadiens est une violation claire de notre Charte des droits et libertés. De telles lacunes dans les données feront en sorte que les décideurs à chaque niveau n'auront pas les informations nécessaires pour desservir ces groupes importants de Canadiens. Peut-être s’agit-il là d’une marginalisation orchestrée ?

Nous méritons mieux ; ces groupes de Canadiens méritent mieux. Rejoignez-nous dans ce moment important de l'histoire canadienne.

Si vous souhaitez de plus amples informations ou si vous désirez vous impliquer, contactez notre présidente, Peggy Taillon à  Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots des spammeurs, vous devez activer Javascript pour la voir. .

Faites un don au Fonds pour la défense des données et devenez un membre du CCDS.

Nos partenaires dans ce défi comprennent les organismes suivants :

SOCIAL PLANNING TORONTO,
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT HALTON,
SOCIAL PLANNING COUNCIL OF WINNIPEG
CANADIAN ARAB FEDERATION,
ONTARIO COUNCIL OF AGENCIES SERVING IMMIGRANTS,
COUNCIL OF AGENCIES SERVING SOUTH ASIANS,
CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION TORONTO,
AFRICAN CANADIAN LEGAL CLINIC,
NATIONAL ABORIGINAL HOUSING ASSOCIATION,
SOUTH ASIAN LEGAL CLINIC OF ONTARIO,
METRO TORONTO CHINESE SOUTHEAST ASIAN LEGAL CLINIC