By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
Advocates for smaller nonprofit organizations across the province are breathing a sigh of relief after the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) walked back planned changes to the distribution of funds from a provincial program on which their operations rely.
The Programme de soutien aux organismes communautaires (PSOC; community organization support program), an established provincial funding scheme for nonprofits, received a $10-million top-up in the most recent Quebec budget. As many as 1,585 eligible nonprofits use the funding, known as global mission funding, to cover administrative costs, run activities and fill shortfalls. The funds are usually divided more or less equally according to criteria determined by regional round tables, Daniel Cayley-Daoust, co-spokesperson for the Coalition des Tables Régionales d’Organismes Communautaires (CTROC), a provincewide network of regional networks of community organizations, explained. “Every region has a regional procedure in place to make sure the money is distributed fairly, with the organizations that have the fewest other sources of funding being prioritized.”
Last month, the CTROC learned that the MSSS intended to divide the funds according to new criteria determined by minister responsible for social services Lionel Carmant. “We were told that [the MSSS] wanted to target organizations in difficulty, but they didn’t provide a definition of what that meant,” Cayley-Daoust said. “It just seemed kind of arbitrary.”
However, on June 27, the MSSS confirmed that there would be no changes to the funding distribution process. “There is no revision to PSOC global mission funding criteria in progress; PSOC global mission funding is being allocated according to the structure in place since November 2023,” MSSS spokesperson Marie-Claude Lacasse told the BCN.
“We put a little pressure on them and they changed their minds,” Cayley-Daoust said.
The funding is a drop in the bucket according to the CTROC, which estimates that the PSOC top-up would have had to have been $800 million – 80 times the $10 million granted – to respond to all of the member organizations’ needs. “Even though we won this year, salaries and rent and all sorts of expenses are rising very, very quickly, a lot quicker than financing,” Cayley-Daoust said. “Organizations are just tightening their belts and hoping for new money. At the same time, we see the needs going up, whether it’s in food aid or mental health support; it’s always something. We are complementary to the social safety net; we do a lot of prevention and support work that lightens the load on the public health, education and social services sectors. If [nonprofits] are badly funded, the public sector ends up with the overload.”