More than a funder
A partner committed
to community agencies
Every year, Centraide invests in a vast network of 375 agencies and projects that work directly in Greater Montreal’s neighbourhoods. Centraide invests using a unique approach developed in the field for over 50 years to provide long-term support adapted to local realities, which is key to reducing poverty and social exclusion.
🤝 Collaboration
Maintaining relationships with community agencies is core to the work of Centraide’s social development advisors. Their experience in the field gives them an authentic viewpoint and makes them open to dialogue. They also maintain close ties with other partners involved in the fight against poverty and social exclusion (schools, the healthcare network, boroughs, etc.). This proximity fosters trust, pools strengths, and creates solid and lasting partnerships.
💡 Understanding
By looking at each neighbourhood as a whole and interacting with its stakeholders, Centraide can understand the needs, challenges, and specific community dynamics when it comes to poverty, access to housing, homelessness, food insecurity, school dropouts, the isolation of seniors, and other issues. It creates neighbourhood portraits to shine a light on the reality of each sector and gain insight for its investment decisions. This overall vision guides Centraide’s investment choices, ensures consistency in its action, and reveals complementarity between agencies and/or projects.
🫶 Support
Supporting agencies also means taking time to understand their realities and involves meeting with teams, valuing their strengths, identifying what they have learned, and identifying ways they can improve their action. Through partnerships with training resources, Centraide strengthens the skills and leadership of agencies, helps them develop new approaches, and encourages them to find innovative ways to work in and collaborate with communities.
⚖️ Equitability
Some communities are more vulnerable than others. Centraide uses territorial equity to adjust its support based on real needs so that all populations have fair and equitable access to resources. This means giving greater support to territories most at risk of poverty and social exclusion, correcting historical imbalances in funding allocations, and ensuring that each neighbourhood gets support that is tailored to its reality.
🔍 Evaluation
Evaluation is a way for Centraide to recognize and understand what agencies do while ensuring that each investment generates concrete and lasting results. This approach is based on a well-structured collaborative process that is enhanced by the expertise of our consulting team and volunteers. This invaluable volunteer citizen perspective highlights areas of limitation, provides new areas of expertise, and leads to continuous improvement.