Calling all Fundraisers in the GTC, please reserve time in your calendars on the following dates:
January 12 and 26, 2024
February 9, 2024
March 1 and 15, 2024
These are the dates for hosting AFP-GTC Listening Sessions across various locations in the GTC, as well as virtually accessible meetings. The Listening Sessions will be at 8:00 am, 12:00 pm and 5:30 pm. Locations will be Downtown Toronto, Peel Region, York Region, and Mississauga.
We want to hear your thoughts, concerns, aspirations, and experiences relating to the past, present, and future of our chapter. Liz Rejman provide further communication outlining specific locations for these Listening Sessions to take place.
If you or your organization would like to host a Listening Session in your community, please let us know. You can contact Taylor Cunningham, our Chapter’s Professional Developments & Events Specialist (tcunningham@afptoronto.org) to arrange this opportunity.
Following the listening Sessions, we will also launch an extensive survey to capture the viewpoints of members and fundraisers in the GTC community.
Interim Board Member, Esther Saehyun Lee has identified several Affinity Groups whose voice and participation are important to our work in engaging the full breadth of fundraising commutes in the GTC. Specifically, Esther has focused on groups that have been hitherto marginalized from expressing choice, voice, and control (power), as fundraisers within the GTC.
These include Black, Indigenous, Muslim, and Asian Fundraisers. If you are part of a cultural group that has been marginalized and aim to form an Affinity Group, we would like to hear from you. Please contact me at makerewusi@afptoronto.org with details about the aims of your group and your interest in having a further conversation with AFP-GTC.
Dane Bland, CFRE and Ann Rosenfield, MBA, CFRE are in the process of developing a transformative AFP-GTC professional development and events roster for 2024. For now, I can reveal that we are focusing on the delivery of powerful one-day learning sessions spread across the year. I am pleased to announce that the first learning session will be at AFP ICON, 2024 here in Toronto, where we will lead a short event which is currently being curated.
There is much more to say and even more to share, however at this point I will conclude by thanking everybody who is supportive of the transformation at Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Greater Toronto Chapter. I know it has been tough for many of us to endure this year’s events.
One of the discussions we have had at the board table is an acknowledgment for the continued need to heal and reconcile. Sara Wolfe continues to shape this work for us, initially by steeping us in a new set of values and different ways of operating. I hope you are seeing the result of this emergent work and will begin to feel its impact over the coming months.
Best Wishes
Olumide Akerewusi
Interim Chair
