By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
On July 24, Dare to be You(th) (DTBY) hosted an event celebrating a recent $33,000 grant given to them by the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF), as part of the Resilient Communities Fund.
Attendees were treated to coffee or tea, an array of chips and snacks, and a sundae station, along with a DTBY t-shirt and pin, gifted to them as they left.
A youth ambassador greeted attendees as they entered 551 Maple Ave., the headquarters of DTBY.
Kicking off at 6:00 p.m., the first half-hour of the event was reserved for mingling with fellow guests, which included Shannon Tobin, the founder and CEO of DTBY, Jodie Schnurr, the former vice principal of Craig Kielburger Secondary School, where DTBY hosted their Play Day event earlier this year, and several members of the DTBY board.
When the event formally started at 6:30, the youth ambassadors made statements thanking DTBY for the opportunity to help fellow students and further the work that the organization has been doing in the community.
Nicole Kenny, director of operations for DTBY, spoke next, talking about how the goals of the OTF and their Resilient Communities Fund align with the values of DTBY.
“[It’s about] building resilience,” Kenny said. “And I think we all need to have some of that in our life, to meet the different and diverse needs of our communities.”
Kenny also spoke about the difficulties that many non-profits experience when starting out, and the help that grants like the one DTBY received can help mitigate these issues.
“Some of you may not realize that 30% of nonprofits actually fail in the first 10 years of their development, in part, it’s because we don’t understand how to evolve beyond the day-to-day tactics, and we’re not necessarily looking at strategies,” Kenny said.
“So I want to be clear, without the OTF and the Resilient Communities Fund, I wouldn’t be here,” Kenny continued. “Makayla [Cherrett, Communications Manager] wouldn’t be here, and perhaps in the future, DTBY might not be here.”
“It allowed us to hire two part-time employees and expand some of our processes internally and bring in some different experts.”
“We’re really focusing on how we communicate, expand our reach, how to engage people that might donate so that we’re not just utilizing grants to grow our reach.”
Kenny said that over the past year, DTBY’s LinkedIn impressions have gone up 88%, their website usage by 32%, and their Instagram followers by 56.5%.
Sixty individual donors and 28 corporate donor relationships have also been established.
Kenny also said that they have “refined DTBY’s mission and vision statements to reflect a better focus and distinguish ourselves from other organizations.”
Kenny said that while grants are always necessary for the organization to run, the more they grow their brand, it will make DTBY less dependent on them.
“We’ll always need some grants, but as you become more sophisticated, you’re able to show a company why they would want to provide funding,” Kenny said. “Even for individual donors who might want to become a [regular] donor, rather than just ‘ad hoc’ here and there.”
Kenny said that a $25-a-month donation provides funding for one student to go through their program.
Nadirah Nazeer, a volunteer who was there on behalf of the OTF, spoke about some of the statistics that Kenny touched on in her speech.
“It tells you there’s a huge need because they were able to support over 2000 individuals last year, and there’s a huge increase of 86% [since 2021],” Nazeer said. “What that shows is whatever they’re doing is resonating with the youth and they’re absolutely services that will help them be better as adults, as they go from high school to post-secondary school.”
Nazeer also mentioned that the OTF has supported over 100 non-profit organizations across Ontario.
“Especially after COVID, a lot of them have struggled a lot to raise money,” Nazeer said. “And now that we’re post-COVID, and there’s been a lot of different resilient funds, we’ve been able to sustain that and make sure that they survive.”
She also said that organizations can always reapply for grants at any time.
“There’s always a need,” Nazeer said. “If they keep going, clearly they’re going to need more money. They also do a lot of fundraising and they’re looking at corporate sponsorships, and OTF is certainly there to assist them with that growth because it is impacting our future, with Gen Z and Alpha.”
Tobin said that the event was a huge success.
“It was better than I expected,” Tobin said. “When I look at the people that are here, from our youth who have been through our programs, to our volunteers who help us do these events, to our board members, to our team. It takes a community to create massive change, and every single person that’s in this room has impacted our organization in many, many ways.”
To find out more about DTBY, visit dtby.ca.
