COVID-19 Resources

LAST PAGE UPDATE: Feiday, February 26, 9:40am

Pillar Nonprofit Network is leaning into our heightened awareness of violence against and inequities affecting Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) abroad and right here in our own community. As we've written here and elsewhere, our own response is evolving. Addressing racism and xenophobia is part of Pillar's strategic plan, and we are committed to actively anti-racist work while recognizing that leadership must come from BIPOC communities inside and outside of our organization, our membership, and our network.

At Pillar, those of us who have benefited from White privilege are committing to the long process of unlearning and learning, and we are making sure to check on our team members who have suffered and continue to suffer harm from White supremacy.

We also know that, as individuals and organizations dedicated to positive change, our members have an essential role in creating a safe, just, and equitable community for all. While we continue to examine and adjust our own role in this work, we remain committed to sharing resources to help our membership and community recognize and combat racism in Canada and elsewhere while also managing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We also join in recognizing that the pandemic is a revealer of other sociodemographic determinants of health both in Canada and abroad. If there are resources or other supports you need to join in this work, please reach out to membership@pillarnonprofit.ca to let us know.

The Pillar Nonprofit Network team is committed to engaging, supporting, and informing our membership and community through the multiple crises we face. Use our curated collection, updated daily, to find the information you need, when you need it. Though the individuals, nonprofits, enterprises, and impact investors in our membership each have their own needs, many of the resources will be useful to multiple users, so by all means browse for the items you never knew you needed, too. You'll also find COVID-19 news related to our operations and service delivery or other critical updates affecting our community on our News page, a forum to ask questions on the Pillar Online Community, and relevant virtual content on the Pillar Events page. Use this guide to jump to the section or item you need.

Government news & relief to nonprofits, social enterprises, businesses, and individuals. For an overview, we recommend Imagine Canada’s regularly-updated Federal Government Covid-19 Measures. Canada Helps has a good guide to province-specific relief programs and try out rTraction’s business self-assessment or feedback from the Women’s Entrepreneur Knowledge Hub to see what might apply to you or your organization. For relief to people, check out Dr Jennifer Robson’s plain-language guide to government aid for individuals. If you're still browsing, start with federal government news and relief programs here, provincial news here, and local London news here. There's more helpful guides for area nonprofits here, and government relief for individuals here. You'll find data from Statistics Canada and others here.

Find up-to-the-minute learning opportunities here and, for events hosted by Pillar members, head to our events page and, for Pillar Nonprofit Network events, our Upcoming Pillar Events page. For a variety of resources delivered in ASL, visit Silent Voice's COVID-19 Corner.

To find resources and advocacy for the impact sector that suit you best, start with national, provincial, and local advocacy for the sector here and advocacy for impact investors, social enterprises, and innovators here. Learn about the impact on the sector here, find resources for impact organizations here and specific resources for social enterprises and innovators here.

Feel like you just need to do something now? Take this checklist and make it your own: you could inform folks of anything that's changed about your programs; do a business self-assessment today so you know what's on your list for tomorrow; or seek volunteers to help move your projects forward.

On the subject of volunteers, though there are some new challenges, volunteers have likely never been more willing or more needed to help, and you'll find some volunteer-involved stuff here, including local resources, grassroots movements, national resources, some global perspectives, and even a bit of funding for volunteer-involved initiatives.

Addressing racism and xenophobia is part of Pillar's strategic plan. Now more than ever we need to acknowledge the racism that exists right here in our own communities. As individuals and organizations dedicated to positive change, our members have an essential role in creating a safe, just, and equitable community for all. We continue to update resources to help recognize racism and do anti-racism work in Canada and elsewhere. We also join in recognizing that the pandemic is a revealer of other sociodemographic determinants of health both in Canada and abroad.

To help you take care of yourself and the people important to you, we've assembled resources to support good mental health and resilience, from reliable local and Canadian sources and from trustworthy global sources.

Keep the wheels turning. We're talking business continuity a lot. We've collected great resources, many local, for nonprofits, for social enterprises, and on the subjects of crisis communications, leadership, human resources, and the pivot to remote work and virtual everything.

As Londoners, we respond to the pandemic and the wicked problems we already had, by thinking globally, but acting locally. Browse London-specific resources for supporting London's most vulnerable people here, support for the frontlines here, shopping local here, and supporting local micro-volunteering and mutual aid here.

We are not medical experts, either, but these are the things we know about reliable public health information: we're making our decisions and basing our actions on information from the Middlesex-London Health Unit & Public Health Ontario while we monitor information from the Public Health Agency of Canada and global authorities like the World Health Organization.

No, it's not too soon to talk about giving and philanthropy. Find ways to give in support of the local COVID-19 response here. All you fundraisers, find your resources here; join in the conversation about philanthropy here; learn how community foundations are responding here; and check out COVID-19 funding opportunities here

And it's not too soon to talk about the future, either. Bureaucrats and visionaries are drawing the blueprints of a new reality, some of which will ending up being a temporary reponse to the pandemic crisis and some of which will be a transformational response to the crisis we were already in. We've collected a few interesting takes, but especially recommend you check out the COVID-19 collection by Future of Good. As some have noted, the crisis is really played out in cities, and we recommend the suite of tools offered by in the Canadian Urban Institute COVID-19 Response. The missions of our member organizations are critical and, in addition to these resources, we will continue to strengthen our member organizations and increase their impact, in part by building the capacities of their leaders. Watch this section for more about the importance of leadership in the world we hope for.