August 13, 2013
Wendat Community Program is a charity and, at the time that we applied for a loan from the Business Development Centre, in 1996, we had only been in existence for 8 years. We had 14 employees, served about 300 clients per year with an annual budget from the provincial Ministry of Health of about $360,000. Government funding was on the decline and, although we didn’t know it at the time, we were in the midst of a 12 year streak of nothing but budget cuts. We were committed to maintaining the services to all of our clients and maintaining the employment of all of our staff, so we needed a strategy to reduce our overhead costs since our source of revenue was declining.
Purchasing a building and fundraising to pay the mortgage off as quickly as possible was a key component of this strategy. And that is what we did. NS Community Futures Development Corporation gave us a loan when no one else would – we really had no assets or collateral – and as a non-profit corporation, the banks simply weren’t interested in us. With that loan we purchased a building, -- we then had very successful fundraising to not only pay it off within 4 years, but to go on and raise another $750,000 to expand that building in 2004.
The loan allowed us to become property owners, to maintain all services and jobs in spite of funding cuts and to build a solid foundation for future growth. Today, we have 53 employees, an annual budget of $2 million and close to 2,000 people who receive our services every year. Our services range from providing Crisis Counsellors to the ER at Georgian Bay General Hospital 7 days a week, to sending Behaviour Nurses into Long Term Care homes to support their staff in managing seniors with advanced dementia, to providing recreational activities for adults disabled by mental illness and more. We are just about to enter a third capital campaign to build a much needed assisted living residence to serve 24 seniors with low incomes who are in need of daily personal supports, a resource that is desperately needed in our community.
There is no doubt that many thanks are due to the North Simcoe Community Futures Development Corporation for having the faith to invest in a non-profit charity so we in turn could move ahead in addressing the social and health needs of this community. Thank you again Debra and the whole team at North Simcoe Community Futures Development Corporation. Your support made a real difference.
