Together 25 Ensemble: Inspired by Imagination

In Jamaican patois, “I and I” means we, and when put ourselves beside one another, we are together.

Throughout the development of this year’s national conference Together 25 Ensemble, we have been taking inspiration from the approaches of our philanthropic sector peers who have organized gatherings, by the ideas offered to us by our members who are working on so many important issues, and through the countless conversations taking place in the charitable sector, in order to ensure we imagine new possibilities for this year’s conference.

Registration is now open
to all philanthropic sector organisations across Canada and beyond.

Community Is Our Headliner

In March, we shared that we received over 100 submissions responding to our Call for Speakers – a truly extraordinary expression of a commitment to strengthening philanthropy from those working in our sector and beyond. And, ever since, we have been in the process of combining, selecting, and stitching together all the proposed wonderful ideas into our program.

Our approach has been to enable you – our community – to drive our conference program. Community is our headliner. Our keynote speakers, our session presenters, our activities, are all being driven by the people who attend our conference. Of course, we want to sprinkle in some magic from outside our sector, yet this is a recognition that our sector is diverse in culture, geography, language, focus areas, and so much more – that we can tap into our collective wisdom.

This includes hosting attendee-led side events at local restaurants – called a “Dine Around”; hearing from the CEO of Canada’s largest foundation – who will reflect on their learning journey; engaging in sessions that go beyond the panel and invite us into dialogue, reflection, and collaboration, and; on our final night together in Ottawa, we will be celebrating Senator Ratna Omidvar’s contribution to the policy and charitable sector.

Coming together as a community is what motivates us.

Solving Together

There is so much we can solve by coming together. How do we host a space that enables us to tackle the multiple challenges facing the community? Now that’s big question.

The short answer is; coming together for three days won’t solve everything in the immediate, yet we know these purpose-driven gatherings can create meaningful sparks, foster collaboration, and serve as important milestones in the journey.

We have all gone to various conferences and gatherings in our lifetimes. What makes them special? Is it the people, the experiences, the location, the unexpected moments? For the Together 25 Ensemble, we are hoping this can be a time and place where we take steps on our various challenges and opportunities together — especially as a national gathering of our sector.

Together as a community, we are co-creating a conference program that will address a wide array of topics from grantmaking, investing, governance, Indigenous-led philanthropy, debating limited terms and perpetuity, understanding funding gaps, transforming philanthropy, reconciliation, government grantmaking, non-qualified donees, journalism, international development, climate action, research, data, youth, justice philanthropy, and more!

Give Us Space

We have heard it over and over again: “don’t over program, give us the space to connect with each other.”

We hear you. Our friends at Community Foundations of Canada received similar feedback from their own conference, which they shared with us. We also read the similar sentiment on reflections from The Circle on Philanthropy’s All My Relations gathering, which included an interesting prompt; “Have I drank too much of the philanthropy?”

Giving space is also an exercise in allowing ourselves space — for reflection, to take the time to reorient ourselves in our work, our sector, and our community. Together 25 Ensembles presents an invitation to intentionally create that space alongside one another. We are giving ourselves the space to ask; can the spaces we provide allow us to be liberated from our day to day, our assumptions, our worries, our silos… allowing us to re-center ourselves? We are ruminating on this to come prepared for our time together in September.

To complement the Plenaries and Session offerings, we have designed Together 25 Ensemble to include Wellbeing Mornings – an opportunity to meditate and get grounded as a way to start our days together. We are also reserving a dedicated quiet space within the conference venue to enable participants take a pause and do a self-check-in. And, we are offering icebreakers and interactive activities that invite us to reflect more deeply – as individuals, and as a collective.

Looking Back, As We Look Forward

PFC’s national conference has grown out of what was previously a members-only style gathering, to becoming a philanthropic network-driven gathering attended by our members, but which seeks to bring together the philanthropic community at large from across Canada. We acknowledge these roots, while we shift towards a more open forum for philanthropy. This important work includes the following tensions:

Some of our members want funder-only spaces and have expressed worry about being solicited at these in-person gatherings. Therefore, we will have designated funder-only spaces and will ensure, through the registration process, every participant agrees to and adheres to our no solicitation policy during and throughout the conference.
It is important to us that our ticket prices reflect the diversity within sector, and not create a barrier to access. Therefore, we have developed several more categories to ensure it creates opportunity for access.
Designing a conference program that provides value for a broad array of topics while also intentionally holding space to go deep is a beautiful challenge. Therefore, we have curated speakers and sessions that are driven by foundation needs, yet touch on how philanthropy as a sector can approach these topics.
We need to acknowledge the limits to our ability to be inclusive – especially when holding space in a traditional way at a hotel conference location. Therefore, we are introducing evening events programming that supports the ability to host attendee-led side events, joyful networking with respectful cultural experiences, and we will be tying in the presence of our sector in Ottawa that week by building in opportunity for engagement with the federal government.

We feel and appreciate your partnership as we seek to strengthen philanthropy in Canada together.

Join us

Thank you to every single one of you who has reached out to contribute to the creation of Together 25 Ensemble. Every step of the way, it has been a true community effort.

We would like to especially acknowledge the members of our Conference Advisory Committee: Adwoa K Buahene, AKB Talent Edge, Namendra Anand, Zero Emissions Innovation Centre, Keira LaPierre, Mastercard Foundation, Ode Belzile, Fondation J. Armand Bombardier, Marni Pearce, Graham Boeckh Foundation, Camylle Legault, Fondation Choquette-Legault, Kendall Quantz, Burns Memorial Fund.

If you have never attended a previous PFC Conference, we hope this article helps express our attempt to be inclusive and intentional as we work towards a more just, equitable and sustainable future.

If you have attended a PFC Conference in the past, we hope you can appreciate our effort to ensure this gathering continues to add value to your work, your organization and your priorities within the philanthropic space.

Conference registration is now open to all foundations and other philanthropic organizations. We hope you can join us. Thank you for being part of this community. We look forward to hosting you this September – please visit our conference event page for details and to register.