Our unprecedented engagement, advocacy, and leadership efforts in 2021 and 2022 culminated with a historic regulatory change for the sector: the disbursement quota increase from 3.5% to 5% for assets over $1M starting January 2023, was made law in December 2022, thanks to our instrumental mobilization.
Following the largest network consultation in PFC’s history – engaging over 70% of our membership – we stepped up to take an elevated leadership role in advocating for our sector’s needs, bringing expertise, and negotiating a diversity of perspectives towards a balanced approach.
With the disbursement quota at 3.5% since 2004, and with increasing and compounded demands on the charitable sector, our most involved network consultation and research experts’ empirical analysis landed us at a 5% increase recommendation, with periodic reviews – a position that balances concerns about increasing charitable spending and avoiding capital erosion. We are proud to have helped shepherd this change, bringing our community together towards a common cause, and were pleased to see several of our key priorities included in the new regulations.
Another key finding of our consultations was that raising the disbursement quota would be an inadequate measure to equalize community access to funding, as it does nothing to remedy the existing funding inequities in the sector. In addition to an increase in funding, we also advocated for mechanisms to encourage greater diversity of distribution, through three enabling conditions.