May 15, 2016
Today is the 5^th anniversary of the Slave Lake fire. Wisdom Gained: The Town of Slave Lake shares its reflections on recovery from the 2011 wildfire is a 42-page review on the story of Slave Lake’s disaster relief and recovery. It is a jargon-free account of what worked and what did not. Wisdom Gained is the how-to guide to rebuild a Canadian community in 3 years. It’s also a fascinating peak at how charities help in a Canadian disaster with useful insights for donors to give intelligently.  Let’s learn from the past to best help Fort McMurray’s recovery.  
Key giving tips from Slave Lake fire:

• Donate cash to help the township and its local charities – Salvation Army, foodbanks, community centres
• Do NOT send donated goods
• Know the local needs of the community
• Do not show up to help without checking in with the township who is leading the recovery and do not expect the township to provide you with room and board while you do your charity work.

NGOs can sometimes stand in the way of effective assisting with recovery.”

Wisdom Gained has an entire section on donations. Giving stuff hurt Slave Lake’s recovery. Donations show donors care and lets those hit by a disaster know that they are not alone. But donate cash, not stuff. Slave Lake was inundated with donations of stuff. Pallets of items arrived in the town, truckloads of clothes, furniture and household items. Sorting and storing these goods was very labour intensive. This created an enormous burden on Slave Lake when energy was needed elsewhere. Around 75% of the goods that arrived could not be used. Slave Lake, already in a cash-flow crunch (municipal infrastructure like fire hydrants and side walks were not covered by insurance, disaster relief funding had not yet arrived), had to pay the unexpected additional disposal cost of getting rid of these donations.  
Ironically, while Slave Lake was awash in donated stuff, its local charities suffered during the recovery. “Regular donations to the Salvation Army, food bank and the Friendship Centre were down drastically during this time as the focus was on those affected by the disaster.” The town’s volunteers were all in high demand (maybe sorting stuff?). This made it harder for Slave Lake’s most vulnerable to get help.
Cash donations also maintain the dignity, pride and freedom of the recipients. Nobody wants to receive charity. The people of Slave Lake found the sudden turn of the tables psychologically hard. Just weeks before they were giving to charities, now they were receiving charity.  
This was also hard for charities working in Slave Lake to grasp. Most of Slave Lake’s homeowners were well-insured and an estimated 75% did not miss a pay cheque. Yet they had needs. All those affected by a disaster have needs. “Initially, the Red Cross had a hard time justifying support for these families because these were not its typical clients.” Learning the needs of Slave Lake, the Red Cross modified its ways of doing things. The Red Cross provided support services for two years after the fire and funded community initiatives from the donations it received.
Wisdom Gained recollects that many NGO’s were less involved in the recovery of Slave Lake for a variety of reasons, including the high level of government support and involvement, and due to these NGO’s lacking local knowledge on Slave Lake’s people and needs.
Wisdom Gained’s checklist delineates its local charities and outside charities. For effectively helping in a recovery, it recommends townships:

• Delay arrival of outside NGOs into the community until you are ready for them.
• Ensure outside NGOs have realistic expectations and understand the need.
• Pick a local organization to accept cash donations for the town’s recovery efforts.
• Include information about donations in early public communications.
• Arrange with one or more outside organizations to run a physical donations centre.
• Encourage ongoing donations to charities such as the food bank and Salvation Army.
• Encourage organizations who have received donations to work together to select worthwhile community projects.

Wisdom Gained mentions 5 main charities that came into Slave Lake and provided services:

• the Canadian Red Cross interviewed and assessed people’s needs, assisted with finances, referrals, accommodation and provided psychological support to children and families. Donations funded school lunches and recreation for children and have supported many other community projects,
• the Salvation Army provided a mobile truck with meals,
• Samaritan’s Purse helped clean up debris from the fire and floods,
• Mennonite Disaster Services came prepared to search through rubble and rebuild houses; since neither of these were options, it helped Samaritan’s Purse in general cleanup,
• The Billy Graham Evangelical Association of Canada had trained counsellors who provided emotional support.

“If volunteer agencies called saying they needed food, accommodation, showers, they were advised not to come.”
Many other NGO’s showed up unannounced and uninvited in Slave Lake and did not check in with the township that led recovery efforts. If you are thinking about going to Fort McMurray to help out, don’t ask for room and board, check in to see if there’s a need that matches your expertise, and don’t get in the way.
Wisdom Gained’s checklist is a nearly complete recovery manual except it forgets to provide Kensington Palace’s telephone number. Will and Kate’s royal visit was a highlight community event lifting Slave Lake’s spirits. Disaster recovery is far more than building new houses; it is rebuilding a whole community’s strength and resilience to adjust to the new normal.
On this 5^th year anniversary, congratulations Slave Lake. Fort McMurray’s recovery will be even better if we act on Slave Lake’s wisdom.
 
Wisdom Gained: The Town of Slave Lake shares its reflections on recovery from the 2011 wildfire, compiled by the Northern Alberta Development Council (NADC) at the request of the Town of Slave Lake (2013) http://www.nadc.ca/Docs/Wisdom-Gained.pdf http://www.nadc.ca/Docs/Wisdom-Gained.pdf
Kate Bahen mailto:kbahen@charityintelligence.ca kbahen@charityintelligence.ca
 

Canadian Charity Impact Fund Methodology

For around 100 diverse, individual Canadian social service charities, Charity Intelligence (Ci) and Success Markets Inc. (SMI) have quantified the amount of effective help delivered to beneficiaries in a consistent manner using dollar-based figures. These by-charity value estimates are presented in the form of total benefits per donation dollar as Social Returns on Investment (SROI) ratios. These are broken down further into benefits accruing to clients and those to society at large. They provide estimates for total benefits that are highly likely and, above this, include both conservatively estimated and lower probability upside amounts.
Around 70 of these results possess a great deal more depth than the remainder. They show that likely SROIs for these better-than-average charities range from 0 to 20 with potential upsides of up to 50. This is significant given evidence indicates that most Canadian charities have SROIs in the range of 0 to 2 with an average upside of 4.
Ci & SMI results come from systematically using standard program evaluation methods and emphasize consistency of SROIs across all charities. We have used around 100 external studies as sources for values of outcomes and baseline and program success rates across a wide variety of different sectors and interventions. In addition, we can replicate the results of around 5 external SROI studies completed by other analysts. Main drivers for SROI results are presented and several charities and charity evaluation experts have provided open letters stating that SMI estimates and ranges are reasonable, comparable and congruent with other evaluations. In addition, several financial market experts have stated that SMI estimates are similar in quality to information regularly used in financial markets.
Our SROI magnitudes make sense for the right reasons. Rough improvements in quality of life for charity clients can be reasonably estimated with boundary ranges whose widths make sense.
Charity analyses include both solid baseline SROIs and additional possible SROIs whose magnitudes are less certain. Both likely and possible SROI magnitudes and their causes can be explained. Some reasons for SROI results are presented in Table I. SMI work emphasizes the rough size of what is currently known and unknown with varying levels of certainty. Some sources of and reasons for different information uncertainty levels are presented in Table II.

 

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Canadian Charity Impact Fund Selection Criteria

The Canadian Charity Impact Fund (CCIF) is a unique philanthropic donating vehicle started by Charity Intelligence (Ci) and Success Markets Inc. (SMI), a third party impact analysis organization, in 2015. We have undertaken Social Return on Investment (SROI) research on approximately 100 social service charities in Canada that had previously been identified as highly effective charities by existing Ci analysis.
The SROI analysis has resulted in interval and most likely SROI estimates that should be around 70% accurate for each charity, both in total and for the components of the benefits that accrue directly to the charity’s clients as well as to greater Canadian society. These two SROI distribution estimates have been used as the inputs into the selection of the CCIF.
For both the total charity SROI and the beneficiary SROI, three metrics were scored: the best estimate score, a lower bound score representing the likelihood of lower than expected SROI results, and an upside score, representing the likelihood of greater than expected SROI results. A weighted sum of these three metrics gives the overall score and beneficiary only score respectively. The final score is a weighted average of these two scores.
The ten highest scoring charities in our social service sector database were selected for the CCIF, with the proviso that no single sector can have more than three charities. This proviso ensures diversity of programming that aids in reducing the overall downside risk of obtaining lower than expected impact overall.
Best Estimate Score:
The best estimate score ranges from a low of 0 to a high of 100. For each charity it represents where their best estimate lies within the range from the greatest best estimate to the lowest best estimate. The equation is given as follows:

The charity with the highest best-estimate SROI will have a max score of 100 and the charity with the lowest best-estimate SROI will have the minimum score of 0.
Lower Bound Score:
The Lower Bound Score ranges from a low of 0 to a high of 100. For each charity it represents the probability, given the assumption of a 70% accurate interval and a best estimate, that the true SROI is above 5. Charities with greater scores are less likely to be lower impact charities and are thus thought of as less risky donation options than charities with lower scores (and thus a greater probability of having a low SROI).
Upside Score:
The Upside Score ranges from a low of 0 to a high of 100. For each charity, it represents the probability, given the assumption of 70% accurate interval and best estimate, that the true SROI is above 15. Charities with greater scores are more likely to have incredibly high impact than charities with low scores, and are thus viewed as having a very high upside in terms of potential impact.
Beneficiary Score:
For each charity, a Best Estimate, Lower Bound, and Upside Score is calculated, using only the 70% accuracy interval estimates for the SROI that only values direct beneficiary benefits (thus, leaving out benefits to larger society). The beneficiary score is a weighted sum of the three component scores. Both the Best Estimate and Lower Bound are given weights of 4 and the Upside Score is given a weight of 1. Thus, the maximum possible beneficiary score is 900 and the lowest possible is 0.
The weights were determined through a small focus group that was asked which charities they would choose to donate to given a choice from a small set of hypothetical 70% accurate interval SROI estimates. The result of this focus group was that a small set of informed donors strongly consider both best estimates and riskiness in their choices, but that potential upside was not a large component of their decision. For this reason, both the best estimate and risk scores are given four times the weight of the potential upside score at present.
Total Score:
For each charity, the same process taken for the Beneficiary Score was undertaken using the 70% accurate interval estimates for the whole of the charities benefits created, and not just the benefits to direct beneficiaries. The same weights were used to obtain a total score, with a maximum value of 900 and a minimum value of 0.
Selection Score:
The selection score, used to make the final selections for the CCIF was calculated as a weighted average of the Beneficiary and Total Scores. The Beneficiary Score was given a weight of 70% and the Total Score a weight of 30%. The maximum value of the selection score is 900 and the minimum is 0.
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