What an exciting and busy time for the CSSP! Here are some highlights of recent activities:
2024/2025 Compass Award Recipients
All 24 of the 2024/2025 Compass Award recipients have provided their responses to our request for year-end letters or notes. These responses from the students provide useful and positive feedback and are nothing short of inspirational!
Amazing News About Fundraising!
We have risen to the challenge of securing funding to support participation in the CSSP by all TCDSB high schools starting with the 2025/2026 school year. I am thrilled to be able to report that:
- The ladies’ tennis night fundraiser organized by Sue and Tracy raised over $23,000 for the CSSP.
- The CSSP’s summer intern, Olivia Brodie, came on board and jumped right in to manage the wine party and silent auction at the tennis fundraiser.
- Tracy, with help from Sue, made a presentation which obviously resonated with 100 Women Who Care, because it resulted in total donations of $10,000.
- We have been informed by the Joyce Family Foundation that the Foundation will make a grant to the CSSP of $50,000 per year over three years; this grant will support two students at each of 25 new participating schools from the TCDSB.
Looking Ahead to Future Fundraising
The pickleball event planned for June 21st was postponed (seven other tournaments were happening on the original date), but, based on their learning and experience from planning this event, Sue, Tracy and Leslie are already looking ahead to a future pickleball fundraiser.
Tracy has a short list of grants through the Toronto Public Library portal for grant organizations. She is working on project scope definition for applications.
Technology
Andre has been especially busy as he has been working on many different enhancements to the CSSP’s use of technology. While I won’t try to describe everything he has been doing, here are some examples:
- As a result of Richard making us aware of Microsoft for non-profits, followed up by Andre’s work, the CSSP has a new Microsoft Azure wordpress website which went live in May; this will mean a significant cost saving for the CSSP.
- To communicate the impact of CSSP visually, Andre has integrated Google maps using an API (https://ww2.compassaward.com/our-schools/).
- He has consolidated a document management and knowledge management process using Google drive.
- He has many areas of work in progress, which include donation receipt automation (special thanks here go to Andre’s son, Nathan!) and website update (theme); Andre’s longer term technology planning considerations include registration functionality and web applications for donor management, school management, integration with email and integration with payment processor.
Website, Social Media, etc.
Leslie shared a template for social media planning which Olivia is going to use to schedule and control our broader messaging and community building.
Olivia analyzed the new CSSP website for quick fixes, while Leslie developed our approach for a site analysis to support a new launch on Labour Day.
Tracy met with the Executive Director of Toronto Hand up from Hunger, who provided feedback on the website, CanadaHelps integration and board composition.
Board Meeting
The next meeting of the CSSP board of directors is on July 7. We welcome any directors who are able to attend in person (184 Humbervale Boulevard, Etobicoke).
Fred