Changes to Rethink Charity’s strategy and staff roles

Rethink Charity has changed significantly since our last update in June. This update provides a brief overview of our current strategy and staff roles, and accompanies our announcement about Rethink Charity’s leadership transition

Strategy update

Rethink Charity is now focusing solely on RC Forward. We aim to foster a culture of giving effectively among many more people in Canada, and to be an active contributor to wider efforts to contribute to effective giving across the world. RC Forward has already been trusted by thousands of donors in Canada to forward over $18 million CAD of their donations to high-impact charities since 2017. 

We believe we could optimize significantly by focusing our team’s bandwidth on this project, identifying and filling our gaps in expertise, and by closely collaborating with other effective giving organizations. 

We’ve been winding down projects less aligned with our current strategy and comparative advantage since August of this year. We handed off EA Giving Tuesday to Giving What We Can (with the support of One for the World). Since September we have been winding down our fiscal sponsorship program. 

Staff roles update 

Rethink Charity currently has three staff (3 FTE total). Our organization is fully remote, with our team dispersed across British Columbia, Canada. 

SK OwYong: Our previous post introduced SK as Executive Director and bids a fond farewell to Baxter Bullock after five years of service. As Executive Director, SK oversees our team, people and projects. His particular current focus areas include building key partnerships, improving RC Forward’s donation platform, improving our task management processes, and setting KPIs for 2023. 

Siobhan Brenton: Siobhan has worked across most of Rethink Charity’s core functions in her five years at the organization. She is now serving as Project Manager on initiatives to help us streamline according to our new strategy, including fiscal sponsorship wind-down, improving our accounting support, and advising on strategic initiatives. 

Megan Jamer: Megan has worked in communications and operations roles across Rethink Charity’s projects, with particular focus on RC Forward and EA Giving Tuesday. Megan served as Acting Executive Director from July to November 2022, working to develop a new strategy and leadership plan for Rethink Charity. She is now serving as Project Manager for RC Forward, as well as fulfilling some of Rethink Charity’s more general operational needs.

Looking ahead

In 2022 Rethink Charity navigated changes to staff and strategy that were challenging for our team. We welcome 2023 equipped with more stability and clarity. This progress is due in no small part to the support we’ve received this year from Rethink Charity’s Board of Directors, from our community of partner charities, our wonderful donors, and from other effective giving organizations, particularly Effektiv Spenden, Giving What We Can, and One for the World. 

We’re passionate about driving more support to organizations doing high-impact work on pressing problems. On a day-to-day basis, what drives us is our ongoing work to improve the efficiency of RC Forward and to help more Canadians take action to do more good with their charitable giving. We look forward to seeing what we can achieve in 2023 and beyond. Thank you for your interest and support of Rethink Charity. 

– The Rethink Charity Team