SHIFT’s governance model
SHIFT’s governance structure is designed to create accountability to our community and to enable our mission, vision and values to be stewarded by a diversity of perspectives.
We see the potential for participatory decision-making structures to contribute to systemic social change. By giving people meaningful opportunities to share power and contribute to decision-making, we are building an engaged and dynamic SHIFT community.
About the Steering Committee
The SHIFT Steering Committee (SC) is a core component of SHIFT’s governance model and is responsible for ensuring that our activities, objectives and future directions are aligned with our mission and values.
Engaging in questions of high-level strategy concerning SHIFT’s evolution over time, deliberation among members is enriched by shared commitments to deep listening and generative dialogue. The Steering Committee’s decisions are informed by regular input from SHIFT staff and community members, facilitated through communication with our program hubs.
In recruiting members for the Steering Committee, we are looking for people from across the SHIFT community and those engaged in socially transformative work Montreal who are willing to invest in SHIFT’s development and ways of working as described in the following statements:
- A strong grasp of and alignment with SHIFT’s mission, values, vision and ways of working. In particular, potential Steering Committee members are invited to review the SHIFT values to decide if they resonate with them.
- A deep commitment to advancing social transformation, grounded in the urgency of action and awareness of how systems of injustice, inequity and unsustainability perpetuate violence against people and communities on a daily basis.
- An openness to seeing value in a diversity of approaches to social transformation, and the opportunities and critiques of each.
- A willingness to engage with both SHIFT as a whole and specifically, the work of the Steering Committee, as a live experiment in shared power, community accountability and collaborative co-creation.
- An openness to uncertainty and a willingness to contribute to collective learning.
Furthermore, for the Steering Committee members to collaborate effectively, all members must have the following skills:
- Strong interpersonal communication skills, including openness to dealing with conflict as it arises, the ability to hear constructive feedback and the ability to express perspectives and concerns constructively.
- Self-awareness of your own worldview, perspectives and social position, and experience discussing and engaging respectfully with people from outside of your domain, culture or field of study.
As a whole, we aim for the Steering Committee (SC) to include a diversity of perspectives informed by the lived experience or work experience relevant to the communities and context in which SHIFT works. While this diversity of perspectives is essential for the committee to effectively accomplish its mandate, members are asked to contribute to the committee as engaged individuals, not as representatives of any particular group.
- Experience with hands-on work with a socially transformation initiative that engages with root causes and systemic change, while remaining grounded in community priorities. This could be in the private, government, community, public or parapublic sector, or working across these sectors.
- In particular, it is an asset for us to have SC members with meaningful work or volunteer experience in the focus areas of the project teams we currently support. These include issues of food security, social isolation, homelessness, decolonization/Indigenization, migrant justice and immigration, gender-based violence, prison justice/incarceration, climate justice, waste management, and systemic discrimination based on gender, age, language, religion, race, sexuality.
- Lived experience of issues of systemic injustice, inequity or unsustainability.
- Current or recent experience as a Concordia student, faculty member, instructor, researcher, staff member or administrator.
- Awareness of changes, developments and best practices in the field of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, social change philanthropy or social justice movements.
- Experience with community-university partnerships or other multi-stakeholder collaborations, especially in the role of facilitating relationships across different sectors.
- Experience disbursing or receiving grants and other funding.
As the Steering Committee is responsible for high-level strategic decisions for SHIFT, experience in any of the following areas is an important asset:
- Experience participating in or guiding an organisation to make strategic decisions aligned with its values.
- Knowledge, experience or strong interest in governance structures, especially with alternative governance models, structures that support shared power, and consent-based decision making.
- Ability to bring an equity, diversity and inclusion lens to governance issues.
- Ability to bring a decolonial lens to governance issues, grounded in relationship to Indigenous peoples and communities.
- Experience managing conflicts across differences (of education levels, cultures, structural power levels, etc.).
- Ability to bring an evaluation lens to governance issues, especially in relation to impact evaluation and establishing systems to monitor organisational objectives.
We are currently recruiting up to four new members for the Steering Committee. In particular, we are seeking applicants with lived experience, knowledge or interest in the following areas to complement the skills and expertise already present on the committee:
- Concordia faculty members perspective
- Concordia staff members perspective
- Community organisers, grassroots organisers and people engaged in front-line community or activist work
- Entrepreneurs or “intrapreneurs” working towards social transformation in the public, parapublic or private sector
- Strong understanding of the health sector, particularly within public health institutions or policy initiatives
- Time commitment: approximately 25 hours/year (meetings, reading between meetings and annual half-day retreat).
- Meetings are held every six to eight weeks on Friday mornings (9:30 to 11:30 a.m.)
- Term length: option of a one-year mandate or two-year mandate, beginning in December 2023.
- Compensation: $1,250 annual honorarium issued to all members (with the exception of Concordia full-time staff and faculty members)
Program hubs
What is a hub?
Please Note: None of our Program Hubs are currently accepting new members.
Program hubs are the primary decision-making site for major program-level decisions at SHIFT. They support staff in developing program-level strategy, providing additional perspective to major operational decisions, and actively bridging the day-to-day work of the staff team with the multi-year horizon of the Steering Committee.
Hubs are composed of four to six members of the SHIFT community, including a Steering Committee member and a staff member. Ideally, hub members will represent a mixture of people who have expertise in the topic area and people who are likely to be impacted by the hub’s decisions.
Both of SHIFT’s two current hubs — the Fund Disbursement Hub and the Governance Hub — bring together a diversity of voices from across the SHIFT community and broader ecosystem to inform the strategic programming decisions related to their area of focus. New this year, we are launching two additional hubs: the Space Hub, focused on shared ownership of the SHIFT collaboration space on campus, and the Ecosystem Activation Hub, building and stewarding impactful, mutually supportive collaborations between members of SHIFT’s ecosystem.
By engaging at the level of strategic programming decisions, hubs play a critical role of ensuring that the broader organizational orientations are turned into action and impact in ways that are aligned with SHIFT’s mission, vision and values.
Fund Disbursement Hub
The Fund Disbursement Hub ensures that SHIFT’s funding opportunities act as efficient mechanisms to identify potential partnerships with promising initiatives, and provide ongoing support to members of the SHIFT Learning Community. Members contribute their expertise and perspectives to increase accessibility and transparency of SHIFT’s funding processes and evaluate their effectiveness.
In alignment with SHIFT’s organizational priorities and resource constraints, the Fund Disbursement Hub is tasked with ensuring that the funding opportunities offered by SHIFT support the realization of the following objectives:
- Identify existing and emerging multi-stakeholder projects that are working to make Montreal more just, equitable and sustainable
- Support socially transformative work by providing project teams with funding, coaching, training and other resources to project teams as needed.
- Recruit project teams into a learning community in which knowledge and expertise is shared between SHIFT staff and project teams, as well as between projects and the broader SHIFT community.
- Invest in high-potential projects that are connected to Concordia and aligned with SHIFT’s values and ways of working and to support them in reaching their next level of impact.
All SHIFT Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- The ability to “think from the centre”: the willingness to use their position to contribute to SHIFT’s mission, as opposed to furthering their own interests
- An understanding of social transformation that is grounded in the harm caused by systems of injustice, inequity and unsustainability
All Fund Disbursement Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- Understand the instrumental role that funding plays at SHIFT — as a catalyst and support for social transformation, not as philanthropic endeavour
- Value the process of experimentation and documentation as an important contribution that SHIFT can make to collective learning about funding disbursement grounded in efforts to bring about greater justice, equity and sustainability
- Recognize the structural barriers that marginalized communities face when accessing funding
Prospective Fund Disbursement Hub members are encouraged to identify in their applications which of the following areas of interest, competencies, enthusiasm or experiences they could contribute to the hub:
- Funding disbursement (through application-based, relationship-based or other funding disbursement mechanisms)
- Identification and selection of socially transformative projects
- Best practices for funding and supporting systemic change
- Evaluating the impact of funding programs/relationships
- Participatory, inclusive, democratic decision-making processes
- Understanding of accessibility and structural barriers to accessing funding for marginalized communities
The Fund Disbursement Hub is not currently accepting new members.
- Time commitment: approximately 30 hours/year (meetings, reading between meetings and annual half-day retreat).
- Meetings are held monthly, scheduled based on members’ availability (currently held during business hours)
- Term length: 18 months, different start dates depending on hub mandate
- Compensation: $1,500 annual honorarium issued to all members (with the exception of Concordia full time staff and faculty members)
Governance Hub
Governance Hub members are passionate about how healthy organizational processes and decision-making structures can contribute positively to social change. Their work is focused on ensuring that SHIFT’s governance model is of greatest possible benefit to our mission, and on sharing what we’re learning at SHIFT with others interested in the transformative power of alternative governance systems.
In alignment with SHIFT’s organizational priorities and resource constraints, the governance hub is tasked with ensuring that SHIFT’s evolving governance structure supports the realization of the following goals:
- Ensure that SHIFT’s decision-making processes are grounded in accountability to our community and informed by a diversity of perspectives
- Grow the community of people committed to realising SHIFT’s mission and vision by creating welcoming and inclusive decision-making structures that build a strong sense of co-ownership and engagement
- Leverage the opportunity to experiment with alternative governance models to contribute to collective learning about the socially transformative potential of collaboration and power sharing.
Over the course of their term, the Governance Hub will focus on the following dossiers:
- Accompany the ongoing evaluation of the SHIFT governance model and develop opportunities to share the findings with the SHIFT community
- Develop and implement recommendations for improving SHIFT’s governance model, based on the results of the evaluation
- Monitor and advise on the expansion of the governance model especially in relation to gaps, overlapping mandates or lack of clarity of decision-making roles between Steering Committee, Hubs, Staff Leads & Staff Team.
- Act as a resource for emergent issues related to governance, working towards developing organization-wide conflict resolution systems.
- Contribute to opportunities to share what SHIFT is learning about shared power and alternative governance structures.
All SHIFT Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- The ability to “think from the centre”: the willingness to use their position to contribute to SHIFT’s mission, as opposed to furthering their own interests
- An understanding of social transformation that is grounded in the harm caused by systems of injustice, inequity and unsustainability
All Governance Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- Believe in the potential for participatory decision-making structures to contribute to systemic social change
- Value the process of experimentation and documentation as an important contribution that SHIFT can make to collective learning about social transformation
Each Governance Hub member contributes experience, expertise and/or enthusiasm relevant to SHIFT’s governance related to at least one of the following:
- Participatory and alternative governance structures
- Collaborative decision making strategies
- Participatory approaches to restorative conflict mediation
The Governance Hub is currently not accepting new members.
- Time commitment: approximately 30 hours/year (meetings, reading between meetings and annual half-day retreat).
- Meetings are held monthly, scheduled based on members’ availability (currently held during business hours)
- Term length: 18 months, different start dates depending on hub mandate
- Compensation: $1,500 annual honorarium issued to all members (with the exception of Concordia full time staff and faculty members)
Space Hub
SHIFT’s Space Hub engages in strategic visioning and decision making to ensure that SHIFT’s new collaboration space on campus becomes a valuable resource for the SHIFT community and wider social transformation ecosystem.
In alignment with SHIFT’s organizational priorities and resource constraints, the Space Hub is tasked with ensuring that SHIFT’s new collaborative space supports the realization of the following goals:
- Ensure that the SHIFT space is a resource that is co-owned with the SHIFT community to support their socially transformative work
- Develop processes and norms for space users to share responsibility for maintaining a welcoming and productive environment.
- Leverage overarching programming and hosted events to provide an entry-point into SHIFT’s ecosystem for potential collaborators and an opportunity to deepen engagement with SHIFT.
Over the course of their term, this Space Hub will focus on the following dossiers:
- Contribute actively to SHIFT’s ongoing learning about hosting a co-owned collaboration space, through experimentation, eliciting and integrating community and visitor feedback.
- Review preliminary space norms and procedures and suggest recommendations based on best practices and feedback in relation to the community’s experience of the safety and accessibility of the space
- Ensure that SHIFT’s policies around supporting external event requests are aligned with SHIFT’s mission and values
- Review and propose relevant updates to the support offered to different events
- Monitor the use of the Space and effectiveness of our existing programming to advise on the 2023-24 events’ programming.
All SHIFT Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- The ability to “think from the centre”: the willingness to use their position to contribute to SHIFT’s mission, as opposed to furthering their own interests
- An understanding of social transformation that is grounded in the harm caused by systems of injustice, inequity and unsustainability
All Space Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- An understanding of the role of SHIFT collaborative space as (1) a way to support the socially transformative work of our community, and as (2) an entry-point into SHIFT’s ecosystem for potential collaborators.
- Excitement for learning about and developing best practices regarding shared ownership, accessibility and safe spaces.
- Time commitment: approximately 30 hours/year (meetings, reading between meetings and annual half-day retreat).
- Meetings are held monthly, scheduled based on members’ availability (currently held during business hours)
- Term length: 18 months, different start dates depending on hub mandate
- Compensation: $1,500 annual honorarium issued to all members (with the exception of Concordia full time staff and faculty members)
Ecosystem Activation Hub
SHIFT’s Ecosystem Activation Hub identifies and supports opportunities for mutually beneficial collaborations between the project teams at the heart of SHIFT’s Learning Community and the broader ecosystem of relevant actors within and without Concordia University. Members of the hub contribute their expertise and networks to open possibilities for partnerships and make decisions together about the scale and nature of SHIFT’s investment in them.
In alignment with SHIFT’s organizational priorities and resource constraints, the Ecosystem Activation Hub is tasked with advancing SHIFT’s efforts to support mutually beneficial collaborations between the projects selected through our funding programs and the broader ecosystem of relevant actors within and without Concordia University, in order to advance the following objectives:
- Offer rich, social transformation-oriented experiential learning opportunities to Concordia students.
- Increase the impact of SHIFT-funded project teams through connections with the SHIFT ecosystem.
- Elevate the value of alternative forms of community-based knowledge across the university’s core teaching, learning, and research activity.
Over the course of their term, the Ecosystem Activation Hub will focus on the following dossiers:
- Familiarizing themselves with promising projects within the SHIFT Learning Community who are eager to expand their socially transformative impact through partnerships with the university or external stakeholders.
- Leveraging their own networks or exploring collaborations with other values-aligned units at Concordia (e.g. Office of Research, Office of Community Engagement, Experiential Learning Office, etc.) to identify potential mutually beneficial collaborations.
- Facilitating introductions and accompanying potential connections.
- Evaluating the value of exploratory collaborations and engaging in shared decision-making about SHIFT’s investment in them.
All SHIFT Hub members bring the following qualities to their participation in their hub:
- The ability to “think from the centre”: the willingness to use their position to contribute to SHIFT’s mission, as opposed to furthering their own interests
- An understanding of social transformation that is grounded in the harm caused by systems of injustice, inequity and unsustainability
All members of the Ecosystem Activation hub bring the following qualities and interests to their participation in their hub:
- Excitement for learning about and developing best practices around socially transformative multi-stakeholder collaborations that center equity, justice, and sustainability.
- A natural inclination toward identifying and activating opportunities for generative collaboration between diverse actors.
- Willingness to make introductions and provide accompaniment to emerging initiatives as relevant opportunities arise.
The Ecosystem Activation Hub is currently not accepting new members.
Members will commit approximately 1 to 2 hours per month over the course of a 12-month term (January 2023 to January 2024).
- A total of 6 meetings over the course of the year (2 hours each), to be scheduled based on members’ availability
- Preparation in between meetings and accompaniment of prospective collaborations (reading documents, facilitating introductions, etc.)
An annual honorarium of $1000 will be provided to all members (with the exception of Concordia full-time staff and faculty) to facilitate their participation.
Selection juries
SHIFT’s selection juries play an essential role in bridging SHIFT’s participatory governance efforts with the distribution of financial resources. Through their work and the diversity of perspectives they bring to the table, jury members ensure community ownership of SHIFT’s funding decisions.
An independent selection jury composed of three to five members is assembled for each of our funding programs. Jury members are provided with training and assessment tools to review all eligible applications through their funding stream. Using a structured and facilitated consent-based decision-making process, jury members are invited to discuss and deliberate on which projects are most closely aligned with SHIFT’s selection criteria. Together they decide which projects will enter the community and receive funding and support from SHIFT.
- Will work collaboratively and reach consensus
- Aligns with SHIFT’s values and ways of working
- Resonates with SHIFT's definition of social transformation
Our objective is for each jury to unite a diversity of perspectives from across the communities and ecosystems that SHIFT works in, and includes people with the knowledge and expertise to accurately assess all of the selection criteria for the funding stream they are evaluating.
Prospective jury members are encouraged to identify in their applications which of the following competencies and experiences they could contribute to the deliberation process.
- Experience with socially transformative work that engages with root causes of injustice, inequity and unsustainability, and efforts to bring about change at the level of whole systems, who will be well placed to assess the selection criteria on “potential for social transformation”
- Experience with movement building, identifying and acting on community-led priorities and community-led work, who will be well placed to assess the selection criteria on “community groundedness” and “real-world impact”
- Lived experience based on belonging to a community impacted by systemic injustice, inequity and unsustainability, who will be well placed to assess the selection criteria on “community groundedness” and “real-world impact”
- Experience building strong mutually beneficial partnerships across difference (disciplines, worldviews, approaches to social transformation), who will be well placed to assess the selection criteria related to “multi-stakeholder engagement”
- Familiarity with project management, financial management and operations in the domain of social transformation, who will be well placed to assess the selection criteria related to “feasibility”
- Familiarity with socially transformative projects related to decolonization and Indigenization, grounded in relationship to Indigenous peoples and communities
- Familiarity with approaches to social transformation grounded informed by social economy, social entrepreneurship or social innovation frameworks
- Familiarity with SHIFT and the SHIFT definition of social transformation, who will be well placed to assess the fit with the SHIFT community and alignment with the in-kind support that we offer
- Strong connections with Concordia, who will be well placed to assess depth of connection to the university’s operations and teaching and learning priorities
- Previous experience with reviewing social transformation projects through application forms and jury systems (please note: first-time jury members are also strongly encouraged to apply)
- Time commitment: 10–20 hours/selection process (jury training, reading of applications, interviewing applicants, deliberation meetings)
- Time commitment concentrated over six-week period (six to seven selection processes run annually)
- Meetings scheduled based on members’ availability
- Compensation: $500 to $1,000 honorarium issued to all jury members, depending on anticipated time commitments (with the exception of Concordia full time staff and faculty members)
