Despite widespread commitments to equity and intersectionality, many Canadian non-profits face barriers to translating these frameworks into everyday practice, according to new research from York University.
The study led by Ashlee Christoffersen, a postdoctoral researcher hosted by the Department of Politics in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, aims to fill gaps in understanding how equity-seeking non-profit organizations in Canada apply inclusive frameworks.
“Many Canadian non-profits have made commitments to furthering racial and Indigenous justice and intersectionality in recent years, but how this translates to practice has, until now, been largely unexplored,” says Christoffersen.
Advancing Equity in the Nonprofit Sector, Funding and Policymaking focuses on organizations and practitioners working with communities that face overlapping forms of marginalization – including racial justice, Indigenous women and gender-diverse advocacy, disability justice, migrant and refugee rights and 2SLGBTQIA+ equality. It examines how these groups, across sectors, apply frameworks such as intersectionality, Indigenization, antiracism, decolonization and harm reduction – both in daily operations and in external advocacy, coalition-building and relationships with funders and governments.
Christoffersen sought first-hand expertise from non-profit leaders to ensure the findings reflect real-world challenges, actionable knowledge and solutions. Between 2023 and 2025, she analyzed organizational publications and parliamentary or committee records, observed public events, held interviews with 15 practitioners from 12 organizations and hosted two collaborative workshops where participants – all recognized leaders in equity-focused work – reviewed preliminary findings and helped co-develop recommendations.
The research shows that while 2020 sparked renewed attention to equity in some organizations, many changes were short-lived or largely performative. Lack of diversity remained widespread, particularly in leadership and decision-making roles. The findings also reveal that internal practices often lag behind in advocacy efforts and equity work frequently falls disproportionately on staff from marginalized communities.
Short-term or inflexible funding cycles, siloed streams and limited support for capacity-building make it difficult for organizations – especially smaller or intersectional ones – to sustain meaningful equity initiatives.
Drawing directly from experiences of non-profit leaders, Christoffersen makes recommendations for making equity work more effective, including:
- encouraging non-profits to embed equity frameworks across all operations, sharing equity-related responsibilities fairly, investing in staff capacity and creating safe ways for staff to provide feedback;
- encouraging funders to provide longer, more flexible funding, recognize lived-experience expertise, embed equity into their own practices, simplify reporting and support cross-sector collaboration; and
- urging policymakers to create incentives for systemic change, including equitable hiring, transparent funding and integrating equity into broader social programs.
For Christoffersen, these recommendations are an important part of her work and a key reason she involved practitioners – to produce real-world outcomes. “I hoped to harness the expertise of equity-seeking non-profit practitioners to share their knowledge and recommendations with policymakers and the wider non-profit sector,” she says. “I hope that the recommendations that practitioners have made lead to concrete changes, especially in funding, that help to advance equity and intersectional practice more broadly.”