The Community and Agency Development Program advances the work of SACE, both internally and externally, and aims to present a strong, unified voice to the community on topics related to sexual violence.
The 2022-2023 year brought rapid growth and change to the Community and Agency Development (CAD) Program. This year introduced three new staff, including a Fund Development and Donor Relations Coordinator, Client Care and Community Support staff, and a Programming and Evaluations Analyst. The new members helped round out our team and created more opportunities to collaborate, learn from one another, and make a greater impact with our work.
As we reflect on the achievements and challenges of the past year, we remain committed to our individual roles and the work we do collectively as a program. Our priorities going into the next year are to expand our program reach, foster collaboration, and embrace innovation.
New and Updated SACE Resources
Public & Media Relations
Our strong reputation in the community was reflected in SACE appearing in the media numerous times this year. Much of the media attention focused on concerns about violence within hockey culture and overall funding concerns for sexual assault centres in the province.
Donate to SACE Radio Ad Campaign
The CAD team helped write, create, and coordinate speakers for a radio ad fundraising campaign that ran on 630 CHED, CISN Country, CJSR, and Spotify earlier this year.
The campaign helped bring awareness to the prevalence of sexual violence in our city and the increasing need for SACE services.
Your donations help SACE offer no-fee services and support to thousands of individuals affected by sexual violence in Edmonton every year.
Fund Development
The Community and Agency Development team successfully diversified our agency’s funding sources again this year, securing grants from various foundations and government agencies. A major initiative for which we will continue to fundraise in 2023-2024 has been the SACE capital campaign Moving to the Centre, raising funds for our essential move to Princeton Place on 124 Street. To learn more about this campaign, the move, and to donate, please visit sace.ca/centresace.
Other fund development activities included an online winter holiday 50/50 raffle, and working with a group of hockey enthusiasts who organized a hockey game fundraiser, 50/50 raffle, and silent auction which resulted in a significant donation to SACE!
In total, we coordinated with and supported 17 businesses, groups, and individuals who organized their own fundraisers in support of SACE. These fundraising efforts created a considerable amount of awareness of SACE, our services, and the issue of sexual violence within the community, which was encouraging to witness.
We continued to work on strengthening relationships with current and past donors with a donor relations strategy and publicly acknowledging donors on SACE social media.
We are grateful to have received one-time financial support from the following funders in our 2022-2023 year in addition to our core funders:
Program Development and Evaluations
The CAD team made great progress this year on a massive agency-wide project to inventory, streamline, and strengthen all the program measures that SACE collects across our various programs and as an agency. Once completed, this program theory and evaluations guide and its associated agency framework will give us a bird’s-eye-view of all program measures and outcomes and reflect alignment with our agency mission, mandate, and strategic goals, allowing us to conduct future evaluations and accommodate funder requests more easily. Already our agency has learned a great deal about what it means to conduct this work with an “evaluations mindset” and to map our evaluations onto our intended outcomes, and some of the deliverables produced to date have already benefitted our programs as well as funder reporting.