The not-for-profit organization Revitalisation St. Pierre is tasked with a dual mission of poverty reduction and facilitating the revitalization of the St. Pierre neighbourhood, a socioeconomically disadvantaged area within Montreal. Revitalisation is run by and for local residents. David Marshall, its executive director, is committed to keeping control of the agency in the hands of neighbourhood citizens.
How did they go about embedding community participation into their organizational structure? For starters, they took inspiration from practices that have emerged from the cooperative business model. Cooperatives are a unique form of business ownership characterized by three things:
their express purpose is to meet the needs of members (not maximize profits), each member gets a voice (usually in the form of voting rights), and profits are returned back to the members.
In the case of Revitalisation St. Pierre, all strategic and most tactical decisions are made by committee. These committees have 6 to 20 members, at least 50 percent of whom must be local citizens. One such committee was formed to identify the agency’s priorities when they were first established in 2003. This resulted in the identification of four priorities: the revitalization of the main street, increased access to outdoor sports facilities, the creation of a community festival, and the creation of a general store that would stock low-cost fruits and vegetables. Each of these projects has since been realized and expanded upon, in part because community involvement has helped ensure the ongoing engagement and commitment of local volunteers. Their organizational structure therefore encourages strong focus on individual projects (each one gets its own committee) and helps to avoid the “volunteer fatigue” common within other service agencies.
David Marshall says that the small size of the organization helps keep formalization to a minimum, allowing for a responsive organic structure that evolves comparatively easily as the agency expands and broadens its mandate. “Having fewer staff and letting the people who actually use our services decide where to focus our attention helps keep us relevant,” he explains. “It also fosters creativity and innovation.” For example, in 2003 knowledge about how to prepare the most affordable forms of fresh food was identified as an issue, resulting in the creation of a community kitchen and learning space. This added a whole new branch to their structure and resulted in some reshuffling of reporting relationships, but the change was readily accommodated and communication was relatively simple considering the magnitude of the change.
The organization’s success has been based in part on their organic consensus-driven model and their ability to respond with rapid structural changes as needed. Now Revitalisation is continuing to expand. They have purchased a truck to allow them to open mobile food markets in other impoverished areas of the city, gotten involved in community gardens, and expanded their sport and recreational programs.
It remains to be seen whether their existing structure can handle the growth. What will happen when staff levels increase to the point where more specialization is needed? How will communication flow then? How can they maintain community input on priorities if there start being 40 project committees instead of five or six? How can Revitalisation St.
Pierre maintain their positive momentum?
Discussion Questions
1. What organizational structure–related problems do you anticipate emerging as Revitalisation continues to expand and grow?
2. Should they change their organizational structure in response to growth? If so, how? What will the likely impact on their mandate and mission be?
3. Do for-profit companies experience similar “growing pains”? How might their issues differ from those of not-for-profit and charitable organizations? How might they be the same?