Our Story
CCNDR wasn’t launched by an institution. It was built by people who kept showing up.
Six years ago there was no national centre for nonprofit digital resilience in Canada. There was a gap, a handful of organizations who could see it, and no money to do anything about it.
2020–2021
Before there was a Centre
Digital change was outpacing the sector’s ability to keep up. Funders saw it in their portfolios. Infrastructure organizations saw it in the questions coming from members. Nobody owned it.
Two efforts started at once. The Technovate consortium came together, led by Ontario Trillium Foundation with IBM Canada, RBC, Canadian Tire Jumpstart, CIRA, Community Foundations of Canada, and Medavie Foundation. Separately, the CIO Strategy Council (now the Digital Governance Council) and Tamarack Institute began volunteer conversations about whether Canada needed a national centre at all.
By the end of 2021, the founding organizations had put a six-figure in-kind investment into a centre that did not yet exist.
What followed took a year
- Conversations with 150+ organizations
- Analysis of six global models
- 12 focus groups with 31 sector leaders
- Open design sessions
- Two public prototypes
- A CEO roundtable
All of it unpaid.
2022
Built together
In early 2022, CCNDR was established as a collective with seven co-founding organizations.
Centraide du Grand Montréal
Digital Governance Council
(formerly CIO Strategy Council)
Imagine Canada
Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund
NTEN
SETSI
Tamarack Institute
The Digital Governance Council provided incubation, HR, and financial support so the work had somewhere to live.
CCNDR launched publicly in March 2022, the first deliberate collective action to build digital capacity across Canada’s nonprofit sector.
At public launch, March 2022
184
advisors
489
mailing list sign-ups
7
working groups
16
prototypes
281
meetings
$130K
in-kind
0
staff
2023
The first hires
In February 2023, CCNDR hired its first two people. Katie Gibson as founding Executive Director and Jason Shim as the Chief Digital Officer.
Katie’s job was to take something held together by volunteers, working groups, and goodwill and give it an operating shape. Build the structure while the work is already moving.
That summer, following a change in direction, the five co-founding organizations still actively stewarding the work resumed day-to-day responsibility for CCNDR. Imagine Canada, Tamarack Institute, Digital Governance Council, NTEN, and SETSI met weekly while identifying a governance path forward.
The same month
CCNDR published Building the Cybersecurity and Resilience of Canada’s Nonprofit Sector, the first report of its kind in Canada. It led directly to the Cybersecurity On-Ramp pilot for the settlement sector.
By March, a formal funding partnership was in place with Mastercard Canada, Okta, Ontario Trillium Foundation, RBC, Sonor Foundation, and WES Mariam Assefa Fund.
2024
A new home
On April 1, 2024, CCNDR moved to Imagine Canada stewardship. Funding agreements transferred. Every key funder confirmed continued support.
Stewardship gave CCNDR national infrastructure, a charitable host, and a governance line to a board. It also meant translating a founding model into a structure that could hold it.
A month later, the inaugural Advisory Council was constituted and in October of 2024 Wilfreda Edward joined as CCNDR’s second Executive Director.
Wilfreda Edward
CCNDR’s Executive Director
Selected from 312 applications by a panel representing all five stewarding co-founders and Imagine Canada.
2024–2026
The inaugural Advisory Council
The posting drew more than 60 applications. Thirteen members were selected across co-founder, funder, sector, and board liaison seats, co-chaired by Ambreen Ahmad and Clement Esene.
They arrived without a playbook. New Executive Director. New host organization. A governance model still being tested.
Over two years they reviewed the draft 2026–2029 plan and returned feedback that reshaped it. They sat for individual conversations about where the governance model was holding and where it was not. Then they reviewed their own functioning against the new strategy and said plainly that the structure built for CCNDR’s founding years was not the structure the strategy needed.
Most councils never get to that last part. This one redesigned itself out of the seats it held.
With thanks to the inaugural Advisory Council
2024–2026
Ambreen Ahmad
Executive Director
Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy
Co-chair
Stephen Baldwin
Director, Digital Product
Imagine Canada
Continuing
Victor Beausoleil
Executive Director
SETSI
Continuing
Charles Buchanan
CEO
Technology Helps
Continuing
Victor Cordon
Director, Social Impact
Okta
Clement Esene
Executive Director
BIPOC Foundation
Co-chair
Continuing
Liz Forsberg
Executive-in-Residence
Capacity Canada
Continuing
Keith Jansa
CEO
Digital Governance Council
Continuing
Danya Pastuszek
Co-CEO
Tamarack Institute
Amy Sample Ward
CEO
NTEN
Alisa Simon
EVP, E-Mental Health Transformation and Chief Youth Officer
Kids Help Phone
Continuing
Mahalia Verna
Board of Directors
Imagine Canada
Board Liaison
With particular thanks to Ambreen Ahmad, Victor Cordon, Danya Pastuszek, Amy Sample Ward, and Mahalia Verna, whose service concluded with the inaugural Council. Beyond your time, you gave CCNDR your wisdom and care. The vision you leave behind is stronger for having passed through your hands.
“Some of this Council had carried CCNDR since its earliest conversations. Others came to it as freshly as I did. Together they brought their candour, their conviction, and their trust to our collective work. As we’ve found our way over the last two years, the love they each have for CCNDR and the sector we serve has been clear. Everything we build next grows from ground they chose to tend. I am so grateful.”
Wilfreda Edward
Executive Director
2026
Putting the plan to work
The plan was not the starting line. By the time it launched, parts of it were already in motion.
Through 2025, while the plan was still being written, CCNDR was already building the program areas it would need. The sector had been clear that AI was arriving faster than most organizations could respond to it. So in October 2025, the Nonprofit AI Impact Hub launched with support from Microsoft Elevate, Canada’s first, with more than 600 bilingual resources.
By April 2026, when From Foundations to Impact 2026–2029 launched alongside a full rebrand and a redesigned bilingual website, we knew where CCNDR’s focus belonged. The plan runs on the 4As framework and three focus areas: Data Management and Literacy, Cybersecurity Readiness, and Emerging Technology.
Then we built out from there. The Nonprofit AI Skilling CoLab started in February 2026 as the Centre’s first national CoLab. Cybersecurity work is following close behind with support from CIRA, because the sector told us plainly that the urgency was real.
The plan runs on
The 4As framework
Assess · Access · Act · Amplify
Three focus areas
- Data Management and Literacy
- Cybersecurity Readiness
- Emerging Technology
Listening, then building what we heard. That has been the pattern since 2020, long before there was a plan to write it down in.
2027 onward
The Network Activation Council
The strategy asks CCNDR to reach tens of thousands of nonprofits and grassroots organizations across Canada, with the most attention going to the smallest, the most rural, and those facing the greatest barriers to inclusion.
No national office reaches that many people from a national office.
That is why, in 2027, the Advisory Council becomes the Network Activation Council.
What changed
An advisory council advises. It meets, it weighs in, and the work carries on between meetings without it.
What the strategy needs is different. It needs people already rooted in communities CCNDR cannot reach on its own, who carry the work outward and bring back what they hear.
So the role changed to match. Every member is now a Network Activator, and the name describes the job.
Three responsibilities
Activate the strategy through network reach.
Each member is a node in a community CCNDR cannot reach directly. The strategy travels further and comes back with better intelligence.
Enrich the Executive Director’s decision-making.
Members bring grounded sector knowledge into the room before decisions get made, including from the corners of the sector that are hardest to reach.
Tend the founding spirit.
CCNDR was built as a network of networks advancing digital resilience for nonprofits and grassroots organizations, particularly those facing the greatest barriers to inclusion. The Council names it when CCNDR drifts.
The story is still being written
CCNDR has always worked the same way. We listen to what the sector needs, build it together with the sector, and make sure the sector doesn’t get left behind. That is how a volunteer conversation became a national centre. It is how the next part gets built too.
There is a lot still to do, and it was never meant to be done alone.