Black-led, Black-focused, and Black-serving organizations (B3s), as part of Canada’s nonprofit and charitable sector, play a critical role in advancing solutions, recognition, justice, and well-being for Black communities. Despite this essential role, the sector faces persistent and deeply ingrained systemic barriers. Chronic underfunding, fragile infrastructure, and systemic inequities continue to limit the full expression of their capacity for leadership and innovation.

NABC is proud to announce the launch of the Black Canadian Learning and Transformation Institute (BCLTI). This new initiative is a national hub designed to help strengthen the organizational and adaptive capacity of B3’s and nonprofits while advancing long-term systems transformation. BCLTI represents a new pillar of NABC’s work, rooted in the belief that lasting impact requires addressing the root causes of systemic inequities through deeper systems transformation.

Meeting urgent needs while transforming systems
Through ongoing collaboration with community partners, allies, and funders, NABC recognizes that programs and services are critical to meeting the immediate and often urgent needs of Black communities. Meeting urgent needs alone, however, is not enough. True and meaningful progress in improving conditions for Black communities requires grappling with the deeper causes of inequity, including funding systems, research and evaluation, policies and governance, and the nature of relationships that shape them.

BCLTI was created to hold this dual focus. It provides organizations with the knowledge, skills, practices, tools, and resources they need today while also serving as a vehicle for reimagining and reshaping the systems in which they operate. By strengthening the organizational and adaptive capacity of B3 nonprofits, we create the conditions for them to be responsive, resilient, innovative, and transformative.

BCLTI is envisioned as a dedicated space for learning, problem-solving, and innovation. Its role is to seed new ideas, grow effective practices, and sustain them over time. The work under the BCLTI is grounded in many Afrocentric philosophies and principles, such as Nguzo Saba, Harambee, etc., which emphasize collective responsibility and mutual care as the foundation for our shared humanity. This grounding reminds us that the solutions BCLTI supports are not imported or imposed but emerge from our collective wisdom, experiences, knowledge systems, and leadership.

BCLTI also looks outward in ways that strengthen connections between Black community organizations and the broader systems that shape their efforts. By bringing various stakeholders, including funders, evaluation practitioners, researchers, public policy leaders together, BCLTI helps foster more transparent, informed, and collaborative relationships and a shared responsibility to bring about better outcomes for Black communities. Recent partnership with the Region of Peel has created opportunities to strengthen the evaluation capacity of B3s and nonprofits. These efforts not only support organizations in telling the impact story of their funding relationships but also help explore how funding and evaluation practices can be improved to produce better outcomes for Black communities.

This commitment to shared learning is grounded in BCLTI’s core values. The institute creates space to test and pilot new ideas, examining their feasibility, impact, and potential for broader application. It advances knowledge through research and reflection, ensuring that learning informs practice and strengthens decision-making across organizations. BCLTI also nurtures emerging initiatives and ideas, ensuring they have the support needed to take root and grow. By embedding testing, learning, and incubation into its work, the institute helps cultivate approaches that are responsive to community realities and capable of driving long-term transformation.

First learning engagements
BCLTI will deliver its mission through a series of learning engagements. Two inaugural engagements are now open:

• Strengthening Grant Writing, Program Design, and Evaluation Capacity — This offering builds foundational knowledge, skills, and practice in grant writing, program design, and program evaluation. It combines interactive, experiential, and reflective learning with real-time technical assistance and coaching to help participants prepare and submit strong funding applications, design, and implement programs, and evaluate and report on their impact to various stakeholders.
• Examining Funding and Evaluation Relationships — This engagement brings stakeholders together to examine and strengthen funding and evaluation relationships. It creates a brave space to explore, validate, and challenge emerging lessons and perspectives, and facilitates dialogue that deepens collective understanding. The sessions also provide room to test action steps that can contribute to more transformative and equitable funding and evaluation relationships.

Future programming will expand into spotlighting community initiatives across Canada, the Diaspora, and the African continent.

A call to collective action
The launch of BCLTI is both a milestone and an invitation. It is a milestone because it signals a renewed commitment to strengthen and sustain the Black community sector in Canada. It is an invitation because the institute’s success depends on collaboration with B3s and nonprofits, with funders, with evaluation practitioners and researchers, and with allies who are committed to systems transformation.

Together, we can help ensure that B3s, nonprofits, and the broader ecosystem are equipped not only to meet today’s challenges but to shape and contribute to the conditions for a better tomorrow.

BCLTI is more than a learning institute. It is a commitment to transformation that honours the interests of Black communities and helps to lay the foundation for a more equitable and just future in Canada.

Learn more about BCLTI, connect with us about partnership opportunities, and take part in our upcoming learning engagements: https://networkabc.ca/learning-institute/