Fairer Funding Summit: Waterloo Region

The Fairer Funding Summit: Waterloo Region is a one-day, sector-led gathering created by and for nonprofit, grassroots, and community leaders.

This Summit is grounded in long-standing systems change work led by Black, Indigenous, queer, racialized, feminist, and disabled community leaders, alongside sector-wide advocacy from the Ontario Nonprofit Network. The name Fairer Funding is inspired by Imagine Canada’s campaign, which helped bring national attention to these issues and sparked this local conversation.

Across the nonprofit and charitable sector, all of us are navigating the same realities:

• Increasing demand for services
• Limited and inequitable access to funding
• Pressure to do more with less
• Economic uncertainty and rising costs

In many cases, the very funding systems we rely on encourage us to work separately, or even compete, despite shared goals.

This Summit is an invitation to do something different.

To come together - across roles, organizations, and subsectors - to:

• Name what isn’t working in our funding systems
• Share what is working
• Build collective solutions for a more sustainable future

Businesses strategize collectively. Our sector needs space to do the same.

This is not a traditional conference.

This is a space for trust-building, honest conversation, and collective problem-solving.

It’s an opportunity to:

• Build a shared voice across our sector
• Surface the solutions we already know exist
• Begin shifting how we approach funding — together

We know there will be different perspectives in the room.
We know power dynamics don’t disappear just because we name them.

But this is the work. And it’s what our sector needs.

Because the truth is: the status quo isn’t working.

And if we want something different, we have to start doing things differently - together.
A full agenda and speaker lineup will be shared by May 15, 2026, as this gathering continues to be shaped collaboratively.
We’re building this together, and we’re glad you’re part of it.

We are relying on our solidarity pricing model to cover the costs of food + refreshments, so if you can, please support us. However, we do not want cost to be a barrier.
Additionally, we are asking that funders do not attend this year. We plan to share what we learn with you!

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Dumbo Octopus Consulting