BARRHEAD - There seems to be a lot of confusion or misunderstanding in the community about what Barrhead and District Family Community Support Services (FCSS) does and how they are funded.
At least, according to executive director Karen Gariepy.
"When I ask people if they know about FCSS, I usually get the same answer — the food bank," she said.
While the food bank is an essential program in the community and one to which FCSS devotes much of its resources, Gariepy said, the organization does much more.
However, she believes this confusion about precisely what FCSS does and, just as importantly, how they are funded is causing an issue that could potentially impact their fundraising ability.
Recently, Gariepy said she received an e-mail from an individual who stated they were considering no longer donating to the organization as they believed that FCSS was not being transparent and that people who were donating monies to go towards a particular program were not being used for the purpose they intended.
"That is not the case. If anything, given the rules that govern how we operate, we are more transparent than ever," she said.
Part of the reason for the confusion, Gariepy believes, is that the Barrhead FCSS is one of a handful of FCSSes in Alberta that run independently as not-for-profit societies. In Barrhead's case, they are also a registered charity, becoming incorporated in 1997.
The majority of FCSS operate under the umbrella of municipal governments.
She explained the Barrhead FCSS has three streams of funding.
The traditional 80/20 funding model has base grants from the provincial and municipal governments (with the province providing the larger share), Family Resource Network (FRN), and community funding, i.e., public donations and its own fundraising efforts.
The FRN funding is self-explanatory. The funds FCSS receives from the province go strictly to providing FRN services.
FRN replaced the former Parent Link, which provided programming to parents of young children, expanding its scope to include children from infants to 17 years old. Community funding is used for programming outside the first two categories.
The Barrhead FRN and the Family Connections Centre provide spoke service from the Westlock hub.
In simple terms, FCSS 80/20 funding, which Gariepy notes is more like 60/40 as the Barrhead municipalities contribute more than required, can only be used for programming of a preventative nature.
"They cannot be used for intervention, so the monies cannot be used for things like the food bank," she said.
Barrhead FCSS also has a contract with Woodlands County, which is currently being renegotiated to provide services for their residents in the Fort Assiniboine/Goose Lake area, which funds would fall into this category.
"We have a large program manual that explains what we can and cannot do [with FCSS 80/20 funding] and a chart of outcomes and indicators that we must abide by and ensure our programs meet," she said.
However, Gariepy said it is complicated, and it is not always cut and dry, adding that sometimes the areas can overlap, using the example of family and youth programming provided under the FRN funding stream.
"We can supplement it [with FCSS 80/20 funds] because [some of the programming] meets [the preventative mandate]," she said. "There are also some community programs where we can use [FCSS 80/20 funds] to oversee or administer it, but not any of the associated operational costs and buy any items and materials from community funding. [FCSS 80/20 dollars] cannot be used to specifically enhance people's lives."
A good example to demonstrate this, Gariepy said, is the Santa's Toy Box program, where the FCSS community volunteer coordinator can organize the volunteers but cannot buy any physical items for families.
School lunch or food program confusion
Gariepy said there also seems to be some misunderstanding in the community that FCSS is no longer providing school lunches as they are no longer running the Barrhead Elementary School (BES) hot lunch program.
While the latter is true, FCSS is still providing school lunches to children in need; they have just changed the mechanism of how they do it and, as such, expanding their efforts to include more schools.
One of the reasons Gariepy explained why FCSS chose to opt out of the BES hot lunch programming is that they had other mechanisms to provide the service, which freed up funds to help provide food to students in need at other schools.
She added that the FCSS mandate through its school food programming is not necessarily to provide lunches but food, which they are doing in several different ways.
However, she said the FCSS is still helping BES students in need access the program by subsidizing their enrolment.
Community programming
As with all FCSS programming, Gariepy said FCSS makes great efforts to ensure the books for all its programs are meticulously maintained, keeping separate bank accounts for each program.
The more well-known community programs include the food bank, Community Angels For Recreational Enrichment (CARE), Santa's Toy Box, and the community volunteer tax program.
"We have been more angled than ever at transparency. Up front, we have two reporting systems, one for [FCSS 80/20] and one for the community program. When someone makes a donation to a specific community program, it is receipted as such, and the money goes to that program's bank account," she said. "And as a registered society and charity, our books are open."
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
