To provide equal opportunity and access to capacity-building training for every small-shop non-profit, environmental leader across Canada.

Let's be honest: Canada's environment can use all the help it can get.   

With challenges like climate change, nature loss, and species decline dominating the headlines, the work of environmental nonprofit organizations has never been more important.   

Across the country, people are organizing to protect forests, push for more robust environmental policies, connect new Canadians to the outdoors, plant community gardens, build more sustainable cities, raise funds for renewable energy projects, and protect habitats for at-risk species.   

This is not a challenge for the faint-hearted. Nonprofit leaders, staff and volunteers must constantly balance the urgency and scale of their issues with limited resources and training. CanadaHelps (2022) states that the environment still makes up a tiny portion (5.1%) of all charitable donations. Meanwhile, most charities doing the work are small shops, often entirely run by volunteers.   

Our goal is to make the Canadian environmental community equal to its vital task. By providing capacity-building training and support to small environmental nonprofits, we aim to bolster Canada's environmental sector. We offer a range of training programs aimed at nonprofit leaders at every stage of their journey - from founders to executive directors to volunteers, board members, fundraisers and other staff. 

In 2021, Capacity Building Institute was spun out of the work of Sustainable Eastern Ontario, which fosters partnerships and collaborations on sustainability activities throughout Eastern Ontario. 

Find out more about our program offerings below. Sign up for our newsletter, check out our series of online events and get in touch about your training needs.

We look forward to working with you to make Canada's environmental sector more robust, resilient and effective.