Canadian Anglicans cut relief staff

The Anglican Church of Canada was forced to make significant staff cuts to the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) following a shortfall in fundraising during the past year. The Executive Director of the PWRDF, Cheryl Curtis has resigned as of the end of February.

"Curtis’ departure was announced a day after a major staff restructuring was unveiled at the PWRDF, spurred, PWRDF’s executive committee said, by a 26 per cent cut in its budget for 2010-2011.

Seven positions have been eliminated and three new ones have been created ‘to meet the organizational needs of PWRDF programs,’ Curtis said in a letter sent by email to staff at the church’s national office in Toronto. She cited ‘reduced donations to PWRDF’ resulting from the global economic crisis as a reason for the budget cut. "

Read the full account here in the Anglican Journal.

The staff cuts also include redefining a number of remaining jobs and reduction in hours for some existing staff. The staff officer for the Latin-American-Caribbean Refugee Program is among those who have lost their jobs.

Posted by Nicholas Knisely on January 30, 2010 8:22 AM | |
Comments (2)

So they will have no staff officer to be present in Haiti at this moment in time? Aïe.

Posted by Lee Alison [TypeKey Profile Page] | January 30, 2010 7:51 PM

PWRDF, being considerable smaller than ERD, does not typically send staff persons to disaster sites. They are represented on the ground in Haiti by ACT (Action by Churches Together) and are also giving money to the Diocese of Haiti.

The benefit to this approach is that their overhead (administration and staff) is less than 7%; many of the other Canadian organizations soliciting money for work in Haiti have overhead of 15 to 20%.

The impact of the staff cuts will be (1) targeted fundraising for major gifts and (2) staff liaisons on long-term relationships and projects, such as AIDS work in Africa.

Posted by Jim Pratt [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 1, 2010 1:02 PM

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