Your starting point for social change™

The basics | Explaining our name | Our community promise | Our community partners

ABOUT MENDICANT

The basics

Mendicant’s value to its clients is built upon three (3) main pillars:

We understand the reality of the nonprofit sector: Mendicant’s senior consultants are all veterans of the nonprofit sector. When clients engage Mendicant, they are partnering with professionals who don’t require a lengthy learning curve to understand their challenges. Whether it is the delicacies of dealing with boards and volunteers or the resource and time shortages that plague most organizations, clients find we can quickly hit the ground running, saving valuable time and money.

We deliver maximum impact for modest fees: Mendicant knows that nonprofit organizations are called upon every day to deliver maximum impact with minimal resources, Our organization is no different - we keep our operations lean and focused, minimizing overhead and enabling us to provide top-quality work at a reasonable price.

We connect clients to others who can help: At Mendicant, we know that if our clients succeed, Canada succeeds. If our clients have needs that we can’t fix, we will connect them to someone who can – free of charge. Our extensive network is a resource we are happy to share with our current and future clients.

<Top>

Explaining our name

“Mendicant” is a word from the Middle Ages that refers to groups that were dedicated to community well-being. Religious orders, for example, were called “mendicant groups” because their members were not concerned with their own wealth but with the health of the community. And as members of these groups often took a vow of poverty, the word expanded in meaning to include “beggar” in its definition.

At Mendicant, we don’t beg. Nor do our clients. But we do join them in their work to create a more compassionate and caring world.

Our community promise

We are members of the Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy and adhere to the Imagine Canada Caring Company standard of donating at least 1% of our gross revenue back to the community (in regular years, it varies between 3% and 5%). Our supply chain includes Bullfrog Power, A-Way Courier and EthicalHost.ca and we are adding more community-minded suppliers each day. We are proud supporters of the Toronto City Summit Alliance DiverseCity Greater Toronto Leadership Project. As part of our commitment to sustainability, we are working towards making our operations carbon neutral through the judicious use of eco-friendly alternatives and the purchase of gold-standard carbon offsets.

<Top>

Our community partnerships

We donate a percentage of our gross fees each year to a variety of Canadian charities and nonprofits, but with the basic rule that - for ethical reasons - we do not donate to organizations that are current or past clients of our firm.

We are also proud supporters of the Mukwashi Trust project in Zambia. Each year, instead of sending holiday gifts or purchasing cards for our clients, we make a donation to the school in support of its educational mission, exemplified by its motto of "prepare today for tomorrow."