Many people in our communities, particularly those who are impacted by evacuations and wildfires, have been patiently waiting to hear about how these funds have been used or distributed to be supporting evacuation and wildfire relief efforts.
As an organization that is made up of people who are also impacted by evacuations and wildfires, we understand why people want to know where these donations have gone. We’re hopeful that this information will answer some of these questions.
About United Way NWT:
United Way NWT is a volunteer-run charity in the NWT that specializes in providing funding directly to charitable organizations in the NWT. The organization is a separate legal entity from United Way Canada, and is governed by an independent Board of Directors made up of people from the Northwest Territories.
The organization has one permanent part-time contractor, working an average of 10-15 hours per week to support the organization. During Emergencies, UWNWT engages one additional part-time contractor to support the Emergency Response. In rare circumstances, such as the most recent Yellowknife, Hay River & Fort Smith evacuations, UWNWT has engaged some additional support to help with finances, communications and other needs.
Donations collected from the public through the NWT Emergency Fund do not go towards paying for the costs of delivering the Emergency Response Program, including staff and contractor labour. These costs are covered through support from UWNWT’s corporate, and government partners.
How many donations has United Way NWT received?
Since May 2023, United Way NWT has received over $3.3 million in pledged donations from the public, private sectors, foundations, and governments. Around $625,000 of these pledged donations are from the public. We had previously estimated around $730,000 of these pledged donations from the public, but many of those donations were from small businesses who donated through our CanadaHelps portal.
We’ve redistributed just under 70% of these donations, and have just launched our Emergency Recovery Fund, inviting applications for funding from across the territory to distribute the remaining 30%.
How has United Way NWT distributed these donations?
Thanks to the generosity of donors, we’ve been able to award over 130 grants to First Nations governments, community organizations, municipalities and evacuation centres since May 2023.
During emergencies, we tend not to release the list of recipients to ensure that they are not inundated with requests that they cannot manage or respond to. Because the wildfire season has ended, we have now posted the list of organizations on our website who received funding.
As has been our practice since the emergency season, we are providing an overview of the types of projects we’ve funded here.
Funds Distributed since May 2023:
Since May 2023, we have distributed over $2.3 million in funding to community organizations, community governments, Alberta Reception Centres for NWT Evacuees, and Indigenous governments to help with costs associated with evacuations and wildfire relief.
These funds include all of the funding distributed to date.
- Fuel Gift Cards: Almost $165,000
- These funds refer to funds spent on fuel specific gift cards that were provided to the Reception Centres in Alberta who are hosting NWT Evacuees.
- This number had previously been reported as “Over $165,000”, however about $2,000 was returned to us as it was unspent.
- Grocery Gift Cards: Over $440,000
- These funds refer to funds spent on grocery specific gift cards that were provided to Reception Centres or community organizations who are supporting NWT evacuees.
- Various Gift Cards: Over $150,000
- These funds refer to funds spent on gift cards that were provided to the Reception Centres in Alberta who are hosting NWT Evacuees. These are under “various” because they include gift cards that may have been for clothing, personal hygiene items, laundry, groceries, gas, etc.
- This number had previously been reported as “$160,000”, however about $6,000 was returned to us as it was unspent.
- Pets & Animals: Over $125,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to both NWT-based and Alberta-based organizations helping with pet evacuations, pet supplies, food, or other needs associated with caring for animals during evacuations.
- Youth Support & Care: Over $80,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to organizations supporting youth evacuees, either as organizations that evacuated with youth and are responsible for taking care of youth evacuees, or as organizations that are providing opportunities for youth evacuees to socialize and try and find reprieve from the emergency.
- Food Needs: Over $320,000
- These funds refer to funds that were provided to help with feeding evacuees. These funds were accessed generally by Indigenous governments, or community organizations feeding NWT evacuees.
- Accommodation Support: Over $50,000
- These funds refer to funds that were provided, in exceptional circumstances, to help with the cost of local Indigenous community governments who housed evacuees in communities that didn’t have access to hotels or other accommodations. We generally do not make it a practice to fund accommodations, and this allocation was made in an exceptional circumstance.
- Human Service Organizations: Over $130,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to human service organizations, generally organizations that provide services to vulnerable populations such as people who are unhoused or homeless, people with disabilities, survivors of violence, seniors, or other vulnerable groups. Human service organizations have accessed funding to help with the costs of supporting evacuees with complex needs.
- Direct Aid: Almost $440,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to organizations, Indigenous governments, or Indigenous organizations who distributed direct financial assistance to their members, or to the public, impacted by evacuations, or evacuees in need.
- Transportation Needs: Over $65,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to initiatives that supported evacuees with ground transportation in the communities they’ve evacuated to.
- Families & Children: Over $140,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to Reception Centres, organizations, and charities that are providing direct aid or evacuee support to families, pregnant or post-partum individuals, babies, or small children. Examples include providing diaper hampers, providing direct financial assistance, or other needed baby supplies.
- Cultural & Mental Health: Over $85,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to organizations, Indigenous governments and Reception Centres to help address cultural and mental health needs of NWT Evacuees throughout the evacuations.
- Personal Hygiene & Laundry: Over $8,0000
- These funds refer to funds provided to organizations, Indigenous governments and Reception Centres to give evacuees personal hygiene supplies or products, and to help evacuees with cost of laundry services.
- Arts & Culture: Over $2,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to organizations doing work related to arts and culture that had costs associated with evacuation and wildfires.
- Emergency Infrastructure & Planning: Over $90,000
- These funds refer to funds provided to organizations, Indigenous governments, and municipalities to put towards the purchase of infrastructure to mitigate impacts of future emergencies, or to put towards planning for future emergencies.
Why are some totals lower than what we’ve seen in other reports?
When we award and distribute a grant to an organization, they often provide us with estimated budgets of how they anticipate using the funds. Sometimes, after they’ve undertaken the work they initially anticipated doing, they discover that the amounts they needed were less than expected. In this case, they return these funds to us, and we re-allocate the money to other projects.
As an example, there was an organization who applied for funding to purchase gas gift cards for evacuees, but they ended up needing less than they anticipated.
When will the public see which organizations actually received funding?
You can see a full list of organizations that have received funding at the end of this report. You can also see this full list by visiting our website.
Why haven’t all the donations been distributed yet?
We know that members of our community may be curious about why 100% of the donations that we’ve received have not yet been distributed. Based on our experience with previous emergencies, such as the floods in the Southern NWT back in 2021, we know that communities will continue to have a need for financial support for a while. We also know that donations from the public and from the corporate sector may dwindle, meaning that we won’t as easily be able to replenish our Emergency Response Fund.
With that in mind, we encourage Indigenous governments, charities, non-profits, and municipalities to apply for funding through our Emergency Recovery Fund program. There is about $600,000 in that fund that we will be allocating to projects across the territory.
How to contact the United Way NWT’s Emergency Response Team:
If you have any questions, you can contact our Emergency Response Team using the contact information below. Emergency Response Coordinator:
Jacq Brasseur
Pronouns: they/them
(867) 675-2643
support@nwt.unitedway.ca
