Joined by a lineup of customers around the front of its Bayfield Street retail store recently, staff and volunteers of Habitat for Humanity Huronia celebrated the work the local not-for-profit organization does in the community.
The organization, which serves an area that includes Oro-Medonte, also celebrated receiving an Ontario Trillium Foundation grant to develop a fundraising plan in Barrie, which was received in 2023, and share how those funds were used.
“It’s been a process,” acknowledged Robert Cikoja, Habitat for Humanity Huronia chief executive officer. “We went through probably eight or nine proposals to see who we can get to lead us on the fundraising plan strategy side of it. We ended up with a local group that has the marketing aspect of it."
Putting in place this kind of a plan, he said, is important in ensuring the continued success of the charitable organization.
“Prior to the pandemic, we did not have any government funding. We were very self-sufficient (with) our social enterprise (being) the ReStore. What the pandemic showed us was that can go away in a second. If this was to disappear, we disappear,” Cikoja said, motioning toward the Bayfield Street ReStore.
Ontario Trillium Foundation volunteer and Barrie resident Samatha Loney grew up in low-income housing and said it’s been great to be able to support an organization that is continuing to help low-income families in the community.
The organization used to fundraise to build homes, but fundraising to build is limiting, Cikoja said.
“Even though it’s amazing how we can raise $2 million to build two homes, it’s also very limiting to just build two homes. This gives us the planning, monthly donations, access to foundation grants, (and) extra revenue that can actually stabilize and give us the ability to scale … which the rest of it didn’t,” he said. “What we are really doing is looking to stabilize things. The economy has had a real hard hit on us with regards to ReStore sales, which has again limited us. With this fundraising plan, we are starting to see the fruits of the labours come in and offsetting things now. I could say it was genius planning, but it just sort of fell into our laps … so (we) thank the lucky stars for that.”
The ability for the organization to do the good work is about collaborating with others and partnering with them to be able to “move forward faster” in fighting the affordable housing crisis, Cikoja said.
Seeing the lineup to get into the Bayfield Street store is proof the organization is on the right track, and has the support of the community, he said.
“My construction background always gives me the for-profit eyes on what happens. Joining Habitat, I was introduced to something completely different — people giving of their time, their effort, their knowledge, their skills, and organizations donating. It’s so heartwarming to be in a community like Barrie and south Simcoe, to see how much they value bringing up their own community, and this is an example of it. They could go shopping at any other thrift place,” he said.
The message about what the organization does, why it does it, and how it does it is still not entirely out there to the public, and is something it plans to focus on moving forward.
“People just know Habitat helps build homes … and this is part of what this grant is going to allow us to do … get the awareness out there to properly tell people about what we do,” Cikoja said.
