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The East Scarborough Storefront:A Backbone Model of Social Service Delivery and Community Engagement

PLA 1503: Sue Ruddick

Alex Tranmer, Jessica Schmidt, and Seth Wright

November 30, 2012

Tranmer, Schmidt & WrightThe East Scarborough Storefront:

A Backbone Model of Social Service Delivery and Community Engagement

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Introduction Toronto prides itself on its rich diversity of strong and vibrant neighbourhoods, but cur-

rent trends indicate a growing disparity between the quality of life Toronto boasts and the

harsh reality contained in its impoverished inner suburbs. In attempting to address this geo-

graphic disparity in the context of social service austerity, some social planners and service pro-

viders have turned to creative organizational solutions. One model that has proven particularly

successful and relevant, both to the community and within the broader socio-political context,

is the backbone model. Put simply, backbone organizations facilitate an infrastructure and ad-

ministration where partner agencies and organizations can provide specialized services to meet

community needs. As an organization that facilitates coordination and collaboration among

partner agencies, community members, and other partners, the backbone model has proven to

be exceptionally adept in facilitating appropriate and coordinated service provision, while also

maintaining financial sustainability and supporting resident-driven community development.

This paper examines the backbone model in the context of the East Scarborough Storefront –

an organization that has been recognized as a successful community-based service organization

in a neighbourhood that has faced low social cohesion, numerous and diverse needs, and poor

access to services. Adopting the backbone model allows the Storefront to cultivate financial

sustainability, facilitate a broad range of coordinated and integrated services, support com-

munity members to access the tools and partners they need to lead the development of their

community, and commit long-term support. By situating the Storefront in a political-economic

context, examining the unique model of the backbone in relation to other service organizational



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models, and outlining the role the organization plays in its neighbourhood, the specific advant-

ages of the backbone model as used by Storefront will become clear.

The Inner Suburbs in an Age of Austerity: The Development of Service Deserts

The Neoliberal turn, initiated principally by Thatcher and Reagan, led to a marked de-

cline in the Keynesian welfare state and the social entitlement programs that characterized it.

Canada’s social safety net and the image of the just and compassionate society suffered initially

at the hands of Mulroney, but were further eroded through successive Liberal and, more re-

cently, Conservative federal governments. Canada’s 1995 Liberal government of Chrétien, in

particular, administered “among the most striking and unilateral developments in Canadian so-

cial policy and fiscal federalism” (Prince, 2004, p. 203) through the combined action of a de-

crease in provincial transfers and the reorganization of funds into a single transfer as the

Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST). Concurrently, Ontario’s Conservative government led

by Harris instituted its own severe austerity measures including the creation of workfare, now

permitted under Chrétien’s sweeping reforms, and the devolution of many previously provin-

cially-administered social services to municipalities (Lightman, Mitchell, Um, & Herd, 2009).

These compounding assaults on programs intended to support marginalized and impoverished

communities have had a detrimental impact on such communities (Miller, 1998).

Toronto, similar to many North American major cities, has experienced a changing geo-

graphy of wealth distribution (MacDonnell, 2004). Low income communities that had occupied

the parts of the inner city for most of the twentieth century began experiencing gentrification



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as suburban housing stock suffered decay and downtowns were rebranded as the new ideal

place to live. This forced many low income communities to find affordable housing elsewhere,

and this, in turn, led to the development of the inner suburbs as concentrated sites of poverty

or the suburbanization of poverty (MacDonnell, 2004). This suburbanization of formerly inner

city poverty occurred concurrently with the arrival of new immigrants directly into the inner

suburbs (Cowen & Parlette, 2004).However, the original development of these suburbs for

middle-class, car owning families has proven ill-suited for the new populations occupying these

areas. When poor communities were located in the inner city, they were ably equipped to ac-

cess the centralized service providers. Today, however, the new geography of poverty has cre-

ated a phenomenon termed ‘service deserts’ where people in need of social services live in

neighbourhoods void of such programs and, therefore, experience significant challenges simply

to access key service providers.

Residents of service deserts have been more significantly impacted by the provincial

downloading of responsibilities to municipalities than other populations. However, when this is

coupled with the inability of municipalities to provide the same services previously provided by

the province with fewer dollars, the result has been for non-profit organizations (NPOs) to take

on a greater role in providing vital social services, ranging from mental health counselling to

youth employment programs (Schram, 1995). In the period since provincial devolution, NPOs

have had to deliver more services with less funding leading to a crisis of chronic underfunding

(Schram, 1995; Miller, 1998). To compound these impacts, centralized service delivery organiza-

tions, such as Toronto Employment and Social Services, often do not have the capacity to cope



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with the suburbanization of poverty and the need for localized service provision. Most non-

profits have been financially unable to absorb the demand for increased services, resulting in

many resorting to introducing user fees for services, significantly reducing their operations, or

closing down completely (Miller, 1998). The ability of a NPO to secure funding has a direct im-

pact on the services that it provides to the community. Even if an organization is able to remain

operating, the funding cuts affect the quality of social assistance they are able to provide. NPOs

thus become fragmented and financially precarious and are “less likely to offer the poor re-

sources that can effectively address the problems they confront” (Schram, 61, 1995). Com-

munity Capacity Draining: The Impact of Current Funding Practices on Non-Profit Community

Organizations, a study completed by the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto (2003)

discovered many groups found themselves with such chronic funding deficiencies in the areas

of employee benefits, front-line supervision and core organizational function that NPOs were

heavily subsidizing these operational needs at the expense of their other capacities (Eakin,

2004).

The Backbone ModelDue to the aforementioned transformations in Ontario’s social service landscape com-

bined with the suburbanization of poverty, NPOs have been compelled to explore opportunities

to adjust their organizational structures to more effectively reach as many users as possible

within the specific financial restraints that they operate. The backbone model, for example, has

been a recent innovation both as an organizational structure and as a locally-situated approach

to social service delivery by NPOs (Turner, Merchant, Kania, & Martin, 2012). In the past ten



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years, backbone organizations have been established and thrived in various contexts from busi-

ness consulting to health services and education. Turner et al. (2012) cite numerous collaborat-

ive processes that sought “to invent more effective methods for creating powerful and lasting

social change” as the impetus for the development of the backbone model. In their most funda-

mental essence, backbones can be understood as umbrella organizations that are firmly rooted

in the community they serve and can be applied to any complex challenge that involves numer-

ous issues and requires numerous specialists. Kania and Kramer (2011) highlight three roles

that backbone organizations are highly attuned to successfully carrying out: project manage-

ment, data management and facilitation. In the context of social service delivery, project man-

agement refers to the coordination of partner agencies that provide specialized services to the

community. Data management alludes to the front line staff’s work in amassing information

about service providers, opportunities, and programs that may be of use to the community.

Lastly, facilitation refers to the function of supporting the community in giving voice to address-

ing their challenges as well as to the very core role of bridging agencies and the community.

To understand the qualities and benefits provided by the backbone model, we will con-

sider three other commonly-employed models of service delivery and illustrate how the back-

bone model is ideally suited to addressing the community’s dynamic challenges in the contem-

porary locally-situated, but broadly relevant context. The most typical and common model of

social service delivery has been the centralized program provider such as the Centre for Addic-

tion and Mental Health or the Francophone Centre of Toronto. Such organizations may provide

a single service or a number of generally similar services and are typically located in the down-



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town core of a city. While this was quite practical when poverty and marginalized populations

were concentrated in or near the inner city, the suburbanization of poverty has made this

model inaccessible to many potential clients and the cost of multiple sites of delivery is usually

prohibitive for the agency (Toronto Social Policy Analysis and Research, 2006). Another model

which has proven to be more dynamic and responsive to the shifting geography of poverty is

the service hub model, which emphasizes that service delivery should be decentralized and

must be geographically accessible to its clients (Dear, Wolch, & Wilton, 1994). The hub model

accrues its benefits from a geographical agglomeration of social services through either formal

land use zoning or informal site selection (Dear et al., 1994), and while the hub model may

manifest in some forms similar to the backbone, the backbone model can always be distin-

guished by its implicit separation from the programming function. A third model is the neigh-

bourhood house model enacted most systematically in Vancouver, British Columbia where

there are nine throughout the city (Sandercock & Attilli, 2004). The neighbourhood house

model establishes integrated community centres where community-specific programs and ser-

vices are offered. The centralized service provider, the integrated community hub and the

neighbourhood house all provide unique benefits and challenges to understanding the terrain

of service delivery and these models provide key reference points to highlight the distinguishing

characteristics that make the backbone model uniquely ideal to facilitate the provision of locally

situated social services.



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Kingston-Galloway Orton Park NeighbourhoodIn this section, we will highlight the neighbourhood where the East Scarborough Store-

front is located and explore how the Storefront became established in the community, which

will underscore the conditions that make the backbone model so valuable. The Storefront is loc-

ated in the Scarborough neighbourhood of Kingston-Galloway Orton Park, commonly referred

to as KGO, and while Scarborough was a distinct suburban municipality up until 1998, a provin-

cially-imposed amalgamation of the six municipalities integrated the metropolis into a single

city administration (MacDonnell, 2004). KGO is popularly characterized by its poverty, its di-

verse immigrant makeup, and its designation as one of the City of Toronto’s 13 Priority Neigh-

bourhoods (Cowen & Parlette, 2011). The priority neighbourhood designation brings a number

of provisions including various focussed funds and an evaluation of policy measures that may

mitigate the state of poverty and marginalization pervading the neighbourhood. With unem-

ployment nearing 9 percent, poverty experienced in nearly a third of households, and an aver-

age after-tax household income of 67 percent of the metric city-wide (Toronto Social Policy

Analysis and Research, 2006), the social challenges in the neighbourhood can fairly be charac-

terized as complex and acute. The composition of the neighbourhood is also extremely diverse:

61.4 percent identify as a visible minority and 47 percent are recent immigrants (Toronto Social

Policy Analysis and Research, 2006). This profile is in many ways endemic of the new face of

poverty in Canada - increasingly suburban, largely composed of immigrants, and often com-

posed of populations with overlapping barriers to full social and economic participation (Larry &

Rose, 2001). The remnants of rapid post-war growth has given the neighbourhood a contem-

porary built form consisting largely of high rise towers and townhouses punctuated by strip



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malls and motels. Through the 1970s and 1980s, as the downtown experienced gentrification

and the poor moved outwards to the inner suburbs, Southeast Scarborough became the site of

the greatest concentration of social housing in the province. This poverty migration, however,

compounded upon itself and created more complex challenges in the decades that followed:

In the late 1990’s, East Scarborough was a community in desperate need. Families

were leaving the inner city where low cost housing was becoming increasingly scarce

and moving to the inner suburbs to find more affordable housing. Vast numbers of

refugees were being housed in the motel strip along Kingston Road. Few services for

these new residents were available nearby. The suburban transit infrastructure was

inadequate. Taking transit, even if residents could afford it, wasn’t an option, since

service within suburbs was (and still is) poorly covered. Simply getting to where the

services existed was an enormous barrier (Mann, 2011, p. 13).

The conditions of this neighbourhood highlight a trend typical of inner suburbs in many

of North America’s larger metropolitan areas. Racialized poverty, mixed with crumbling infra-

structure and inadequate provision of basic services including transit, illustrate a community

struggling on the fringes of an otherwise largely prosperous city. This picture is symptomatic of

the suburbanization of poverty and the creation of service deserts. The complexity of these

conditions demand community based services that accommodate the multifaceted and dy-

namic needs of the community.

In response to these converging crises of poverty concentration, overlapping barriers to

economic participation, inadequate access to necessary services, and other challenges, a num-

ber of community members and allies gathered in 1999 to form the East Scarborough Store-



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front. The development and evolution of the Storefront, in this way, runs parallel to the way

the organization continually seeks to place the community at the centre and forefront of its ef-

forts and approach. The founders of the Storefront agreed, from the outset, that to support the

community in addressing the issues they faced, they should ask the community what tools and

supports were needed to address those challenges (Cowen & Parlette, 2011). The survey they

undertook highlighted the need for a diverse base of specialized services. In the following two

years, this group of community members, activists, and social service providers formed alli-

ances with existing agencies and innovated a formal structure that would establish a service

hub where community members could find a variety of services in one location provided by a

number of agencies, each with the specific skills and expertise related to the service they offer.

The key participants in this process stress that the time-consuming and incremental work of

building relationships, cultivating a collaborative vision, and constructing grassroots models of

community-based solution building demands a steadfast commitment to spending the time and

effort involved (Cowen & Parlette, 2011). Throughout the process, the key organizers recog-

nized the need to maintain autonomy, stability, and act more as a facilitator role than a pro-

vider. This distinction aligned with the concept of the backbone model, which they have been

fine tuning for community-based social service delivery ever since.

The Success of the Backbone Organization Given the context of the development of Toronto’s service deserts specifically exempli-

fied by KGO, the backbone model offers a particularly successful structure through which the

Storefront operates effectively. Most significantly, the backbone model allows the Storefront to



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cultivate financial sustainability, facilitate appropriate and coordinated services, support com-

munity development, and ensure long-term community support.

Financial SustainabilityAs a backbone organization, the Storefront offers a building and administrative infra-

structure where 40 partner agencies are able to provide service, on a rotation that allows each

agency a weekly time and space appropriate to providing residents with that specific service. In

The Little Community That Could: The Story Behind Our Story, Cathy Mann explains the cost-ef-

fective advantage of this approach:

With only one overhead cost for 40 agencies offering services and programs to the

community, the cost savings to each organization, to the community and to funders

is remarkable. Furthermore, since partner agencies do not pay fees or rent to the

Storefront, it is more feasible for existing agencies to reach new constituents and

stretch their usually limited budgets (Mann, 2012, p. 26).

Indeed, as partner agencies do not pay for the space they use at the Storefront, they can

reach multiple populations without having to bear the cost of maintaining multiple operational

locations. As it is more cost-effective to maintain a physical presence downtown where the

total population of clients remains higher, operating out of the Storefront also allows partner

agencies to amplify their impact by reaching a population that would otherwise have severely

limited access to their services. Additionally, as the Storefront is already well known and trusted

in the community, each agency need not invest in outreach, promotion of their services, or de-

velopment of their credibility in the neighbourhood.



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The Storefront’s success as a backbone organization that brings together a wide range

of partners and reaches a broad population in KGO has attracted five funders to offer stable and

long-term funding:

Many of our funders and donors understand that long-term change happens gradu-

ally, and is a result of the input of thousands of individuals and institutions working

together and facilitated by a central organization - and not from a single break-

through program or organization. And they have been prepared to invest in us over

the long-term. This has made a profound difference in the Storefront’s ability to at-

tract, facilitate and sustain relationships with a myriad of strong and dedicated part-

ner agencies (Mann, 2012, p. 21).

This is particularly notable in light of the significant and chronic underfunding to service

delivery organizations, particularly in the area of core operation costs, leaving many NPOs to

rely on precarious funding sources to cover employee salaries and particularly supervision

costs, or to draw from their programming budgets to cover these costs (Eakin, 2004). Also, as

competition for programming grants increases, especially in the current context of limited fund-

ing, many NPOs modify their projects to adhere to the criteria of available grants. The focus of

their programming is thus dependent on the shifting priorities of foundations and governments.

As Storefront’s funding is independent from the programming offered on its premises by part-

ner agencies, their staff is not restricted in their ability to support a wide range of resident-iden-

tified initiatives.

The Storefront’s funding structure also allows for more effective collaboration between

the Storefront and its partner agencies, as Mann indicates:



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Our partner agencies source their own funding to deliver their services and therefore

have their own accountability structures. This means that they are at the Storefront

because they want to be which means that the relationship is one of true collabora-

tion: as independent entities, we work together towards a common goal (Mann,

2012, p. 31).

The role of a neutral third party, which the Storefront embodies, is crucial to developing

and maintaining strong partnerships and affirms that partner agencies are guaranteed that the

Storefront will not compete in service delivery (Mann, 2012). Unlike the service hub model,

backbone organizations ensure staff is able to facilitate coordination and collaboration among

partner agencies and other actors, which has nourished the strong relationships that contribute

to Storefront’s success.

Appropriate and Coordinated Service DeliveryThe backbone model allows for service delivery to appropriately respond to the specific

and evolving interests of the community in a coordinated and collaborative approach that is

beyond the capacity of the service hub model or single service NPOs. Like the service hub

model, the Storefront’s backbone approach allows many diverse interests and needs to be ad-

dressed, as 40 partner agencies cycle through a single common space. This is of particular im-

portance in a neighbourhood such as KGO where there is a higher concentration of poor and

marginalized populations, greater need for diverse social services and a near absence of access-

ible services. It is also a neighbourhood of low car-ownership, inadequate transit, and poor

walkability (Cowen & Parlette, 2011).



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As the residents of KGO possess a broad range of challenges, needs and desires, the

Storefront’s partner organizations are diverse and include groups such as the Afghan Associ-

ation of Ontario, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Francophone Centre of

Toronto and Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto (see Table 2 for a complete list). Moreover,

as the needs of community members are complex and overlapping, the Storefront possesses

the ability to coordinate collaboration among service providers to both address overlap and

find areas of potential integration. Unlike the service hub model, the Storefront’s front line staff

facilitate collaboration and coordination between service agencies to develop a more integ-

rated community of service agencies that are sometimes unaware of such overlaps or oppor-

tunities (East Scarborough Storefront, 2012). This specific capacity is central to backbone organ-

izations, and indeed, Turner et al. (2012) have identified the role of supporting aligned activities

and guiding a unified vision and strategy as two of six defining features of backbones. The

Storefront establishes a mission that defines the relationship and operation of partner agencies,

and staff is charged with facilitating partner agencies that provide similar services to eliminate

overlap, thus resulting in services that are better adapted to the specific needs and qualities of

the community. A front line worker at the Storefront articulates an example of this process:

… there were like six or eight different agencies that wanted to provide services and

we said...you need to figure out how you are going to share the responsibility...So

youth people sit down together, the settlement people sit down together, the seniors

people sit down together and sort of start working together… cooperating (quoted in

Roberts & Roche, 2007, p.138).



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The dynamic created by staff not oriented to service delivery allows for more strategic

reflection on the relationship and opportunities between services that would benefit the com-

munity and services that may be available. Dear et al. (1994), in assessing the success of sys-

tems of care to support vulnerable people dependant on social services, stress the importance

of continuous reassessment of client needs and careful selection of the most effective model of

service coordination (Dear et al., 1994). A Storefront staff member indicates this function:

There's a lot of reflection that goes on and a lot of going back to, so, what were some

of the original ideas about this? What were the founders thinking when they set it

out this way? Yeah, and is it still relevant? Or how much do we have to change it to

keep it real and alive (quoted in Roberts & Roche, 2007, p. 145)?

The fact that community members influence decision-making at the Storefront also en-

sures that services are appropriate to specific needs and interests, and continue to reflect their

evolving needs. Residents serve on the steering committee and are encouraged to participate in

visioning processes, allowing the users to direct the organization to best suit their needs. For

example, residents at a Community Speak1 event identified insufficient youth services, and the

Storefront worked with community partners to facilitate a response to the identified gap

(Roberts & Roche, 2007).

Supporting Community DevelopmentThe backbone model allows the Storefront to move beyond providing social services to

supporting the community in ways that develop collective capacity. Specifically, the Storefront

1 The Storefront hosts Community Speak events 3 or 4 times a year where residents discuss community issues such as service gaps, public space, and food security. In collaboration with the Storefront, partner agencies, com-munity partners, and politicians brainstorm local solutions to create community change.



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is able to build social capital through supporting the development of relationships between

community members, between community members and partner agencies, and among the

partner agencies. This allows the Storefront to facilitate initiatives beyond service delivery, in a

concept described by Turner et al. (2012) as collective impact. Social capital, as seen through

the lens of relationships as resources, can be understood as comprising two aspects: bonding

and bridging (Larsen, 2004). Bonding refers to the development of relationships and trust

between individuals in a neighbourhood that facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit, and is

often considered a necessary precedent to bridging. Larsen et al. argue that the relationships

that form within a community empower it to engage in bridging by reaching beyond its own

network of self-interests to “engage external institutions and organizations that might help [the

community] to resist threats to [its] well-being” (2004, p. 65). They explain the link between

this process and civic action, indicating that resisting threats or securing assets can require

politically engaging with municipalities or other service providers, which communities are more

likely to do if they have strong social, or bonding, ties.

With the primary responsibility to support community members, the Storefront staff

work to facilitate the development of bonding social capital among residents by providing a re-

source center, community meeting space, and facilitated activities in which residents can inter-

act and develop relationships. In a neighbourhood with a higher percentage of marginalized

people, developing trusting relationships among residents can be extremely valuable as a sup-

port network and a base from which the community can develop solutions to collective chal-

lenges. Dear et al. (1994) indicate that for many community members who require services, “in-



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formal networks represent vital components of day-to-day existence” (p. 182). Staff members

also prioritize developing their own relationships with community members, and as such, the

Storefront becomes a trusted check-in point where residents can get advice and better access

the services they need. This is particularly important for community members facing challenges,

as a Storefront staff member explains:

For people especially with mental health issues it's really difficult to get them to go

somewhere, but if they've already been here they know where this place is, they will

feel welcome here by the staff definitely and they won't be so afraid to come back

and see someone from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (quoted in

Roberts, 2007, p. 129).

As a neutral third party who does not provide a service, the Storefront staff is trusted to

respond to community members and provide genuine assistance. Residents can count on them

to offer advice about services, to act as moderators in problems or conflicts, and to offer sup-

port for diverse and specific projects and initiatives. The Storefront is able to provide support by

facilitating community members’ access to the services, resources, tools and partners they

need to achieve the goals they determine themselves. Based on the relationships the Storefront

develops with partner agencies, residents, funders, and academics, the organization is also well

positioned to connect residents to appropriate collaborators, supporting the development of

bridging ties by linking people who would not otherwise meet each other. Indeed, the Store-

front staff indicate that the complexity of the issues in the neighbourhood “require working to-

gether across boundaries and sectors, require a shared vision and common purpose, [and bring]

varied networks together to address challenges across spectrums” (Mann, 2012, p. 16). This



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specific ability has prompted Turner et al to identify a key feature of the backbone model as

“effective catalysts for achieving community-level progress” (2012).

To build on the community’s bonding and bridging ties, the Storefront provides a variety

of options for residents to assume leadership roles, influencing the direction of the Storefront

and of their community. For example, when a community member identified that many chil-

dren were going to school without eating breakfast, the Storefront staff supported her in con-

necting to resources and partner organizations that could support the creation of a breakfast

program (Mann, 2012). The ability to move beyond service provision and support meaningful

opportunities for leadership both within the organization and in the community more broadly is

of particular value in achieving empowering community solutions. Such an approach also indic-

ates the potential to affect the lives of community members in much more significant ways.

Anne Gloger, director of the Storefront, argues that although services can make a situation

more manageable, they are not enough to help people out of poverty (Gloger, 2008). By mov-

ing beyond service provision and offering opportunities for community members to engage in

meaningful leadership at the Storefront and in the community, the organization allows com-

munity members to gain experiential skills, engaged citizenship, and a sense of empowerment

that provides greater opportunity for achieving collective gains in the community.

The process of redesigning the Storefront space can serve to illustrate how the organiza-

tion builds social capital, achieves bonding and bridging, and effectively supports the develop-

ment of leadership skills in the community. The need for a more functional and suitable space

emerged during a Community Speak, and led to the Storefront coordinating a partnership



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between architecture firm SUSTAINABLE.TO, design consultant archiTEXT inc., planners, Storefront

staff, and local youth in a project entitled Community. Design. Initiative. The youth developed the

initial vision for the space and were then mentored to be involved in every step towards achiev-

ing the vision, from participating in a design charrette to working with engineers, project man-

agers, interior designers, and garden landscapers to build the new space. Based on the connec-

tions the Storefront was able to draw on, the partnership allowed youth to take ownership of

the project, develop social capital, and gain skills and experience that could be transferred to

future employment (archiTEXT, 2011).

From the strong relationships and trust formed among residents in concert with the

Storefront’s commitment to meaningfully support the community rather than provide a service,

the organization engages the capacity to ensure residents’ voices are heard. The Storefront is

also able to link residents to educational opportunities, to other residents with similar interests,

and to broader movements. In a variety of ways, as outlined here, community development is

essentially resident-led. Nevertheless, the facilitation role that the Storefront assumes is crit-

ical. Indeed, Turner et al. indicate that one of the motivations for organizations to initially de-

velop the backbone model is its ability to “convene collaboratives and coalitions to invent more

effective methods for creating powerful and lasting social change” (2012). Based on interviews

with staff of various backbone organizations, they indicate that in the absence of a backbone’s

contributions, stakeholders believe that “even more decisions in our community would be

made by a small group of folks” (2012). Thus, although the Storefront ensures that residents



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lead the development that they themselves set out, the organization’s role is essential to facilit-

ate space for residents to critically assess the challenges they face individually and collectively.

Long-term Commitment to Community SupportThe benefits provided by the backbone model, as outlined above, are reinforced and

strengthened by the Storefront’s long-term commitment to supporting the community. The

Storefront’s approach contrasts sharply with often ad hoc project-based initiatives led by ser-

vice agencies, which are usually limited in their ability to engage in the complex multi-dimen-

sionality of the community and contribute to long-term lasting change. Prioritizing the develop-

ment of trusting relationships in the community, supporting resident-led initiatives, and estab-

lishing formalized structures that allow residents to guide the direction of the organization en-

sures more effective, respectful, and long-term impact. A community member indicates the

value of this approach:

The thing I like about the governance of The Storefront is that the community has

equal say. Equal or more say than the agencies. So that’s something that community

is not really used to. Community is used to programs being set up and agents saying

this is what program is coming to the community (quoted in Roberts & Roche, 2007,

p. 136).

Financially, that longevity enhances the relationship of trust among funders, partner

agencies, clients, and the broader community, which provides stakeholders with the ability to

ensure that the needs of the community will be addressed beyond the short-term cycles that

many organization are required to operate within.



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ConclusionThe East Scarborough Storefront has achieved great success in enabling KGO to find its

voice and thrive as a stronger, healthier community. While there are various methods of social

service delivery, the backbone model is, we contend, the most effective and appropriate re-

sponse to the issues that face communities such as Kingston-Galloway Orton Park. Community

members are supported and empowered to take on leadership roles through collaboration with

Storefront employees who help them access the skills and resources they need. Among volun-

teers, employees, steering committee and management, there is ample demonstration of genu-

ine community engagement and a constant willingness to build on the social and financial re-

sources available. Even during challenging economic times - especially for NPOs - the Storefront

has managed to not only facilitate the provision of significant services to the community, but

also expand its breadth and ability to support community initiatives in a variety of ways. In the

current context of finite resources for social services and often complex needs for services, it is

imperative that service organizations develop strategies that can withstand economic pressures

and appropriately respond to a changing population. The success of the East Scarborough

Storefront has shown that while the rise of neoliberal government practices has introduced sig-

nificant challenges for poor and marginalized communities and the agencies that seek to sup-

port them, communities have reimagined a model that effectively builds creative, resilient and

dynamic solutions.



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com/25616/241050/projects/community-design-initiative->.

Cowen, D., & Parlette, V. (2011). Inner Suburbs at Stake (Report). Toronto: Cities Centre, Univer-sity of Toronto

Dear, M., Wolch, J., and Wilton R (1994) "The Service Hub Concept in Human Services Plan-ning." Progress in Planning, 42, 173-271.

Eakin, L., Lynn Eakin & Associates, and Community Social Planning Council of Toronto in collab-oration with the City Community Workgroup on Core Funding. (2004) Community Capa-city Draining: The Impact of Current Funding Practices on Non-Profit Community Organ-izations

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Appendix 1: A History of the East Scarborough Storefront1999

Need for services reaches a crisis point as more than 800 people are housed in local mo-tels.

2000

Agencies and residents continue the two-year process of consultation and discussion to find an innovative solution to the service crisis in East Scarborough.

2001

The Storefront opens in Morningside Mall as a multi-service resource center and com-munity space, aiming to work in an open, accountable, transparent, democratic gov-ernance structure with community stakeholder share ownership control. Storefront works with over 40 agencies, and provides service to 43 people.

2003

The Storefront volunteer project is created.

2004

The Storefront model is established and receives Vital Ideas Award.

2005

The Storefront receives 5,400 visits to the space. Announcements are made that it will lose most of its funding and its home at Morningside Mall

2006

Community members stage a march in support of Storefront and agencies launched a letter-writing campaign, bringing five funders together to collaboratively fund the Store-front.

2007

The Storefront opens in an old police station on Lawrence Avenue.

2008

The Storefront hosts a community visioning process through which residents, agencies, funders and supporters create Storefront’s new three-year vision.

2009

The Storefront takes on broader community development work by supporting a com-munity garden, a market, resident engagement and community capacity building.

2010

The Storefront takes on economic development with an innovative approach to employ-ment and business supports. The community encourages Storefront to expand its space; youth and architects begin planning.



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2011

The Eco-Food Hub is launched; Storefront has 50,000 requests for service.

* Adapted from “East Scarborough Storefront 2010: Our Story” accessed at www.thestore-front.org/documents/ESS-OurStory2010-booklet.pdf

Appendix 2: The Storefront’s PartnersService Delivery Partners Accessible Community Counselling and Employment ServicesAcross BoundariesAfghan Association of OntarioAisling discoveries Child and FamilyArising Women’s Safe HouseBoys & Girls Club of East ScarboroughCanadian Centre for Victims of TortureCatholic Cross Cultural ServicesCentre for Information and Community ServicesCentre francophone de TorontoCity of Toronto Parks & RecreationCity of Toronto Public HealthCity of Toronto Culture DivisionCommunity Living TorontoCommunity Resources Connections of TorontoCommunity Social Planning Council of TorontoElizabeth FryHorn of Africa Parents AssociationKennedy HouseNative Child and Family ServicesNeighbourhood linkOn-TrackPACTSalvation Army-The Homestead Scarborough SatelliteSchools without BordersService CanadaSouth Asian Women’s CentreSouth Asian Legal Clinics of TorontoToronto District School board

Neighbourhood PartnersArising Women’s Safe HouseBoys & Girls Club of East ScarboroughCatholic Cross Cultural ServicesCity of TorontoCouncillor Paul AinslieCouncillor Ron MoeserCrime Prevention Association of TorontoCedar Ridge Creative CentreEast Metro Youth ServicesEvergreenGabriel Dumont Non-Profit HomesJumblies TheatreLive Green TorontoMPP Margaret BestMP John McKayMinistry of Training Colleges and Univer-sityNewcomer Services for Youth TDSBResidents RisingService CanadaSocial Planning TorontoSt Margaret in the Pines ChurchToronto District School boardToronto Community HousingToronto Fire Service Neighbourhood Initi-ativeToronto Police ServicesToronto Public LibraryUniversity of TorontoUniversity of Toronto Scarborough



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Toronto Employment and Social ServicesTropicana Community ServicesVasantham-Tamil SeniorsScarborough Centre for Healthy CommunitiesWorkers Action CentreYouth Employment TorontoYMCAYWCA

Scarborough Centre for Healthy Com-munitiesYouth Employment Toronto YWCA

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