Forging Our Future is a three-year Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association (MNPHA) initiative supporting small-to-medium non-profit housing organizations (NPHOs) to pursue meaningful partnerships that strengthen long-term viability while preserving community leadership. The core challenge is not simply financial, it is cultural, structural, and resource-based. Partnerships require time, facilitation, trust, and expertise, yet the organizations that would benefit most are least able to invest scarce staff or volunteer capacity into exploring them.
The project works through three integrated strategies: a Partnership Lab for co-learning and facilitated exploration of partnership models; a regulatory and policy review to lower legal and financial barriers to collaboration; and paid secondments to up to ten low-resource NPHOs to enable meaningful participation without compromising day-to-day operations.
Over the course of the project, outreach will engage approximately 60 NPHOs across Manitoba, with up to 20 organizations participating in the Partnership Lab. Anticipated outcomes include 16–18 meaningful partnerships, a sector toolkit, and a clear roadmap for regulatory reform. Ultimately, Forging Our Future advances a community-led, collective approach to sustaining non-profit housing, giving NPHOs the time, resources, and collective voice to shape their future.
Forging Our Future is a new and exciting partnership and system change initiative, building on the Securing our Future assessment and originated through the leadership of Merchant’s Corner Housing. As a sector-wide initiative, it will be led and coordinated by MNPHA. It is funded by The Community Housing Transformation Centre and The McConnell Foundation.
Learn More and Get Involved
Forging Our Future will continue to bring Manitoba’s nonprofit housing sector together throughout the project.
To learn more about the initiative, upcoming opportunities to participate, or how your organization can get involved, connect with the MNPHA team at [email protected].
Securing Our Future: An Assessment of Nonprofit Housing in Manitoba
Securing Our Future examines the current state and long-term viability of Manitoba’s nonprofit housing sector. Drawing on interviews, focus groups and organizational assessments with nonprofit housing providers and sector partners, the report explores the internal and external pressures affecting organizations across the province.
The assessment finds that nonprofit housing providers are an essential part of Manitoba’s housing system, but many are operating with increasingly limited capacity. Aging buildings, rising operating costs, workforce and board succession challenges, changing tenant needs, administrative burdens and uncertain funding are compounding one another, leaving many organizations focused on immediate operational demands rather than long-term planning. These challenges can be particularly acute for smaller and rural providers.
Looking ahead, the report calls for both sustained public investment and stronger collective capacity within the nonprofit housing sector. It identifies opportunities including shared services, partnerships, mergers and amalgamations, stronger sector networks, improved asset and financial management, and greater access to development expertise. At its core is a shift from asking how individual organizations can survive to asking how Manitoba’s nonprofit housing sector can collectively protect and expand nonmarket housing for the long term.
