Discovery Visit Day 1

Day one. Today was spent at the Grosvenor Central YMCA which has membership of around 11,000 members. It is part of the Greater Toronto Area YMCA and over Toronto the YMCA has an annual turnover of 170m CAD and a Capital Appeal current in place to raise 100m CAD. Wow.

Scott started off the day with a presentation on the YMCA in Canada. He stressed that it is co-owned both Nationally and locally. The National Federation was formed in 1912 today the YMCA is a household name across Canada.

He referred to two key underlying principles that informed their strategic plan.

The first was; The Canada we want and the YMCA we need. I think it is interesting to think about that in an English contact – The England we want and the YMCA we need ….discus

Some very stimulating thoughts from Scott for us to consider.

There Strategic Plan was written in 2011 and had four main aims.

Build our Brand

Extend our Reach

Strengthen our impact

Increase our capacity.

We were told that there had to be an unexpected outcome so far and that was the need to concentrate on the first two. Perhaps others will say more on this