C1 Nonprofit Administrative Assistant Certificate Program
The Office Assistant Certificate Program is a certified training program for entry-level jobs in nonprofit organizations and charities. It includes courses related to the essential work requirements in the nonprofit sector. The participants will gain fundamental operational, technical, and communication skills required to deliver community services.
Duration of the Certificate Program
4 weeks online training + 1-week online/in-person internship
Start Date
Spring 2022
Why The Nonprofit Sector?
The Canadian nonprofit sector job market continues to grow as needs arise. Working in this area can be very rewarding knowing your contribution is impacting lives as you earn your livelihood. Jobs can be found in three vital areas of NPOs;
1. Community nonprofits which include organizations engaged in activities such as social services, advocacy, and sports and recreation;
2. Business nonprofits include organizations such as chambers of commerce, business associations and condominium associations and
3. Government nonprofit organizations include organizations such as hospitals, universities and colleges.
In 2019, non-profit organizations (NPOs)—serving households, businesses and governments employed 2.5 million people, representing 12.8% of all jobs in Canada.
Workplace Communication
Effective oral and written communication is the most sought-after skill by any organization, impacting your daily job performance and determining your career trajectory.
With this course, you will learn different ways in which to clearly convey information and ideas in an engaging manner. Explore how to build trust, communicate effectively, and be heard within your organization. Learn important interpersonal skills and strategies for communicating in complicated and changing circumstances. You will be able to provide useful feedback, get along with coworkers and customers, network, provide serviceable information, work well in teams, and creatively and critically solve problems and present ideas in an understandable manner, gaining attention, trust, and respect.
Frontline Public Communication
Nonprofit sector front-line staff routinely interacts with service providers, beneficiaries, and community member liaisons. These interactions require considerable tact and the ability to understand and relay client feedback to your superiors. This course is designed to prepare you with the necessary skills for effective listening, reading non-verbal communication cues, diffusing escalating situations with conflict resolution techniques, and ensuring all vital information from your clients has been fully comprehended in its context. You will learn how to interact with different cultural groups in a manner that is sensitive and appropriate in order to foster fruitful and trusting long-term working relationships..
Introduction to Finance
This course is designed to take your business knowledge to the next level. It systematically lays the groundwork for understanding business finance, and the financial activities and limitations of a nonprofit organization. You will learn to be familiar with business terminology and be able to interpret with ease the main financial statements of your organization. You will learn how to analyze these financial statements to measure a company's performance in strategic areas. You will then learn to use those calculations to help make budgets, yearly comparisons and forecasting. You will be provided with Excel templates designed to help you gain ease and competence as well as give you a systematic and organized approach to problem-solving.
Nonprofit Organizations Policies and Procedures
Policies provide guidance, consistency, accountability and clarity on how an organization operates. This offers employees guidelines and principles to follow. This course is designed to help you understand, implement and recognize the difference between the two and how each is used and applied for your benefit. Nonprofit policies and procedures ensure that the organization responds fairly and equitably in all situations. When everyone is clear about who is responsible for what, how and why things need to be done, it will lead to smooth operations. Policies and procedures affect various parts of a nonprofit’s work including governance, employee behaviour, and employee benefits. Policies identify key activities and can also provide guidance for how to handle issues as they arise.
Nonprofit Workplace Office Environment
This course is designed to help you succeed specifically in the nonprofit workplace environment. You will learn its culture, how the nonprofit sector differs from other sectors, and its method of functioning in the following areas; Leadership and planning, corporate culture and communications, Dress code, Pay and benefits, training, development, and resources, Engagement with other employees, Role Satisfaction, and Work Environment.
You will also learn vital time management techniques which will increase your productivity, help you reduce stress and prioritize your time. Time management will prioritize your most important tasks so you can achieve better results. These time management tools will help serve as a foundation for the Working in Projects course.
Working in Projects
This course is designed to teach you the fundamental stages of project management. From project definition to planning, you will learn about the importance of project charters, budgets and scope guidelines. You will learn to identify and plan for risks, build a project team, assign deliverables and monitor and measure project performance to ensure it stays on track. Finally, you will learn how to transfer a project to another maintenance team if required. You will be able to ensure proper closure, along with your project's ``Definition of Success`` as agreed upon at the project's initiation.
Understanding the Nonprofit Sector
This course is designed to give you a better understanding of how Nonprofits uniquely operate in Canada and why their function is so vital within our communities. You will learn about the different types of nonprofit organizations as well as their objectives. You will familiarize yourself with the terminology of the sector, and how Nonprofits interact with government, different businesses, and how Canadian Non Profits differ operationally from other countries' Non Profit organizations. You will gain insight into the developments in this rapidly changing sector, and understand the challenges as well as opportunities facing Non Profit organizations today.
Public Relations / Stakeholder Engagement
This course is designed to give you an understanding of the different ways stakeholders can influence your organization's directive and how to successfully engage with them to foster long-term relationships. Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have an interest or role in the organization’s programs or are impacted by it. You will learn how each stakeholder will have a different level of involvement, and influence often with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests and concerns. You will understand how to engage relevant stakeholders for a purpose to achieve an acceptable outcome.
You will learn about the Importance of relationship building and how to discuss solutions that can be used for constituent management, fundraising, awards, policy, program delivery, R&D and impact tracking, to name a few. We will enable you to develop an engagement plan, which will include frequency, method and channels of engagement.
Workplace Safety and Health
This training introduces workers to the Occupational Health and Safety Act. It focuses on the health and safety rights and responsibilities of workers, supervisors and employers. It also serves as a general introduction to workplace health and safety.
The main goal of safety and health programs is to prevent workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths. You will also learn how to address workplace sexual harassment, how to file a report against any type of abuse and hate crime. You will also learn about prevention and how to stay and feel safe in the workplace.
Workers can use this training program as one way to meet the minimum training required by the Occupational Health and Safety Awareness and Training regulation.
The Occupational Health and Safety Awareness and Training regulation requires health and safety awareness training for every worker and supervisor under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA). Content is provided by the Ontario Ministry of Labor
Occasions may arise where the course content could vary slightly from the description provided.
Program Format
The Nonprofit Management Certificate Program comprises nine (9) courses and a one-week unpaid internship. Each has 3-6 credits and 1-2 days in the length of in-class/real-time virtual learning and will be supplemented with course material and assignments. An example of a weekly schedule of the certificate program is shown below.
Participants who successfully complete the courses and the internship will receive the Vectors Institute Certificate in Nonprofit Management.
| All our courses are eligible for the Job Matching Placement Incentive (JMPI), Apprenticeship Employer Signing Bonus (AESB), the Canada Ontario Job Grant (COJG) and similar grants in other provinces. |
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Price: $1.250 + HST (13%)
