I'm Heather MacKenzie (she/her) and I'm the Executive Director of Solar Alberta.
What is your role at your organization?
As the Executive Director, I am the spokesperson for the organization so I do a lot of public speaking and a lot of presentations. Media and government relations tend to be my areas of focus, but also a lot of admin work. I do a lot of spreadsheets! Mostly for financial management, making sure that we have our annual budget and that we're on track to meet our revenue goals and don't go over on expenses. I also do all the hiring of staff and firing of staff, so staff management and HR is kind of my baby as well. As a non-profit, we are governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. I do a lot of work with the Board of Directors, making sure that their policies are in order and that we have the direction we need to execute our goals. Generally, I get to oversee everything and make sure that we're executing on our Mission.
We also have three staff right now (four, including me) and a few contractors that I manage and do payroll for. We have a couple different contractors, like teaching contractors and others who are quite regular with us working on website development and all that jazz. I have staff who are working very hard to do public education and community building with both industry as well as solar enthusiasts or micro-generators. I also have a new staff member who's doing a lot of consumer protection work and vetting our business members to make sure that they're enhancing the reputation of the solar sector. So, just making sure that all of that work is on track and supporting them in any way I can. It's a lot of different hats, but I have a lot of help and many hands make light work. Every day is a little different and I do love that about my job.
Can you trace your involvement with the CSL Program?
I started at Solar Alberta in 2020 and we started collaborating with CSL in 2021. We've had many rounds now of CSL students and also Non-Profit Board Interns (NPBI) and it's been amazing. We actually ended up hiring an intern from our first batch of CSL students full time. She stayed with us for three years after that so that was pretty cool. She transitioned from that program to an Eco Canada internship that we were able to establish for her. That was really neat to see through and was good exposure to the program.
Our president, Preet, works more closely with the board interns so I see them mostly at board meetings. However, this year, we ended up with a CSL student from the Faculty of Law, and I ended up working with her directly because the project we had her working on was very different from our other CSL projects. This project was related to our advocacy work and specifically asking the question, ‘why hasn't anyone sued the Government of Alberta for all the discrimination against renewable energy?’. Since I lead our government relations and advocacy work, I decided to work with that student very closely. We just finished up her report and it is excellent. I’m really looking forward to sharing that with our members. It was nice to be back in the CSL mix this term myself.
Why did you choose to incorporate CSL students into your organization?
A big part of it was just the fact that, as a non-profit focused heavily on public education and advocacy, we do a lot of communications work. CSL students are very well written.
They often have a lot of experience in communications, especially if they're coming from sociology. We really put them to work on helping us connect with members of the public on different topics. We were really drawn to students who knew how to write well. We also don't want people who are just going to go on Chat GPT and give us something that's inaccurate. If we're going to post something as an authoritative source, we need to make sure anyone who's writing for us can actually properly cite their research. If they're drafting a blog post for us, for example, we need that to be correct. It was attractive to us to have students who had experience in communications, research, knew how to do citations and help us maintain our professional image.
Most students were also coming from a class that was focused on the environment. It's really important for us that we're working with people who are environmentally oriented and that we're helping them chart their course in the work world from an environmental perspective.
What do CSL students learn in their placements?
Part of our work with CSL was to benefit us, but part of it is also for those students to get a look inside the green NGO sector and the solar industry and to see what's out there and where their skills might be relevant. We've tried really hard to find tasks for students to give them insight into the different players in the space. This helps them determine where they’d fit best in a future workplace, whether it's in the NGO space that we operate in or in the industry space who we serve. I wish more students did this before entering the workforce – they need to learn about themselves and their strengths!
On the other hand, students who come through the NPBI program get a whole other set of skills. There are many different types of boards in this world. Some of them are policy governance boards, like ours, where they're managing through policy and they set direction through that policy and then have staff execute it. It's really helpful for these students to see what a board should look like because often, people get out into the work and volunteer world and they end up serving on these boards. If they've never seen a high functioning policy governance board, they won't even know where to begin. It's really good for them to see, “oh, this is what a consent agenda is”, for example, and it really makes meetings go faster. Then they can focus the discussion on the more contentious issues. It's very useful.
When I completed my first master's degree, I came back to Edmonton and I decided to run to serve on the Edmonton Public School Board. I served there for three years and was pretty successful and that was how I got to witness how a policy governance board operates. It was trial by fire, you know, jumping right into the fray. I wish that I had had an opportunity to do something like CSL or NPBI when I was a student at the U of A. It wasn't offered when I was there and it would have prepared me well for my future role on the Edmonton Public School Board and my work today. It's really wonderful that these programs have been developed since my time at the U of A. I think it's valuable for both parties too, which is the best part of the program. You're both learning and helping each other, which is amazing.
Have you had any interesting or good stories about CSL students you’ve worked with?
We had one NPBI student, Marika, who ended up helping put together an onboarding package and board handbook. It lets us onboard our new board members every year quickly and efficiently and gives them a great sense for the organization. They have a one-stop-shop now for where all the documents are and to understand what everything is, how we run a meeting and stuff like that. She went above and beyond because she happened to be a graphic designer. We were very short staffed at that time as well so she was willing to draft up some nice posters for us. We're still promoting our Rise up for Renewables lawn signs, stickers, and advocacy campaigns today that are based on her graphic design. That was really special and has helped boost our advocacy and our professionalism. Since then, we have had the resources to bring in some staff who have some of that capability, but she was our first look into someone who actually knows how to make a proper poster so that added a lot of value. Her formal project for NPBI was the board handbook so she just offered her design skills voluntarily out of the goodness of her heart. That was very, very sweet of her.
Since then, other students have built on that and improved upon it and that's been wonderful. We have also had a couple CSL students continue to volunteer with us even after the term ends! A couple of them have applied to work here as well. They didn't always get the job but the fact that I got to see that they were still interested and that we built that relationship is really nice and I hope they'll continue to apply in the future. We only have four staff so we can't hire everyone but it was nice that they had a good enough experience that they weren't shy from applying for work as well!
What advice would you give to CSL students looking to work in the nonprofit sector?
Most organizations won't even look at a resume if there is no evidence that you care about what you’re working on. They're wanting employees who will stick. If they're going to invest in you, they want to know that you really have a passion for the work because otherwise, there's such high turnover in the sector. When they see that people have actually done some concrete volunteer work in this space, they're much more interested in those candidates because they believe they'll be more committed. This is true for non-profits, but it's also true for industry and municipal offices. A lot of our volunteers have transitioned into working for cities, towns or counties on environment portfolios. I think that their volunteer work has been something that helped them stand out in a crowded field of applicants. I find a lot of students, especially CSL students, are less likely to land in industry than they are to land in a policy type job because that's where their skills tend to lead towards. U of A grads in particular are moving more towards the Alberta government or municipal service it seems. Public service is where I've noticed them filtering into more or the non-profit space. I feel like the nonprofit sector is expanding so quickly now that there's lots of opportunities there, so that's awesome.
What have you learned by being involved with CSL?
What I've learned more broadly, instead of highlighting one specific skill set, is just the incredible benefit we see to our organization from collaboration with post-secondary students in general. Our positive experience with the U of A has actually led us also to bringing on a capstone student from the University of Calgary, working with students from Grant MacEwan, and now trying to figure out how to work with Norquest students. I would say CSL has really inspired us to consider how we could work with post-secondary and collaborate on some really important work. It's been nice to lean into that and to see where we can go. It allows us to go above and beyond, especially when it comes to research. Unfortunately, as much as we would love to research, that is just something we don't have a lot of time for, so getting students in the mix to help with that has been wonderful. A lot of university students are willing to help, especially when they're more in the arts side, which is where most (but not all!) CSL students are coming from. It's awesome when their skills can be used.
If you can, sum up your experience with CSL in one sentence.
I wish the CSL program was around when I was doing my bachelor's at the UofA because it is such a benefit both to the students and to the organizations and I'm glad that the university put it in place!