Strategic Plan–Progress Report

Strategic Plan Progress

he 2024–25 period was the third and final year of our current strategic planning cycle. This multi-year commitment to deepening our impact and effectiveness recognizes the different elements of capacity and expertise that ensure ISSofBC can continue to thrive, adapt, and innovate in an ever-changing environment.

The plan set goals focused on sector excellence, sector leadership, organizational capacity (our key enablers), and action on critical social-justice issues. By 2025, our aim was to build a stronger foundation for the next stage of our growth—equipping us with a clear vision and the right strategies to meet both emerging opportunities and challenges in serving our expanding communities.

Service Excellence

ISSofBC launched two programs: BC Newcomer Services Program (BC NSP) delivering all-in-one settlement, English language, and job support for temporary residents and naturalized citizens, and the BC Services and Assistance for Humanitarian and Vulnerable Newcomers Program (BC SAFE HAVEN), providing specialized support for refugee claimants and asylum seekers.
We finalized both the proposal and negotiations for a new, federally funded suite of refugee and settlement services, which launched in April 2025. This call for proposals (CFP) marked the end of the previous five-year program cycle and gave us the opportunity to design new approaches that better reflect the evolving needs of our clients. Despite a backdrop of declining immigration levels and reduced funding, we successfully retained and adapted the majority of our services. However, by year-end, we had to scale back programming in Langley and Burnaby, as well as several entrepreneurship and career services.
Most of our services achieved their delivery and outcome targets. At the same time, we continued to strengthen our capacity—expanding virtual service delivery, enhancing our quality assurance and improvement systems, and improving support for specialized populations.

Our final assessment found that while we achieved many of the service excellence goals set out in our strategic plan, we fell short in some areas. We still have work to do in strengthening data collection and analytics, finalizing quality standards (including completing standards accreditation), and building the capacity needed to sustain ongoing innovation.

Sector Leadership

In a year when public discourse about Canadian immigration became increasingly negative ( see our report on the context of immigration ), we worked hard to keep the needs of newcomers—and the settlement sector that supports them—at the forefront of public and political attention.
Our leadership team contributes actively to sector-wide leadership through roles on advisory bodies, working groups, and boards—including IRCC’s national refugee, data privacy, and cybersecurity groups, and the National Settlement & Integration Council. Our leadership team also presented at national and international conferences and participated in the work and governance of aligned organizations.
We regularly engage with provincial and national leaders, including Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries involved in the immigration system. Last year, we continued our tradition of hosting the federal Minister of Immigration at one of our offices, where we provided a briefing on local immigration services in the Coquitlam community.
As the year ended, we joined several other BC-based settlement organizations to launch The Canada We Believe In—an initiative calling on federal party leaders to work with a broad coalition to renew and promote a positive vision for Canada’s immigration system.

Over the three years of the strategic plan, we continued to deepen the impact of our sector leadership, although at the same time we recognize the need to further extend this work to address new challenges for newcomers, including immigrants and refugees–and immigrant serving organizations–that were not present in 2022 and 2023.

Organizational Capacity (Enablers)

As a community-based social impact organization, ISSofBC needs a strong and efficient infrastructure to deliver on our mission. With over 450 staff, 10 service locations, numerous complex contracts, and a growing digital system, we must operate both flexibly and at scale.
In 2024-25, we advanced several projects to support this work, including new HR and people initiatives, the next phase of our digital investment plan, improved real estate management, and refreshed marketing, branding, and communications strategies.
Financially, we exceeded our goals across the 3-year period, although we also prepared for the challenges ahead that will come with reductions in immigration levels and funding.
We improved our governance by introducing new Board policies, updating committee and meeting structures, and launching a strategic planning process over the past year.

Building our organizational capacity has been a key focus for the last three years. While this work continues—especially around people and technology—we have already met the majority of our goals.

Social Justice Anchors

In June 2024 we launched our first Truth & Reconciliation Strategy (TRS), a three-year commitment to deepen our understanding and contribution to Canada’s journey with Indigenous peoples. Over the year, we advanced a range of initiatives and met our commitment to report out on progress achieved.
In the summer of 2024, we completed our organizational DEI assessment—a key part of our strategic plan—and developed an initial action plan to build capacity and leadership for this work moving forward.

ISSofBC remains committed to the principles and actions needed to advance both Truth & Reconciliation and DEI. Our progress has been thoughtful and steady, though slower than originally planned. Still, we have achieved the key goal of integrating these social justice principles into our organizational practices, and we will continue to deepen our understanding and efforts going forward.

Our New Strategic Plan

Looking ahead, we are beginning to develop our new strategic plan. Given the rapid changes in the settlement landscape, we are carefully reassessing our goals and priorities. For the next 12 months, we will follow a continuity plan to advance the main priorities of the 2022–25 strategy, while working to finalize the new strategy for implementation in 2026.