Equal partners

“Between friends.” That was the title of a book given by the Government of Canada to the U.S. on the occasion of that country’s bicentennial.

The title well summed up – still sums up – how Canadians feel about their relationship to their American neighbours. For 150 years the two nations have been allies and partners economically, politically, culturally and in other ways.

At the same time, there are differences. Canadians and Americans share many things, but they also have different ways of operating and viewing the world. Most of the time, these differences are worked out amicably. But sometimes the only answer is to carve out separate paths in order to accomplish shared goals.

That’s what happened at Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), the relief, development and peace arm of the North American Mennonite churches.

For a long time, MCC international work was governed by a joint American and Canadian bi-national board made up of an equal number of American and Canadian representatives, with the head office in Akron, Pa.

From the American point of view, everything seemed to be working fine. But for Canadians there was often a feeling of being the junior partner or the forgotten child.

This was particularly true for international programming, where MCC Canada felt it didn’t have a sufficient voice in decision-making – even though it raised a lot of money for that programming, including large amounts of government funding.

“We weren’t holding hands as equal partners,” said Don Peters, who was executive director of MCC Canada during the time when the two MCCs decided to disband the binational body in favour of two national bodies sharing international programming as equal partners.

People at MCC Canada felt that “although we contributed a lot to the enterprise, our contribution and voice wasn’t really being acknowledged.”

Five years of revisioning

There were other issues, too, including how American Mennonites tended to be more conservative politically than Canadian Mennonites – which meant MCC needed to be more careful about what it said in the U.S. than in Canada on some topics. “There were no-go zones for some issues,” Peters said.

There were also legal issues related to Canadian government funds and the need for a Canadian entity to have direction and control over such funding.

When the subject of doing away with the binational entity came up, some Americans responded negatively, viewing it as a divorce. Peters disagreed. “It wasn’t a divorce, it was more like MCC Canada had grown up and asked for a marriage between two equal partners,” he said.

In 2012, after a five-year re-visioning process, the bi-national board was dissolved and MCC U.S. and MCC Canada were formally established as separate entities to jointly carry out the ministry and mission of the organization.

Through the restructuring, decision-making power and administrative work was equalized between the two MCCs, with leaders in both countries working as partners to direct the relief, development and peace work of the organization.

At the same time, there was some pain. While many former binational positions were transferred to either MCC U.S. or MCC Canada and some new positions added, 31 former binational staff, most of whom worked in the U.S., lost their jobs.

Helpful autonomy

Twelve years later, things are working well between the MCCs in the two countries.

“There is more equality between Canada and the U.S., more joint ownership of programs now,” said Ann Graber Hershberger, executive director of MCC U.S.

Prior to the change, she acknowledged that the former structure “reflected the U.S. more.”

Now, she said, the boards of both organizations in the U.S. and Canada have “a stronger sense of ownership and involvement in MCC’s international programs.”

For Rick Cober Bauman, executive director of MCC Canada, the new model means “there is more clarity on how international program decisions are made . . . there is no bouncing around between boards in different countries.”

It also “provides space for autonomy, gives each of us room for dealing with our different legal, financial and constituency issues,” he said.

“It gives us space to work on our own unique challenges,” added Graber Hershberger, giving the example of the challenge of racism.

The issue, she said, reveals itself in different ways in the two countries – there is more of a focus on Indigenous relations in Canada, while the focus is more on African-American and Latino issues in the U.S.

The arrangement into separate entities enables each MCC to address its own unique challenges when it comes to decolonization and race relations, she noted.

Taking ownership

While pleased with the state of affairs, Cober Bauman and Graber Hershberger note it takes a lot of work to keep things on track.

“We have a high commitment to each other as executive directors,” Cober Bauman said. “Good communication is important.”

One of the unexpected byproducts of the separation is how MCC has internationalized its leadership; country and regional directors are no longer based in North America.

“I sometimes wonder where we would be on the equity journey if we had not made this move,” said Graber Hershberger, noting that almost half of MCC’s country and regional directors are from other countries.

A major goal was to ensure the changes were largely invisible to supporters, Cober Bauman said. “For them, MCC is just a single entity. They just support MCC.”

That doesn’t mean there still aren’t challenges. But both feel things are much better now than in the past, when – to use a metaphor – it was “like MCC was a house but the Americans owned it and the Canadians rented a few rooms in it,” as Cober Bauman put it.

“Now we both own the house and need to share in the upkeep and maintenance. It’s not a landlord-tenant relationship anymore.

“Although that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes tussle over the paint colour and furnishings!”