Over the past several years, the Centre has invested time, resources, and expertise to strengthen its impact in the digital space. Through tests conducted across different communication projects and through the support of external consultants, we explored what works (and what doesn’t) for the Centre in terms of web strategy, search engine marketing, and social media outreach.
This article offers a brief overview of our observations and sets the stage for a webinar taking place on February 25, 2026, which will explore the results in more detail using a case study format. Through this initiative, the Centre aims to share what it has learned through experimentation and encourage broader adoption of these tools across the sector to strengthen its digital presence. The webinar will also give participants the opportunity to share their own experiences and enrich the discussion.
Why increase the sector’s digital footprint?
A 2025 study conducted by Abacus Data, funded by the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada (CHF Canada), highlights a key insight: when community housing is clearly explained, public support increases from 50% to 73%.
The data paints a clear picture. Nearly three quarters of respondents (73%) support co-operative and nonprofit housing models, and 60% believe their communities do not have enough of them. In addition, 61% want governments to make these models a priority.
This support is both philosophical and practical: for many, these models represent affordable, stable solutions that support community life. People also recognize their capacity to limit the influence of large for-profit landlords, whom they perceive as a factor driving affordability challenges.
Our communications must tap into this interest in sustainable solutions and shine a light on the sector’s initiatives, especially in today’s information ecosystem, which is overwhelmingly digital. According to Statistics Canada, 80% of the population uses the internet to get information, and 24% get their information through social media.
To advance the collective goal of achieving 20% community housing, we believe the entire sector must leverage these digital tools to strengthen its visibility.
What the Centre has tested, and what the sector can learn from it
To strengthen the sector’s impact, it is essential to master the digital levers that allow organizations to be found, understood, and connected to the audiences they aim to reach. This is exactly what we will present in the webinar “Strengthening digital strategy, amplifying impact: Lessons from the Centre’s practices.”
Over the past years, the Centre has rethought its web and social media approaches in depth. The redesign of our website illustrates this shift: conceived as a strategic entry point, it aims to ensure intuitive navigation, improved discoverability, and simplified access to content, services, tools, and funds. Thanks to SEO improvements and a coherent drive-to-web strategy, where our social media channels, newsletters, and campaigns all direct toward optimized pages, we have seen a clear increase in traffic and engagement.
Our social media practices have also evolved. More structured planning, adapted formats, and rigorous performance analysis allow us to better understand what resonates with sector audiences and to adjust our efforts accordingly. This continuous learning approach has become central to our digital strategy.
Some practices proved especially valuable, including the large-scale digital campaign deployed for PLANCHER. While it generated significant traffic, its greatest value lies in the lessons learned: understanding new audiences, testing internal advertising capacity, and identifying the tactics that truly work when targeting highly specialized groups.
Along the same lines, our experimentation with the Google Ads Grant program has allowed us to explore the real potential of paid search at zero cost. Early results show more qualified targeting and considerable potential for nonprofit organizations.
Webinar: sharing lessons to strengthen the sector
The webinar will present concrete learnings, pitfalls to avoid, and practical, immediately applicable insights for any organization seeking to increase its digital impact, even with limited resources. It will also foster open discussion between practitioners and experts in the field.
Our goal is to help shorten the “exploration phase” that many organizations face, a phase when the cost-effort-benefit ratio is often difficult to sustain. By sharing the results of our practices, we hope to strengthen the sector’s digital capacity and, ultimately, its overall impact.
Strengthening digital strategy, amplifying impact: Lessons from the Centre’s practices
Date: February 25, 2026
Time: 1:00 p.m. (ET)
Format: Presentation + open discussion
This free webinar is the fourth in the Centre’s knowledge-sharing webinar series. We will cover:
- The strategies that improved the discoverability of our services and content.
- The results of our advertising campaigns, both paid and free.
- The lessons learned from experimenting with accessible tools.
- The digital levers that can help the sector increase its visibility.
