Shared Services

In rural communities, every dollar counts, and every hour matters. Our Shared Services model offers flexible, reliable support across multiple areas, so you can focus on serving your community, not managing administrative overload.

Unlock Efficiency with Our Shared Services Solution

In rural communities, every dollar counts, and every hour matters. Our Shared Services model offers flexible, reliable support across multiple areas, so you can focus on serving your community, not managing administrative overload.

What We Offer – Practical, People-First Services

 

📜 HR Policy Support

Clear, up-to-date policies help protect your organization and guide decision-making.

  • Help drafting and updating policies tailored to rural realities
  • Policy creation, for existing organizations or newly created organizations
  • Compliance with provincial/federal requirements
  • Templates and plain-language guides for staff and volunteers
  • Support with developing onboarding processes

👥 Recruitment Support

Finding the right people in smaller communities can be tough—we help expand your reach.

  • Job description development
  • Candidate screening and interview coordination

🎉 Event Management

From community gatherings, to AGMs, to conferences, we make events easy.

  • Planning and logistics support
  • Vendor coordination
  • Budget, risk management, and follow-up evaluations

🗂️ Administrative Support

When you’re wearing many hats, we help to lessen your load.

  • Document creation, filing, and tracking
  • Meeting coordination
  • Reporting and data entry
  • Operational suppor

📁 Project Design & Project Management

Local initiatives need strong coordination. We bring organization and follow-through. We can help set-up your project for success with a detailed project plan for your team to execute, or we can support throughout the project. 

  • Activity & financial reporting for funders
  • Work planning, goal setting, and scope identification
  • Setting timelines, developing budgets, and resource planning

💰 Financial Management

Strong financial stewardship keeps organizations running efficiently.

  • Bookkeeping
  • Budget creation
  • Financial reports

🧭 Strategic Planning

Plan for the future with confidence. We facilitate strategy sessions that lead to action.

  • Vision and goal development
  • Community engagement, facilitation and consultation
  • Custom strategic plans for Boards and Councils

🤝 Facilitation Services

Whether it’s a Board retreat, public engagement session, or internal planning, we keep conversations focused and productive.

  • Facilitators with rural experience
  • Neutral, respectful facilitation
  • Outcome-driven sessions that can chart a path forward

📝 Grant Writing

Supporting funding opportunities through planning and writing.

  • Identifying funding opportunities
  • Support with writing and editing compelling proposals
  • Support in designing feasible projects & project plans, including budgets 
  • Grant submission support

Reach out to us and let’s talk!

As a non-profit, we understand capacity challenges and funding restrictions. We’ve spent over a decade refining our processes and now we want to share our expertise to build your capacity.

Get a Quote

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We engaged RDN to complete a full review and update of our organizational policies at a time when we simply didn’t have the internal capacity to take it on. From start to finish, they were easy to work with, asked thoughtful and insightful questions, and delivered exactly what we needed—on time and on budget. Their expertise and efficiency made a complex process feel manageable, and we could not have done it without them. We would absolutely recommend RDN to any organization looking for knowledgeable, dependable, and professional support.


Stephanie Miller, Lloydminster Region Housing Group

Shared Services

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The Shelter Pulse Database Project enabled rural and remote shelters to work together in providing trauma-informed policies and procedures for violence against women shelters in Canada. The experts from the field that gathered to share their knowledge to the Shelter Pulse Database make this new tool invaluable. Under the leadership of the Rural Development Network, many partner shelters contributed to the outcome.


Cindy Easton – Mountain Rose Women’s Shelter Association (MRWSA)

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As a previous participant in the Enabling Housing Choice project with RDN, we are excited to be making progress on key recommendations outlined in RDN’s report – Attracting Diverse Housing Development in Mayerthorpe. This report has been critical to understanding our community’s diverse housing needs, and has equipped us with  community-informed insights on how to address these needs.


Karen St. Martin – Town of Mayerthorpe

Enabling Housing Choice, Housing

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Understanding the significance of having people with lived experience and Indigenous people being at the tables of all conversations – especially those with decision making authority. The value of community, and looking after ourselves so we can serve others. That there is a community of people who I can learn from and share with in my work to serve my community.


Training Participant

National Coordinated Access

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This training was so invigorating, refreshing and very much needed. The intimate setting, I feel, made a huge difference. We left the event with a deeper understanding and a strengthened network. We were reminded to focus on the capacity that we have, not necessarily all we would love to be able to do, and take it in steps. Thank you, thank you, thank you!


Coordinated Access Training Participant

National Coordinated Access

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Creating a sense of home is so much more than just a building and the Innovation Fund gave SHI and the YWCA creative space to think differently about our approach to design. Living in Banff National Park also strongly influenced our commitment to net zero targets. Belonging, security, connection, affordability, community pride-these are all factors that have influenced how we developed the Courtyard project.


Connie MacDonald- Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Banff

Housing

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We are forever grateful to work together on this insight for our project. If not for the support from RDN on this we would not be where we are today! Our dream was to attain transitional, affordable and market housing in our community. This turned into a goal and now a reality. This housing continuum of care will be able to meet people’s needs while recognizing what their housing realities mean in a rural perspective. RDN has walked along with us and been able to connect and answer many questions, concerns and thoughts during this time.


Rebecca Wells – Executive Director, Wellspring Family Resource Center

Housing

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We brainstormed and some said nature and multiculturalism because we are a multicultural building, with people from many different countries and ethnicities here. So we wanted something to represent that, and the mural will make us a landmark in the community as there i s alot of foot-traffic in the community.


St. Joachim Tenant on the Community Mural

Placemaking for Inclusion

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There were people there who don’t normally show up to different functions. Everybody was doing something somewhere and were happy to participate and help others


St. Joachim Tenant on the Mural-Painting Event

Placemaking for Inclusion

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The atmosphere was quite welcoming for everyone. One person said they had been here for 20 years and this was the best event they had seen. The busyness of the room encouraged cliques to break up and this increase mingling


St. Joachim Tenant on the Mural-Painting Event

Placemaking for Inclusion

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It really brought the community together. Overall it was a great success. We also really enjoyed the painting, it was a great opportunity for those who had never painted before.


Senior Tenant, La Société des Manoirs Saint-Joachim

Placemaking for Inclusion

What We Do

Check out our current projects and initiatives that support Canada’s rural, remote, and Indigenous communities. Need help in your community? We also offer a variety of services to kick-start your own projects.

View Our Work and Programs
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