Community foundations occupy unique niche, says Philanthropy Australia chairman

Community Foundations play a vital role in philanthropy, occupying a unique niche that should be cultivated, the Chairman of Philanthropy Australia recently told the 2010 Community Foundations Forum.

In his address, titled Community Foundations in the Australian Philanthropic Landscape, Bruce Bonyhady focuses on positioning community foundations within the broader philanthropic sector and talks about how his organization is helping the sector grow and have greater impact.

The more than 1,400 community foundations around the world represent grassroots philanthropy, Bonyhady says, and provide a structure through which people can start modestly and give regularly.

In pointing out that measuring impact is the number-one concern for Philanthropy Australia members, he speaks at length about Canada’s national Vital Signs program, calling it “a very useful and exciting development in the field of wellbeing measurement.”

Bonyhady talks up the program’s approach: the fact it relies on community involvement, its reports can be understood by a wide range of readers, can be collated to produce a national snapshot, provide valuable information to the media, and useful guidance in grantmaking.

He adds that the success of Vital Signs in Canada may very well pave the way for its introduction within Australia.

His remarks are worth a read. You can find Bruce Bonyhady’s speech here.

Climate change and your community

By Curt Hall

What does climate change have to do with you and your community? Isn’t the threat years away? Why should we do anything about it now?

Truth is, even if climate change weren’t a threat, taking action on it can be very good for you and your community.

Climate scientists have been ringing the alarm bells about the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change for over 30 years now. But most of us really weren’t aware that climate change might be an issue until Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth in 2006.

Those of us who looked deeper into the issue may have discovered that Canada doesn’t appear to be a huge greenhouse gas contributor. Canada produces only about 2.5 per cent of the earth’s greenhouse gases.

However, we comprise less than 0.5 per cent of the world’s population. That means that per capita, we are one of the three biggest polluters on the planet. (Along with the US and Australia).

But that’s the tar sands, right? We’re just trying to live our lives here. Actually, according to Canada’s Vital Signs, greenhouse gas emissions from private vehicles in this country have risen by almost one-third since the early 1990s.

So what can we do about climate change and will it really make a difference? Actually, there are a lot of things we can do and they will actually benefit us even if this climate challenge didn’t exist at all.

The most beneficial action we can take is to demand and support local suppliers for everything. This can provide much needed employment. Start by demanding local food. Ask your grocer why you can’t buy local carrots in September and tell him or her that you are looking for a grocer that can provide local produce. If that doesn’t work, join a CSA and enjoy Community Supported Agriculture.

The Internet has great potential for enabling local cottage industries that can provide all kinds of goods and services if people just started to ask for them.
More than a dozen Manitoba communities are currently engaged in a Community Lead Emission Reduction (CLER) program. This is based on the Partners for Climate Protection (PCP),  supported by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)

These communities are discovering that they are doing more than reducing their greenhouse gases – they are building networks and friendships. They are pulling together to make their communities better places to live and work. Read more about that here:

You can also:
- Get active: Drive less. Take the bus. Walk more. Ride your bike to work. Start by doing it once. Then try doing it once a week. Before long, you may be doing it all the time.
- Be efficient: If you have to burn fossil fuels, focus on burning as little as possible. You may need to insulate the attic, put the hot water tank on a timer, car pool, trade in the old clunker.
- Consume less: Leave more stuff at the mall and you will keep more money in Canada. You will dramatically reduce the amount of raw material and energy being wasted.

If you do any of these things, don’t keep it to yourself. Tell your family, your co-workers, your neighbours. And tell your elected officials that these things are important to you. You may find yourself in pretty good company.

Curt Hull, P.Eng., is Project Manager with Climate Change Connection in Manitoba

RAPP lends meaning to words for newcomers, and their children, in London

The Reading and Parents Program (RAPP) is helping words make sense to newcomers, and their children, in London, Ont.

LUSO Community Services founded RAPP in April 2008 to meet an obvious need. Indeed, 14 per cent of the City of London’s population were classified as visible minorities in 2006, with 10 per cent of Thames Valley students identifying their first language as something other than English or French, according to London’s Vital Signs.

RAPP is a practical family literacy program that provides parents, caregivers and their children with reading resources to use in their homes. It has received funding from the London Community Foundation, the City of London and Lambeth London Rotary Club.

Each RAPP pack consists of five elements: a quality children’s book, reading and language hints, poems and finger plays, a craft, and age-appropriate activity sheets, all of which reflect the theme of the story book.

Literacy staff meet with parents individually to demonstrate the pack and its use as a tool to encourage emergent literacy in children. Packs can be tailored to individual families to include books for younger and/or older siblings and/or books on topics pertinent and relevant to each family’s unique situation. Participants borrow and exchange the packs bi-weekly. Several of the kits are dual-language books, containing translated materials in a variety of languages, including Spanish, Vietnamese and Arabic.

“We loved the kits – we can find a story in our language (Arabic),” one excited mother told RAPP representatives. “My children loved the book and craft – me, too! I loved it. It helped me learn English.”

The program received a $6,050 Community Fund Grant from London Community Foundation, which is committed to welcoming immigrants and supporting them in the community.

“The Reading and Parent Program encourages literacy skill development through key parent-child interaction and bonding – skills that will be carried throughout childhood, adulthood and life,” says Elisabete Rodrigues, LUSO Community Services Executive Director.

“It’s a benefit to individuals, families, and the community as a whole.”

LUSO Community Services is a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to promoting inclusiveness, well being and the prosperity of the London community. Founded in 1979, it provides a range of programs and services to help newcomers and immigrants of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as well as other disadvantaged populations.

National Philanthropy Day pays tribute to great contributors, lasting contributions

By Skana Gee

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

The quote is from an American – 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt – but it crosses all borders, real and imagined. And it’s worth consideration today, especially, as we mark National Philanthropy Day.

The idea is that on this day we recognize and pay tribute to the great contributions that philanthropy – and those active in the philanthropic community – have made to our lives, our communities, and our world.

Today is the 25th anniversary of National Philanthropy Day, spearheaded by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. It was officially declared in Canada just last year, by the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

I’ll be using some of my time today to think about the amazing work being done coast to coast my members of Community Foundations of Canada, and its thousands of affiliated programs, initiatives and projects.

While I’m quite new to the community foundation movement, my respect and admiration for all of its players is great – I feel I have been welcomed into a family of dedicated, enthusiastic and, most of all, compassionate Canadians who are “doing what they can, with what they have, where they are.”

That drive will be palpable as we gather May 12-14 in Vancouver for CFC Conference 2011, a much-needed opportunity to reflect, reconnect and recharge with colleagues from around the globe.

We’re eagerly anticipating the featured speaker – another U.S. President. Bill Clinton is sure to inspire with his philanthropic message, as are the other plenary speakers, including Naomi Tutu and Bill White, who leads the renowned Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

But mainly it’s a chance for all of us to learn how to be better philanthropists, through professional development, networking and Community Learning Forums, which will see conference-goers visiting venues and organizations funded by Vancouver Foundation.

I’ve become acquainted with such grantees across Canada – and the work they do: what they can, with what they have, where they are – via my communications work on Canada’s Vital Signs.

Some of these impressive efforts include hands-on environmental action by Hamilton Community Foundation’s Youth Advisory Council, a quick response by the Foundation of Greater Montreal to help newly arrived Haitian immigrants, and Vancouver Foundation’s role in establishing the new Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia. Others are also documented in our Vital Signs Impact Stories.

With those in mind, I raise a toast to all of you. Happy National Philanthropy Day!

Skana Gee is Communications Coordinator with Community Foundations of Canada.

Death of long-form census robs funders of ability to gauge success of programs, efforts

By Ernie Ginsler

What’s all the fuss about cancelling the long-form census?

Just because it is “arguable” that a voluntary questionnaire sent to 30 per cent of the population will still give good results – as the federal government claims – does not mean it is true. (The mandatory long-form census went to 20 per cent of the population).

About 370 professional groups and government bodies agree that all we will get from a larger survey, which will under-represent low-income Canadians, immigrants, and other marginalized groups who tend to not respond to voluntary surveys, is a very expensive, unreliable survey.

So what will we lose if the long-form census is cancelled? Governments in Canada at all levels spend a lot of money – probably in excess of a hundred billion dollars each year – on services to improve the lives of Canadians. They help pay for adult literacy programs, immigrant settlement programs, subsidized child care, affordable housing, skills training, education from kindergarten to post-doctoral studies, health services for Aboriginal communities, and much, much more.

This funding will continue to be provided to some extent, but we will lose a significant amount of our capacity to evaluate whether it is producing positive outcomes. We won’t be able to tell whether immigrants are able to use the skills and education they brought to Canada, and we won’t know whether their earnings match their education and training. We won’t know whether the general population in our community has the education needed for the jobs that are being created. We won’t know where to build subsidized child-care centres because we won’t know where people with young children and low incomes are settling. We won’t know where to set up adult English-as-a-Second-Language programs because as new immigrants settle in new neighbourhoods, we won’t know which ones they are moving to.

The loss of the long-form census is of specific interest to community foundations across Canada because of the impact it could have on their annual Vital Signs reports.

I know, because for the past four years I have been the data consultant for Waterloo Region’s Vital Signs. I have also provided consulting to many community-based planning initiatives, including a recently completed 40-year plan to reduce violence in Waterloo Region. I have done research for federal, provincial and municipal levels of government.

All of these plans and reports were heavily dependent on data directly from or dependent on the long-form census. Producing such plans and reports at their current level of comprehensiveness – or anything approximating it – will be utterly impossible.

Governments, community and other foundations, United Ways, and individual donors base their funding on identified needs in their communities. They judge the success of their efforts by measuring positive changes in the lives of those in their communities.

“My gut tells me” or “I think” are not sufficient criteria for making decisions on where to direct money to improve the lives of Canadians. We need solid information and that can only come from having solid, reliable, valid socio-demographic statistics from which to work.

Ernie Ginsler has been actively involved in community-based research and nonprofit governance as a professional and as a university faculty member for almost 40 years. He has taught at York University, the University of Waterloo, and, currently, at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Congregation connected to community through Victoria’s Vital Signs

By Leah Baade

Reverend Allen Saunders is a get-things-done kind of man. He finds a need and he fills it. As lead minister at First Metropolitan United Church, he is full of energy for our community – members of the congregation and the city he lives in.

The church houses the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria (ICA) in the low-income housing complex on the church property. It’s also a stepping-off point for many of the church’s outreach endeavours. From supporting initiatives such as Our Place, Inner-City Dinners and Out of the Rain Shelter for street youth, to recreational outlets for youth in the form of a basketball team, or for drop-in recreation. Still other initiatives focus on the environment and sustainability, health and wellness, music, and youth.

Rev. Saunders leads an active congregation of 627 households at the downtown Victoria church; the 1915 heritage building is a hub of belonging and leadership in our community.

So what’s the connection to the Victoria Foundation? Rev. Saunders regularly bases his Sunday sermons on the findings of Victoria’s Vital Signs.

To coincide with Rights of the Child Day, he highlighted some of Victoria’s challenges and achievements that were identified by our youth respondents. And just last month, his sermon took a serious look at what Victoria graders identified as the top five issues in our community, noting that homelessness, cost of living, addictions, housing and mental illness are all interrelated.

The Vital Signs indicators play a valuable role in how the congregation at First Metropolitan decides where there are challenges that need to be met. They help to prioritize opportunities for outreach. A shortage of funding for the arts in Victoria-area schools means an extra-special opportunity for a music program at the church. Cost-of-living constraints find Rev. Saunders pondering a community kitchen program that would facilitate community building and a sense of accomplishment as participants cook for themselves and each other.

Victoria’s Vital Signs is a key tool for the church in its strategic planning process. While putting together its vision for 2020, First Metropolitan is able to examine future staffing needs and identify the church’s greatest potential for redevelopment.

It’s evident that Rev. Saunders has an inspiring effect on his congregation. Parishioners travel to this church each week from as far away as Sidney and Sooke. First Metropolitan’s message reaches much further than the back pew as he encourages each and every member of the congregation to put their faith into action as soon as they step out the doors.

Leah Baade is Youth in Philanthropy and Social Media Coordinator with Victoria Foundation.

Vancouver Foundation hosts Vitality Sessions to engage business, government, nonprofits, and citizens

By Meriko Kubota

Vancouver Foundation released its Vital Signs report for Metro Vancouver on Tuesday, Oct. 5, along with 15 other community foundations across Canada. To find out how Metro Vancouver is doing, come On the Road to Vitality with us by watching this video.

Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs for Metro Vancouver helps to inform the Foundation’s decisions with respect to grants, community partnerships, organizational collaborations and other program activities. It also serves as a key resource of community knowledge to engage donors, funders and partners, as well as community stakeholders.

The Vital Signs report is created by the community for the community. Many volunteers contributed to the selection of relevant and reliable data. Sharing the Vital Signs information and encouraging its use is integral to our vision of healthy, vibrant and livable communities across British Columbia.

With the support of Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, Vancouver Foundation will be hosting community dialogues, “Vitality Sessions” from November 2010 through March 2011. These Vitality Sessions will be hosted in the six sub-regions of Metro Vancouver:

Our conversations will be co-hosted by community foundations in these sub-regions, engaging business, government, nonprofit, and residents of the regions. The purpose of these Vitality Sessions is to provide a space for conversation and support for positive change in our Metro Vancouver communities.

Please visit our website for more information on Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs for Metro Vancouver and updates on our Vitality Sessions: www.vancouverfoundation.ca/vitalsigns

Meriko Kubota is Manager of the Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs Team.

Doing good for goodness’ sake – building bridges between business, government and philanthropy

By Rahul K. Bhardwaj

How should you give away your money to charity?

Some people who have the wealth and generosity to give back to their community apply their own experience and values to those they want to support and to what form that support should take. This is only natural and can work well for everyone concerned. But, often, it doesn’t work as well as it should.

Let me explain why. Broadly speaking, cities in the developed world are being built on three pillars: the public sector, the private sector, and the philanthropic sector. Historically, each of these has had a very different bottom line. For business, it’s been profits and money. For governments, it’s security and social cohesion. And for non-profits and charities, it’s the quality of life.

But, in the past 20 years, each of these three sectors has begun to merge and align with the others. Governments are much more focused on the bottom line. Many corporations, meanwhile, have a mission to satisfy more than their shareholders and customers; they need to prove they’re good community citizens.

The world of philanthropy has changed, too. It used to only deal with charities and the people and organizations that supported them. Today, however, philanthropy is not only playing a larger role in society, it’s become the meeting place for government and business and donors.

Just ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffett if the worlds of business, government and philanthropy are aligning. They’re not just giving back extraordinary amounts from their own vast fortunes; they’re changing what it means to give. In doing so, they’re reshaping the very definition of philanthropy. For many people of means, living the good life has changed to living a good life and ensuring that others do, as well.

With the Gates-Buffett “billionaire challenge,” the world’s wealthiest people are moving philanthropy directly from the boardroom to the barrios, doing what governments used to do, or never could do, stretching what it means to be a large corporation, a senior executive, a foundation, and a philanthropist.

But this transformation is not just limited to billionaires: we see it in Toronto, for instance, with families who give as little as $25,000 to set up a family foundation within the Toronto Community Foundation. Every member of that family is involved in determining where their philanthropy should go.

That bottom line is morphing and merging, so more non-profits are run more like businesses than ever before.

But they shouldn’t be run as businesses. What’s more, the overlapping shouldn’t be a one-way trip. If you feel charities should run more like businesses, then surely businesses can work better if they’re run in some ways like charities.

To those people who say the business approach is the only way to run government or philanthropy, let me say, no, business can help explain and inform government and the social sector, but not replace them. When business tries to turn society into a business, things get out of whack. Or put more elegantly, these three sectors become misaligned.

We see the cost of this misalignment particularly in the United States, where the political gridlock has an iron grip on any progress the country hopes to make, especially economically. The reason is that the competitive urge – the basis of much of business – can at times completely overwhelm the co-operative impulse. The result is that healthy debate about the future of cities, for example, is replaced by clenched fists instead of outstretched hands.

The situation is not as dire in Canada or Brazil.

Competition – the ability to compete and win – has built much of Toronto and Sao Paulo. But the way forward is not through competition. Or at least not just competition. It’s through collaboration. Lots of people know how to “do competition.” But knowing how to do “co-operation” is much harder because it’s new and we don’t have the tools and skills to do it well. This just means we need to find a way to reward co-operation.

We need to stop thinking of our sectors as walls, but rather as bridges. If we can find ways to align our interests, to start by finding what we share rather than what we don’t, business will prosper all the more, the social sector will better serve more people, and government will improve the lives of its citizens.

When people give money to charity and use the financial bottom line as their sole determinant of who gets that money, that’s doing good for personal sake. Or for corporate sake. Or even for political sake. But it’s not for goodness’ sake.

We can only do that when we join with others in the journey, and only when knowledge is added to philanthropy to improve society.

Rahul K. Bhardwaj is President and CEO of Toronto Community Foundation. He gave this address during the recent Sao Paulo Foundations’ Association 5th annual conference. This commentary also appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Focusing on what’s important, through Vital Signs

By Marina Boulos-Winton

Experiencing my first launch of Greater Montreal’s Vital Signs was exhilarating. So many people attended, the presentations made by the panellists were remarkable, and the questions and comments from media representatives and the audience were serious and insightful!

We decided to host our October 5 Vital Signs event at the Auditorium of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, a perfect location.

In keeping with the sheer magnitude of this public library, it serves and is accessed by people from all walks of life, including those who use it for their employment search, those who need to learn English or French, those with young children who need a leisure activity, students of all levels, and those either down on their luck or very fortunate, who simply go to the library to pass the time.

At any rate, libraries are an essential part of having an educated and literate population. Hence it was an ideal place to gather our distinguished panellists (Lise Bertrand, Simon Brault, Aïda Kamar, Sidney Ribaux) and an audience of close to 200, which included funders and the non-profit community, to discuss what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be fixed.

Greater Montreal’s poverty rate is 18 per cent, versus the national average of 13.5 per cent. The city has the second largest population in Canada, yet it’s ranked 20th for level of income. Francophones in Montreal have some of the lowest high school graduation rates, and we rank 29th out of 31 among major North American cities for people attaining a bachelor degree.

While we still rank high in quality of life, will we become a society where the gap between rich and poor becomes even wider, and where no new wealth is being created? Will we have the resources to innovate, compete and create pportunities for ourselves, for future generations and for those newly arrived in our city? Will we become mere transients as we seek jobs elsewhere?

For now, Vital Signs gives the Foundation of Greater Montreal, and those who create funds with us – much like mini-foundations within a foundation – the ability to focus on what’s important, and how together we can invest where it will make a difference.

We hope shortly to announce a partnership to alleviate the rate of high school drop-outs, and in the new year, our philanthropic focus for 2011.

Stay tuned between now and our next Vital Signs report in October 2011 …

Marina Boulos-Winton is President & CEO of the Foundation of Greater Montreal.

Want to help your community? Abandon your comfort bubble!

By Melissa Ricci

Belonging to the Hamilton Community Foundation‘s YAC (Youth Advisory Council) has really given me a unique insight into the meaning of the word “community.”

It’s not a secret that Hamilton has its fair share of problems involving poverty. When I was younger, I would try to avoid going downtown because I thought it was scary – it was not the sheltered suburb I was used to playing dolls in. People used food banks, asked for spare change, and stayed overnight at shelters. I was terrified because it was all unknown to me and I thought I would get hurt.

When I was 15, a teacher invited me to go to the first YAC meeting of the year. I got my mom to drive me down to Jackson Square, in the heart of downtown Hamilton, so I could attend. Representatives explained the grant-making process and gave us a brief outline of what we would be doing over the course of the year. I met some new friends and left. I admit, I was confused as to how meeting in a boardroom would make any difference in the community.

But the longer I stayed with the YAC, the more grant proposals I read, and the more community visits I participated in, the more I learned about Hamilton. It had always been rather unknown to me: I stayed in my happy bubble and ignored everything new. Now I was learning about its thriving arts community, about church groups and youth groups organizaing breakfast programs, street hockey leagues, services for newly immigrated students.

I got involved, I met people, and I saw the true face of the “scary” city I had avoided for so long. I loved every minute of it.

I’ve lived in Hamilton my entire life. But it wasn’t until I started working with the Community Foundation that I really began to call Hamilton my home.

One of the most important things I’ve learned, and that I believe everyone should learn, is the importance of getting outside your comfort bubble. To truly make an impact on the problems in a community, to truly improve the lives of children, to eradicate poverty, to help others become involved, and to help those who may need it, you need to know your city. You need to get involved. You need to make your city your home and care for it as you would care for your own family.

Getting out of the house and simply learning is the first step to helping. Go!

Melissa Ricci served on the YAC for three years, and as co-chair in 2009-10. She now studies Arts and Science at McMaster University. She likes reading, cake decorating, volunteering, and the Hamilton Community Foundation, and hopes to one day found her own charitable organization.