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Funder Focus: Richard Mulcaster and the Vancouver Foundation
February 4, 2002
by Nicole Zummach
CharityVillage is pleased to present the second in a series of interviews with some of Canada's leading funders. This month we feature the Vancouver Foundation, which was formally established in 1950, and is one of the oldest community foundations in North America. CharityVillage spoke with president and CEO Richard Mulcaster about some of the foundation's innovative projects, and how it is working to build stronger communities throughout British Columbia.
CharityVillage: In the foundation's value statements it states that you are working as a catalyst to strengthen community capacity and volunteerism. Particularly in light of the recent economic downturn, how does the Vancouver Foundation achieve this?
Richard Mulcaster: We feel that we can improve the quality of life for people in British Columbia by improving or building strength in communities. We believe it's the nonprofit organizations, or the voluntary organizations that improve the quality of life and our support to them helps us realize our mission. The Vancouver Foundation itself does not run programs, we support organizations that are in business to do that. We?re good at looking at the strength within organizations to take on additional opportunities in the community, as well as to take on the various needs within the community. It's sort of a balance between need and opportunity.
CV: In 2000, you launched a pilot a project to strengthen community foundations across BC. I was wondering what the outcome of the project was and if there are plans to expand or make it permanent?
RM: Last year we took $400,000 and divided it between the various other community foundations within the province, for them to regrant in their communities and build a portfolio. These community foundations are wonderful little resources, but sometimes they struggle when they don't have any money to make grants with. They've got good people, the right boards and everything in place, but for them to have more of an impact they can use this money in their grants program.
It works well in the communities, it works well for those community foundations, but for Vancouver Foundation it works well too, because we are using an existing resource within the community to deliver grants appropriately and as close to the grassroots as we can. We think it's a very efficient and effective way of for us to help those local communities in the best way. The trend of regranting is large and we see that going forward, that even government might find community foundations to be a good way, maybe even a better way, for them to meet community needs, rather than trying to decide from Ottawa which organizations in northern Saskatchewan should be supported.
CV: Another of your value statements says that you believe in "encouraging and nurturing innovation and managing the risks inherent in creative philanthropy". How would you define "creative philanthropy" and how are you encouraging it in you organization?
RM: It is often the case with government assessments of requests for money, that they want to ensure there is minimal risk and that there is a service that is absolutely going to be provided. Government really gets beaten up when they do risky funding. Sometimes it's because it was done poorly, but the fact is that someone has to take a chance on some new and innovative ideas. We believe that community foundations and Vancouver Foundation particularly, has a responsibility to support innovation in the community and to take that risk, but to manage that risk appropriately so our donors are not feeling that we're reckless with their support. But they also want to see that we are making a difference, that we're pushing on the edge, and willing in some cases to take a failure. Individuals don't want to take a risk and very often corporations don't want to be seen doing that either.
CV: Can you give me an example of an innovative project the foundation has been involved with that has been successful?
RM: One appropriate example is the Vancouver Arts Stabilization Team (VAST). Back about 10 years ago many of our major arts organizations in the country were in very difficult financial straits, some were close to bankruptcy, some were going bankrupt, there were big bailouts and so forth. We did a lot of research and there was a model, the National Arts Stabilization Program in New York, that was helping organizations to pay down their deficit on a matching basis and then setting up a working capital surplus so that they wouldn't need to go back to the bank.
We brought the people from New York to Vancouver and started meeting first with the major funders in Vancouver, the governments, other foundations, the corporations and so on. Then we met with the major arts organizations, same presentation, same reaction. The next morning we met with the major arts funders and the major arts organizations together and said, 'okay, we’ve all had a look at this, everyone seems to think it’s pretty good, do you want to do it in Vancouver?'
It’s in its sixth year now, it still has a few more years to go and the organizations have been paying down deficits and working hard. They were also provided with technical assistance, the best consultants we’ve got. These are people that went in and spend real time, billable time, with these arts organizations to help them with strategic planning, business plans and all the various things they needed to be as good as they could be.
So that has all happened and is happening, and it is a very successful program. Our challenge now is to look to the future to say, 'well, this program has been successful, we’ve learned a lot, now how can we develop the program beyond the arts and into the rest of the nonprofit sector', because everyone has the same basic needs. We took a fair risk on that program and I guess we will take another risk and see where it goes in its next stage.
CV: Tell me a bit about the Youth Philanthropy Council, how it came about and what the outcomes of this council have been to date.
RM: The Youth and Philanthropy Council started about six years ago. We make grants around the province and in various communities, for example we get an application from a small town in northern BC, and I am making this up. The adults are quite worried about the young people, who are hanging around at the 7-11, smoking cigarettes, playing video games, swearing at cars when they drive by, being kids. They will often come to the conclusion that it's because the kids don't really have anything to do. They all say why don't we build a teen centre, if they had a teen centre they could do all kinds of things? So they get on with building a teen centre, raising money, applying to Vancouver Foundation for part of it, going to the community and getting stuff donated. Lo and behold, we get an invitation to the ribbon cutting for the new teen centre in the local town. We're all standing out there waiting to cut the ribbon and look across at the 7-11 where all the kids are still smoking and swearing at cars. It is not their project, they're not part of it.
In that same town maybe the young people, who really know their needs and know what they want, realize are being chased off the streets with our skateboards'. What they need is a skateboard park. How does a funding body figure that out? The young people are really the ones who get it. So we thought in developing this program, Youth in Philanthropy, that it would allow young people to make the real decisions about where the money goes for youth driven programs.
We got the committee together and said, ‘okay, here is your budget, here is sort of how we operate’, and away they went. They are incredible grant makers, so rigorous. They go and meet with organizations and they are young people talking to young people. Their granting record is phenomenal, they manage risk well but they take risks. It has been very successful, and we will continue it. We’ve encouraged other community foundations in the province and across Canada to do the same thing. It is an opportunity for young people to engage in philanthropy in a very meaningful way, and a very responsible way, and it is something they will never stop doing I think.
CV: Community foundations differ greatly from other types of foundations in terms of how funds are managed and allocated. What are some of the unique challenges that arise for this type of foundation and have those challenges changed over time?
RM: The community foundation movement is a relatively new movement in Canada and I'd say, within Canada we've learned a lot from the community foundation movement in the U.S. We Canadianized what we have learned from the Americans and developed a network of the Community Foundations of Canada which is our national body located in Ottawa.
Community foundations here and in the United States, are the fastest growing form of philanthropy, growing faster in size and percentage of growth than any other institutional form of giving. Before Christmas there were about 106 community foundations in Canada, ten years ago there were 50 or so.
CV: Why do you think there has been such growth?
RM: I think communities across the country are looking for ways to become less dependent on the vagaries of government funding and more able to have some sense of direction and control of how they can develop in their own style and their own way in communities. If you look at the demographics in the country as people are aging, we all have heard about the trillion dollars, or whatever the right number is, that will change hands intergenerationally in the next 10 or 15 years. A lot of that, people would prefer to leave in the form of an endowment, a fund, or a foundation, something that will go on permanently working in the community.
That’s the reason community foundations are growing, and I think they are growing as well because they are effective. If you take the whole community foundation idea and boil it down to one word, it’s really ‘trust’. Who can you really trust? And not just today, but 50 years, 100 year from now. What entity can you leave your money to? Community foundations are set up in a way that we are a trust, we have legal trusts with all those people who leave money to us, but we are also trusted by communities to do appropriate kinds of grant making with other people’s money. And we are trusted to be able to invest other people’s money appropriately. So all of these things together come down to that one word and that’s more valuable, perhaps harder to find even, than money.
CV: What is on the horizon for the Vancouver Foundation in 2002?
RM: We will continue to work in support of the other community foundations in the province. Our trust, our faith in the future, is really based in the strength of the nonprofit sector to continue to play an important role. In British Columbia with the recent government cutbacks, what is the role of the Vancouver Foundation in meeting community needs in a time of a fairly dramatic reductions in government funding? Clearly that is going to be our challenge going forward.
Our job is not to run in and stand in the breach of government. A more appropriate role for us is to work with community organizations to figure out ways of meeting the needs in different forms. Community groups are very good at it. People say ‘there are going to be community groups going out of business all over the place’. Not likely, there will be some groups that are cut and that will leave, but groups are becoming less dependant on government funding and I think the trend is more back into community and we feel that is probably the biggest challenge for the sector, in British Columbia at least. We will be looking at the new deck of cards that we are playing with and how we can be most appropriate in our work in that area.Richard Mulcaster has been with the Vancouver Foundation for 21 years, and has been president and CEO for the last eleven years. For more information about the Vancouver Foundation, visit: www.vancouverfoundation.bc.ca.
Is there a Canadian funder that you would like to hear more about? If you have a suggestion for a future Funder Focus interview, please e-mail help@charityvillage.com
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