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Funder Focus: Noni Heine and Laurie Kolada of the Wild Rose Foundation
April 1, 2002
by Nicole Zummach
This month in our continuing series of interviews with some of Canada's leading funders, we feature the Wild Rose Foundation, a lottery-funded agency which distributes approximately $4 million annually to nonprofit agencies within Alberta. CharityVillage spoke with executive director Noni Heine and Laurie Kolada, coordinator of volunteer initiatives, about the foundation's efforts to increase volunteerism in the province and the challenges of being affiliated with government.
CharityVillage: Why is volunteerism such a big focus for the foundation and how are you working to foster and promote it in Alberta?
Noni Heine: In Alberta volunteers play a very significant role in three different ways. First, they have an ongoing responsibility, as they do in most other communities and provinces, to make things happen, whether that's in sports, or the arts, or community services. Those things all happen because of volunteers. Secondly, in Alberta we've had a great transition in the last few years. Things that were traditionally run by government have been transferred to the nonprofit sector. For example, all of our children's services are now managed through community nonprofit volunteer boards. Our original health authority, which includes all hospitals and medical care in the province, is also managed through seventeen regional nonprofit boards. The third thing is that we have always placed a great deal of emphasis on the role of volunteers in terms of hosting major events; the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the recent track and field championships. These are very significant responsibilities that would not happen without a large commitment to volunteers and the understanding that volunteers can accomplish wonderful things. It is a very strong province when it comes to volunteerism, and we have a lot of things in place to support them.
We provide grants to organizations to support projects that will help to increase their efficiency and self-reliance. That might mean giving them the resources to create a paid position for a volunteer coordinator. It might involve helping to renovate or buy new equipment for their facility so that they can rent it out more easily and be self-sustainable. In addition, we have some new initiatives, including our Partnership Initiative, which is a resource book and workshop series on building partnerships with other organizations. So far it has been very well received and we are just doing a second part to that now. We've also embarked on a research project on technology, looking at how we can improve the technology capabilities of the nonprofit sector. We've just done two pilots in rural Alberta to see how well we can provide services free of charge to the nonprofit sector to assist in meeting their technology needs.
CV: What types of services would you hope to offer?
Laurie Kolada: The pilot project right now is focusing on technology audits, identifying what organizations may not realize they could benefit from. Often folks in the nonprofit world are just getting used to technology resources, and perhaps not maximizing them. Some of the training has to do with actually taking a look at the current realities of technology at these agencies; looking beyond what they may have imagined is possible and determining whether to purchase new or upgrade; the Internet and designing web pages; and all kind of elements of technology that folks just haven't, perhaps, paid enough attention to.
CV: What kinds of projects are grant recipients of your Youth Initiative Program undertaking and how do those projects address the issue of youth volunteerism and community participation?
NH: We provide resources to the communities so they can get youth together to make things happen. It might be communities that want to have youth leadership events or activities where they're going to set up youth leadership conferences, or facilitation training, or things like that where youth are introduced to the social sector and take a greater level of responsibility. We have some fairly high level youth in the province that we have done quite a bit of work with us as role models and mentors and such; one in the technology sector, others in the programming area.
CV: Do you do any evaluation or outcome measurement of programs you fund?
NH: Yes, being affiliated with government, we are heavily into performance measures and outcome measures, to the point where we also expect that from our grant applicants. So, not only are we required to provide that for each of our program areas, doing data collection in terms of the rate of volunteerism and that sort of stuff, we also ask our grant recipients to explain what they are going to accomplish and how they measure it. That has been quite a transition for some of them.
CV: Do you have you own figures on volunteerism in Alberta that differ from those in the National Survey of Giving Volunteering and Participating (NSGVP)?
NH: Yes we do, and ours are quite different. We do independent research through another research company, asking a number of questions about levels of volunteerism. It said 72% of Albertans volunteer. [Note: According to the 2000 NSGVP, Alberta's volunteer rate is 39%]
LK: The reason for the difference, in our opinion, is because we do measure some level of informal volunteering. Some people, as you may know, say they don't volunteer but they do coach minor hockey and we count those coaches and many others like them.
CV: In a way, your role is like that of a community foundation, supporting other organizations that will work within the community, but your funding comes from government sources. What challenges are associated with operating a government foundation such as this and how does your work differ from that of a community foundation?
NH: One of the biggest things is that, as a community or a private foundation, anything they do is viewed as positive. They can set themselves to have any kind of focus they want. I think the difference in having a government-related foundation is that we are still using government money. So whether it's lottery dollars or tax dollars, we have a responsibility to use that money in a way that best benefits Albertans. We work really hard at having a kind of performance measure for ourselves. Which is, how is the province going to be a better pla ce as a result of us being here? What are we trying to do in Alberta that enhances it? So we really do emphasize things that we have to accomplish. But it's not just a matter of giving away money. A good example is how we came up with this technology audit idea in the first place. We are giving all sorts of grants for technology but we are just not convinced that they actually know what to do with all of this technology. Our job is not just to make sure that every nonprofit has proper computer equipment, but to try and move the technological capabilities of nonprofits up several notches so that they get the best value possible.
CV: Is there any input from the public about what activities the Wild Rose Foundation undertakes? Have there been any special challenges to overcome associated with that?
NH: Alberta is really into public input from a great many perspectives, and we're involved in that in the government side of our branch. We are finding out what the people of Alberta think should be happening and how they think the money can best be used. However, we don't see ourselves as being the only people in this game in this province. We do a lot of work in terms of partnerships and bringing others to the table. How can we move forward collectively? What does the long-term picture look like in the province and what role do all of the partners play? We go all around the province holding public meetings in communities and we invite all sorts of folks, people who already use our services and people who don't, and we ask, 'how can we best provide service to you?' We do that pretty much on an ongoing basis.
CV: What kind of response do you get in terms of the work of the Wild Rose Foundation, what people want to see, or what they hope you will achieve? Do you have a long-term vision of where you are headed?
NH: I hate to say it, but one of the long-term visions that the community has for the Wild Rose Foundation is for us to have more money. That is a bit of a problem because we have such an important nonprofit sector. This is probably our biggest challenge, that people sometimes think that if you have volunteer groups running things that they don't need any help or resources to make things happen. Just because they are volunteers doesn't mean they don't need to have training, that they don't need to know how to do business planning, or talk to the media, or any other kinds of skills.
CV: How will the cancellation of the Community Lottery Board's grant program affect your foundation and the sector as a whole?
NH: Regrettably, we have no additional money, however we have been mentioned several times in the media as being an alternative to the Community Lottery Board. It has been said that we have $56 million dollars to spend and that is just not the case. We are very pleased with the direction we are going at the present time so our intent is to continue in that direction and work with the nonprofit sector, either to help them with their fundraising capacity or in seeking other options for funding.Noni Heine has been executive director of the Wild Rose Foundation for the past three years, and is also director of the Government of Alberta's volunteer services branch. Laurie Kolada has worked at the foundation for seven years. For more information about the Wild Rose Foundation, visit: www .cd.gov.ab.ca/all_about_us/commissions/wild_rose.
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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