Funder Focus: David Cohen and the Jewish Foundation of
Manitoba
June 3, 2002
by Nicole Zummach
This month in our continuing series of interviews with
some of Canada's
leading funders, we feature the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba,
which was founded in 1964 to ensure the future of Winnipeg's Jewish
community and support its causes. CharityVillage spoke with executive
director David Cohen about the foundation's
dedication to connecting
with community and some of the successful programs that are helping
to achieve this.
CharityVillage: The foundation seems to operate very much
like a community foundation. How does it differ?
David Cohen: For all intents and purposes we are the same; our
mandate is the same; as a registered charity we are the same. We've
had an ongoing chat with the Community Foundations of
Canada as to membership
but their definition of 'community foundation' is by
geographic region.
We are not defined by geographic region; we are defined
more by ethnic
community. But beyond that, everything we do is the same.
Our mandates
and mission statements are pretty similar and our
regulatory responsibilities
are the same as relates to CCRA rules and those kinds of things.
CV: Most of your funds are distributed throughout Manitoba. What
kinds of projects and organizations do you support outside
of the province?
DC: Well, we only support them when they are
donor-advised funds
or through a bequest, where a donor in his or her will has asked us
to support organizations that are outside Manitoba. We don't receive
grant applications from outside Manitoba so anything that deals with
our undesignated pool of dollars is distributed within the
province.
CV: When organizations are seeking funding, how
do you prefer
that they contact you?
DC: We have a grant application form on our web site. We have a
grant process and a special committee that deals with grants. We have
a scholarship program and those application forms are also on the web
site. We also have a Women's Endowment Fund that we started a number
of years ago. They have a separate grants committee dealing
with applications
to distribute funds from their pool of dollars to support
women's issues
in the province of Manitoba.
CV: How did the Women's Endowment Fund come about?
DC: It started about seven or eight years ago in my
discussions
with a number of people in the community about the issue of trying to
identify the reality of women and philanthropy, the fact that women
are making their own decisions, are involved with their
financial well
being. There are some who are married and want to be independent of
their husbands' decisions and others who are single and
want to be involved
in charitable issues, and the manner in which women
generally make decisions
about their charitable giving is fundamentally different
than men.
At our first event, where we really had no idea of the
interest we would
have, we drew some 250 women, ranging from their early
twenties to their
early eighties. But what was most significant was the fact that many
women who were there were those who traditionally had not
been involved
in Jewish communal affairs, and I think that was because the agenda
was different. The kinds of projects we said we would be willing to
support were broadly based, dealing with family issues,
domestic issues
and abuse issues, counseling issues, gay and lesbian
issues, all those
kinds of issues out there that the community generally has not dealt
with in a narrow sense. Now we have about 430 individuals
who have given
us $100 or more, and the pool of money in the Women's Endowment Fund
is now in excess of $200,000.
CV: You offer many options to your donors. What do you
think attracts
donors to your foundation?
DC: Well we have established a fairly low dollar amount as the
threshold to open a fund, only $100. We have done that for a specific
reason in that we wanted to be open and accessible to the broad based
community. We did not want to make this elitist. We did not want to
make it into a situation where only those who have a
significant capacity
to give money do so. We feel it's broadening the base for the future.
We do a huge amount of tribute cards where people will send cards for
$15 or $20. They begin to familiarize themselves with the foundation;
they get our annual report and our mailings and who knows where that
is going to lead to down the road.
I can tell you a little story of a woman a number of years ago whose
husband passed away. She opened a small fund of a few hundred dollars
and sent tribute cards. Every few weeks she sent another $20 to $30
dollars worth of cards. In a few years she built her fund
up from $500
to $800. Then the woman passed away. About three months later I got
a call from a woman who happened to be the daughter and who is living
in Southern Ontario. She said, 'I've been living away from Winnipeg
for a long time. Tell me about the foundation. My mother kept sending
you all this money. What is it all about?'
So I sent her an annual report and told her who we were and what we
do and all that kind of stuff. About a month or two later,
I get a call
from a lawyer saying that the daughter wants to include the
foundation
in her will. If the mother hadn't done anything with her $10 and $20,
we would have never made that contact. We've tried to be
open. It creates
a different environment here but the nature of our community is such
that I think you have to be, excuse the cliche, 'user friendly' and
make it easy for people to connect.
We have another program called the Endowment Book of Life, which has
also been a terrific way of connecting with the community.
We are gathering
community history, stories which are quite fascinating. They tell us
about the fabric of the Jewish community over the last 70-80 years.
And all we say to people is that we want them to make a
moral commitment
to include the foundation in their will, or do something
through a life
insurance policy.
That has allowed us to deal with people who see themselves
as cash poor
but assets rich. Many people have a little house and a few dollars in
savings bonds and when they die they'll have an estate of let's say
$200,000 to $300,000. So we could get 10, 20, 30 thousand
dollars from
that estate, whereas if they give us money now, they'll give us $200
to $300. So we've done two things. One, we are building
this great reservoir
of history for the community. Second, we are building a
huge cash flow
going out to the community for the next 10 or 20 years. We
have created
relationships with people. People come into the office, sit down and
have a cup of coffee with us because they have done their story with
us. They have a kinship with us.
CV: Where did the idea originate?
DC: I can't say it was my idea entirely. I was at a
conference,
and another community in the States was doing something
similar to this.
I brought the idea here and we modified it for our purposes. I mean
the whole issue with the web site and the kiosk with the touch screen
monitor is basically my idea. So we sort of reworked it for
ourselves,
but the original concept for doing the stories was created
in the States.
CV: Have you been approached by any other organizations in
Canada looking to replicate this model?
DC: Oh sure. The people from Planned Legacy here in Winnipeg
created the web site and worked on the kiosk for us. They
were the originators.
When we decided to go forward with this project we approached these
fellows, who I knew were just getting into the business of doing web
sites. They have now taken it out to the commercial world.
It's a great
way of acknowledging a gift in a subtle but effective way and it has
been very effective for us. We now have in excess of 250 signers and
out of those people, 10 to 15 have together pledged more
than $2 million.
I haven't heard from the other 235 people. So who knows what that is
going to be. Some will be $500 and some will be $100,000, but you can
see the potential that is there.
CV: Does being associated with a particular religious or
ethnic community
present any special challenges or benefits?
DC: It is a little bit of both. It's challenging
because we are
working in a very defined market. The Jewish community in Winnipeg is
only 14,000 people and we are now pushing $45 million. That
is significant
dollars for a small community. On a per capita basis we are huge, but
the reality is that we are talking to a very narrow market
and fundraising
is very competitive in the Jewish community, as it is in
most communities.
The opportunity is that the community has a tradition of being very
charitable and is keen to support specific causes, whether
it is Jewish
day school or our Jewish social service agency. People have
a kinship;
they have a relationship with these organizations.
CV: Your Bat/Bar Mitzvah program seems like an excellent
way to get
young people involved in philanthropy and in the community. How did
the program develop?
DC: It's a terrific program and the whole idea is
about 'tzedakah',
which means charity or helping others. Basically it is
trying to educate
young people about the value of giving back to the community and to
give them an understanding of what is going on out there. Our normal
minimum to open a fund where a donor can distribute is $5,000 but for
the Bar/Bat Mitzvah we made it a $1,000. They can then
distribute money
from that fund every year. The family gets a letter from us saying,
'you have $75 to distribute, please advise us'. Then they
sit down with
the child and say, 'Okay, what do you want to do with this money?' If
people begin to understand the value of giving back at that age, they
will do it for the rest of their lives. And we are not only building
a relationship with the young people, we are building a relationship
with their parents and their grandparents because they are proud of
their grandchild, that they are thinking of the community and giving
back.
CV: Where do you see the foundation going in the next
few years?
DC: It's difficult to know. All I do know is that if
we continue
to put our face forward and our name forward it will create a bigger
pot of funds to support the community activities going
forward. As long
as we keep on connecting with people we are going to do that. If you
had asked me this question 5 years ago there is no way I would have
guessed we would be where we are today. I started here and we were at
$10 million and now we are at $45 million. I think that
there is a lot
of potential, as there is with most community foundations. They need
to continue to create that awareness of what they are doing and why
they are doing it. That is the key, what you're supporting
and the impact
on the community.
David Cohen has been with the foundation since 1991. For
more information
about the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, visit: www.jewishfoundation.org.
