Funder Focus: Bob Wyatt and the Muttart Foundation
August 6, 2002
by Nicole Zummach
This month in our continuing series of interviews with some of Canada's
leading funders, we feature the Muttart Foundation, an influential
leader in nonprofit capacity building and a major funder in Western
and Northern Canada. CharityVillage spoke with executive director Bob
Wyatt, about some of the foundation's innovative projects, how it
is working to strengthen organizations by focusing on core needs, and
some of the issues facing the sector as a whole.
CharityVillage: Your funding is focused in Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. What are some of the benefits or drawbacks of having a regional focus?
Bob Wyatt: The reality of Canada is that it is very difficult
for a foundation based in the west to be operating nationally. At one
time we did fund nationally, until the early nineties, and it simply
became impossible to process requests in any sort of reasonable timeline.
If we had an application in Halifax for example, where we have granted
in the past, it would involve sending staff down there to review it
and try and stay on top of the political and the charitable situation
in that province. Now we are able to concentrate more in the provinces
where we are based. It is also the area where the Muttart companies
were most active, although there were Muttart companies across the nation.
In fairness, we also have a program that does support some national
umbrella charities. For example, we have provided funding to Big Brothers/Big
Sisters and the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy. So national umbrella
organizations that serve other charities do qualify for funding.
CV: The foundation has been a leader in the area of capacity building for a while, but in 2000 you shifted your focus even more in this direction. Why did you see the need for this?
BW: What we saw was that nobody was providing core funding anymore.
All funders wanted to fund discreet projects and we found situations
where charities were operating five or six different projects, each
of which provided little, if any, money for administrative overhead.
So if one of those programs ended, what are they going to do, turn out
the lights one day a week? If we look at the agency as a whole and say,
'What is standing in the way of it becoming more effective or better
at what it is trying to do?', and we support those initiatives, then
all of the programs that they run will improve. We just felt that there
were things at the organizational level that were not being looked after.
So we are trying to do that in a variety of ways, through technology
grants, through bursaries, and training of staff and volunteers.
A new program that we are piloting in Edmonton, though we will also
run pilots in Red Deer and Calgary, involves looking at the human resource
practices within charities. The problem is that few charities are large
enough to hire a full time HR staff. What we are doing is bringing together
clusters of charities and hiring a human resources person who will work
within that cluster. Our initial belief is that much of what the consultant
does will have an impact on all of the charities at one time. For example,
many human resource policies are common. So if 80% is common, then the
HR consultant does the template and they all adopt the templates. They
then tweak them for their own individual organization. At the same time,
we can then put the templates on our web site and say to the world,
'use them if you want to'. We still continue to fund certain types of
projects, but now we are looking more at the organizational level to
make sure that the infrastructure for all of those projects is strong.
CV: Do you think these initiatives are making a difference? What sort of feedback are you hearing?
BW: What we are hearing is both, that it is welcome, and that we have to spend more time with agencies to help them get to the stage where they can identify what is holding them back. Right now, we have charities across the country that are fighting fires on a day-to-day basis. One of our requirements is that the board and the staff of the agency sit down and do some serious thinking about what it is that is standing in their way. That takes some concentrated time. It is also perceived by some as rather frightening to admit to your funder that you are not perfect. We are saying, 'you need to come to us; you need to tell us what's holding you back'. In some cases we go in to look at a different type of request, and through our staff assessment say, 'there are other things that this charity requires'. We then go to our board and in some cases the board will provide more than the agency has asked for, or provide what the agency asked for plus additional stuff if we think that it's going to help the agency.
CV: You also have a technology assistance program. Do you
think it is working, and what kinds of changes do you think are needed
in this area long term?
BW: Absolutely, it is working. We get letters almost everyday
from organizations that tell us how they have been able to change their
operation as a result of having up-to-date technology. Now, it is not
as simple as asking us for a computer. For example, if all you are doing
is word processing, you may not need as much computing equipment as
you want. We are not looking to make everybody state-of-the-art. What
we are looking at is insuring that people have the tools to do what
is necessary to do.
What we need in the sector is a better understanding by funders that
they can't continue to shortchange agencies through technology and administrative
overhead. There are costs associated with undertaking a project. We
run into situations regularly where a funder has provided money for
a project but has said, 'we won't fund the computers but you need to
carry out the project'. And we sort of sit there and shake our heads
and say, 'what are they supposed to use? You want outcome measures but
you are not prepared to pay for an evaluation. You are not even prepared
to pay for the technology so that they can track their stuff. So what
are you doing?' Sometimes we can help, sometimes we can't.
CV: Is this a bigger problem then the sector as a whole is aware of?
BW: I have seen some work that has come out of the Information
Management and Information Technology Table of the VSI, and certainly
their research would indicate that it is a very significant problem.
My interpretation of some of the data, they may not share it, is that
there are a whole lot of funders who still just don't get it. And as
a funder I find that embarrassing. In terms of technology we are also
doing other things. We provided a grant that has resulted in the development
of a software program that helps do outcome measures. We are part of
a new organization called the Canadian Outcome Measures Institute, which
is now rolling that software out. Initially we're operating mainly in
Alberta during the pilot phase, and then we will likely expand.
CV: The Muttart Fellowships are very well known across Canada. What types of projects are Fellows engaging in, and what results are you seeing from their work?
BW: The projects cover the gamut. We've got everything from people
looking at evaluation strategies for small charities, to the use of
spirituality in family service counselling agencies. We have a book
on a co-location project that took place in Saskatoon that has just
been released. We've also got a book on partnerships between charities
and corporations that Martha Parker did in the first year of the fellowship
program that we've just had to reprint.
What we wanted to do was create a vehicle so that there was research
being done by practitioners, but we also wanted to give these people
a break. What we were seeing, and we are still seeing to some extent,
is that people are burning out and leaving the sector and we need to
find mechanisms to avoid that. We are delighted with the success of
the program. The board has voted to continue it for another five years,
and review it at that point. We are somewhat disappointed that it has
not been picked up by other funders. I had a dream when we started this
program that there could be 25 of these fellows across the country each
year. But it has not been picked up and that is fine. The evaluation
of the first five years is going up on our web site in the next little
while and hopefully it will be picked up by others.
CV: You have your Youth Granting for Youth program operating in Saskatoon right now. How did this program get started?
BW: We're in the third year of a five-year pilot and have not
decided what to do. Certainly, we've had requests from a number of communities
about the project but one of the problems is that it's very staff-intensive,
particularly at the startup phase. We have a staff member who goes to
Saskatoon every two to four weeks to meet with the panel, to be there,
and to assist them. It has been an absolutely incredible program and
it is one of those ones where I can't really praise our board enough
for taking this risk. I mean we went in and said to them, 'If you want
to do this, basically you are giving $100,000 to a group of teenagers
to give away'. I have had some colleagues come up to me at various conferences
and say, 'You're crazy, what are you doing letting teenagers give away
money?' But they have done such an absolutely superb job and we are
just delighted. It's been wonderful to watch them and to see them mature,
and they are certainly more aware of what is happening in their community.
CV: Do you think that a program such as this will help to build a
stronger philanthropic base for the future?
BW: We are starting to see that the young people who have gone through this program have a better understanding, not only of the issues, but of what is required to fix some of the issues. That has got to be a good thing. In a speech I made last year at an awards dinner, I suggested to the mayor, the MLA, and others who were there, that they should not consider these young people as the future leaders of their province, but rather as the current leaders.
CV: Where do you see the sector going writ large?
BW: I am hoping the sector will start acting like a sector. That, I think, is one of our fundamental problems. We act like a series of sub-sectors and that is understandable, but it's not going to get us to where we want to be. I think we need to concentrate on the things we have in common, rather than talking constantly about what makes us different from one another. We need to gain the strength that comes from uniting. Now, we are not always going to see eye-to-eye on every issue, neither does the Chamber of Commerce or any commercial federation. But we can come up with policy proposals that are well thought out, that will benefit the sector as a whole, and that we can take forward and say, 'these are the views of Canada's charities'.
CV: Is there an attitude shift that organizations need to make in
terms of working together more effectively?
BW: I think with government cutbacks and the way governments
are now handing out money through requests for proposals and so on,
that there are a number of conscious or unconscious efforts to divide
the sector. People hold their cards very close to their chest because
they don't want to give away what they see as their competitive advantage
in getting money. I think what we need is more people spending more
time looking at the bigger issues. I think we can overcome issues like
that if we start working together, and that doesn't mean you have to
disclose all of your warts and all of your secrets, but it does mean
that we need to look at broader issues than those effecting an individual
charity.
Bob Wyatt has been executive director of the Muttart Foundation for
the past 13 years, and was its director for three years prior to that.
He also serves as the co-chair of the Voluntary Sector Initiative's
Joint Regulatory Table. For more information about the Muttart Foundation,
visit: www.muttart.org.
