Funder Focus: David Driscoll and the VanCity Community Foundation
December 9, 2002
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our continuing series of interviews with
some of Canada's
leading funders, we feature the VanCity Community Foundation,
which was established in 1989 by the Board of the VanCity
Credit Union
with a donation of $1 million. That endowment fund has since grown to
$11 million, and the foundation now plays a lead role in
community economic
development in BC's Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, and
Victoria region.
CharityVillage spoke with executive director David Driscoll,
about the foundation's efforts to strengthen local
nonprofits, its support of affordable housing initiatives, and its
unique position as a community foundation with corporate
affiliations.
CharityVillage: What is your relationship with
the corporate side of VanCity, and how do you balance the mandate of
the foundation with VanCity's expectations and goals as a
business?
David Driscoll: When the credit union set up the
foundation they
said they wanted it to have community economic development
as its primary
focus, which is a wonderful connection for a credit union because, as
a financial cooperative, it is community-based, it uses
financial instruments,
and it is development-based. So there is a
development-based focus rather
than an aid-based focus to our mandate. Each year, VanCity sends over
a portion of its earnings related to the dividend distribution to its
members. We call that the common endowment, and the intent
was to create
an opportunity for community groups who wished to pursue
community economic
development, in the initial years in three fields: housing,
employment,
and nonprofit enterprise. That would be evidence that you have a good
community.
The connection to the credit union is that being a locally
based institution,
the fortunes of the credit union are intimately tied to the
well being
of the underlying communities of which they are a part. So they said
to the foundation, 'make sure that at least those three
critical conditions
of a healthy community - jobs, affordable housing, and
nonprofit enterprise
- are all enhanced as a result of our activity.' So VanCity should
enjoy all sorts of reputational benefits, but there can't
be any material
benefits going back to it. The other thing this was
intended to do was
to create a place where our nonprofit sector and our membership could
set up permanent trusts with the foundation to do good works. This is
our planned giving and our named funds part of the operation.
CV: The foundation was created as a community foundation
rather than as a private foundation. Why did you decide to go this
route and how do you think it affects the way in which you
operate?
DD: The community foundation mandate is, I think, a much more
open and transparent mandate. That fits with VanCity's statement of
values. The intent was to include on the board of governance of the
foundation, members of the community. So the governance side wanted
to be clearly inclusive of community members rather than an
expression
of what the directors are at any point in time. The
directors were interested
in making sure the community was engaged. The idea was that over time
the contributions from the community and nonprofit sector,
in building
permanent endowments, would in fact, make us look a lot more like a
community foundation in the sense that our resource base
and our permanent
capacity was built by a much broader community, and not simply by the
credit union.
CV: What is your relationship with the city's other community
foundation, the Vancouver Foundation?
DD: Oh excellent, we have a number of projects that we
work on jointly
where our capacities and our positioning in the community
are different
than theirs. The Vancouver Foundation's mandate is for all
of BC. They
do everything from A to Z. We say our mandate is focused essentially
where the VanCity membership is, because the VanCity membership could
receive money that stems from the foundation, it could be a dividend.
We say we should pay back to the communities. As the
members have said,
'Pay us back some of our dividends individually, and pay us back some
of our dividends in healthier, stronger, more vibrant communities.'
So we see our spatial mandate as being a little more constrained. Our
substantive mandate is much more sharply focused. We
predominantly have
a community economic development focus. Those would be two
distinctions.
CV: As you mentioned, much of your granting is focused on
community economic development and in particular affordable housing,
a major issue in several of Canada's urban centres. How is
the foundation
working to address this concern?
DD: In the past we have done two projects with
Habitat for Humanity.
One in a very high-density complex building site where it didn't turn
out very well at all. The second piece of work we are doing
with Habitat
for Humanity is out in Burnaby and it is working very well. It's the
whole notion of, 'can that model work in a high density, high expense
area?' It's worked in areas where the underlying equity and land has
been so low that frequently it has been a gift from the municipality,
or whatever. We don't have that option here. We are trying
to work with
models that work in the difficult, complex, and expensive
environments,
of which we are a part.
We've looked at a variety of options including mixed equity co-ops,
and some First Nations projects where we were trying to
move to an ownership
model in an urban environment, and a lot of stuff with the nonprofit
sector, of course, where they do housing, whether it is
related to transition
houses, people escaping abusive relationships, drug issues,
or the usual
sorts of things where housing is a component of the initiative of the
organization. With Elizabeth Fry we did one for women
leaving prisons,
so they could have a place to live with their children and
not be vulnerable
to the streets. Elizabeth Fry also set up some commercial space below
as a nonprofit enterprise to provide the cash flow stream
for some residents
above. So we are looking at all sorts of really innovative
and flexible
models.
CV: You support not only the work of nonprofits, but also the nonprofits
themselves, through lending programs, technical assistance, etc. Why
do you feel it is important to support organizations in this way?
DD: Well, it is one of the self-identified needs of
the nonprofit
sector. There is a wonderful description by Paul Brainerd who set up
the Brainerd Foundation in Seattle. He's a venture capitalist and he
was moving in the direction of venture philanthropy, and he said, 'in
the private sector we spend about one third of our income
on organizational
development and capacity.' That's staff training, reconnaissance with
other businesses, product development, strategic planning. He said,
'when we went to work with the nonprofit sector we thought that with
our business experience and their passion we can do a
really good job.'
What he discovered was that the nonprofit sector spent all its money
doing good works in the community. And we said, 'yeah, that's true.'
In fact, nonprofits are so frequently being driven by
project, project,
project, that the capacity of the organization is often
neglected. And
because it is an expression of the idealism of the organization, the
founders, the people who are committed to the cause, and committed to
the passion, frequently the issue of organizational
capacity is overlooked.
It is because of this that the community has come to us and said, 'we
need some assistance for these sorts of things.'
CV: Your Enterprising Nonprofits Program, which
you operate in partnership with the Vancouver Foundation and the
United Way, provides matching grants for nonprofits looking to start
their own business ventures. Do you see a growing trend toward
related business as a source of revenue for nonprofits, and if so,
why?
DD: The nonprofit sector has always been the
cauldron of innovation
for government and the private sector. There isn't an
institution that
I can think of in the private sector or public sector that
wasn't initially
spawned and developed in the nonprofit sector. So we've always been
the source of innovation and development. The whole
environment initiative
now, all of the recycling companies, it all came out of communities.
We all remember it from our childhood years. There used to
be the paper
drives by the Cubs and Scouts and Brownies. That built a
political momentum,
and ultimately we hit a point where we had critical mass. When that
happened, the private sector moved in and simply said to
the community
sector, 'we are looking after this,' and private businesses
now employ
thousands people.
The community drove the material impetus, showing it can be
collected,
that people do care about their environment, and that there is value
in the waste trade. Once the community took it to critical mass, the
private sector took over and simply made a marketplace capacity out
of it. The same is true of hospitals, the community sector,
church groups,
and virtually all of the institutional apparatus of the private and
the public service. The community sector is the source of innovation
and we are engaged in it again. We are in that process once more of
being born and making the next economy that is going to be a source
of innovation.
The second thing is that with every group we've done this
with, no matter
what their struggles were in the past few years with the impacts of
government cutbacks, everyone at the end said, 'as difficult as the
organizational development was, the enterprise initiative was for us,
and we would do it again in a heartbeat. We would do it again because
it gives us targets, objectives, achievements, celebration,
and evaluation.
It gives us a way of refining what we are doing. It brings in either
an alternate revenue source that is free of constraints, or it gives
us the ability to expand on services we weren't able to
before. It gives
us training programs that connect our staff and make them feel better
and more capable at what they are doing. It employs people who were
previously clients and who are now working. It tracks what
we are doing.
Our board has a sense of accomplishment.' And they just go on and on,
it's really moving.
CV: You did a 10-year visioning exercise last
year. What did you discover during the process and what do you think
the next 10 years will hold for the foundation?
DD: Well we did some fairly traditional methods of
focus groups
with our community and, you know, you keep away from those
independent
evaluators. But the community kept saying, 'why aren't you here? We
trust you.' So the first message was the process message.
'Don't worry
about all of that separation of you and the community. We trust you
and we want you at the table and we are happy to say what we want to
say and know that you'll use it wisely.' The next message
was that our
fundamental mandate is not that far off. Community economic
development,
the key issues of employment, housing, and nonprofit enterprise, are
good. 'But you might want to look at some of the issues where in the
past ten years, you have wanted to do more.' Those issues
are capacity
building, leadership, First Nations and aboriginal issues,
and immigrant
issues, areas where our connections have been good but
where we've not
been as strong as we thought. We think that there is more
traction there
than we've got if we really put our heads to it and go at
it in a more
deliberate way ourselves. So that is the next stage we are
looking at.
I think that all of the things that are going on in the
community probably
need to go on - those that are aid-based, or those that are
development-based.
But for me, the real personal energy comes from developmentally based
organizations and from communities that say, 'we are
capable of describing
our needs, addressing our needs, designing ways of meeting what our
issues are.' I think there is a really significant shift in thinking
going on right now that is hard to put a handle on, that
validates and
recognizes the civil sector as something that needs to be
nurtured and
tended. What we know is that social capital, the trust that is built
in communities, is necessary for economic well being. We
have been focused
for so long on economic well being as being only the
material conditions.
Many writers all make the case that if you wish to make
economic capital,
you must first make social capital.
Communities build the underlying conditions of trust and respect that
make law and contract and relationship possible and I think that is
built in the civil sector. There is emerging recognition that community
makes for the conditions of trust and safety. That means the economic
well being of our community will be a much more straightforward and
simple task. There is just a richness of relationship and spirituality
in community that is fundamental to the well being of our economy. So
in addition to the inherent good, the old 'arts for arts sake', there
is a functional good that if you wish to build a vibrant economy, build
a vibrant community.
David Driscoll joined the VanCity Community Foundation
in 1992, and
has spent much of the last three decades contributing to the growth
of the nonprofit sector in British Columbia. For more
information about
the foundation, visit: www.vancity.com/link?menuId=52748.
