Funder Focus: Joel Solomon and the Endswell Foundation
June 2, 2003
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus, we feature the Endswell Foundation,
a private foundation headquartered in Vancouver, BC that is working
to protect the natural environment, support the rights of indigenous
peoples, create a more restorative economy, and support the growth of
a culture that embodies these values. CharityVillage spoke
with executive
director Joel Solomon about the many challenges
facing the environmental
sector right now, the importance of capacity building and long-term
sustainability, and what the future holds for Endswell and
the sector.
CharityVillage: Why and how did the foundation get started
in 1992? What were the first ten years like as you
established yourself
as a major funder of environmental issues in BC?
Joel Solomon: Carol Newell is the founder and funder
of Endswell.
She received a substantial inheritance and disclaimed a big part of
it. Out of that transaction she created the Endswell Foundation. She
had a long-time interest in conservation issues in British Columbia
and she and I, together, invented a strategy of which
Endswell Foundation
is the charitable component and Renewal Partners Co. is the high-risk
seed capital investment component. Our goal at the time was to focus
on long-term conservation issues in BC.
It took some years to envision, invent, design, and
implement the systems,
style and methodology of Endswell and we stayed more like a
desk drawer
foundation in the beginning. During the first half of
Endswell's existence
it was managed very discreetly by Carol's lawyer and made most of its
grants through intermediaries. We were sorting things out
and also growing.
Then, during the second half of the decade, we realized that we had
become much more active than we were giving ourselves credit for and
the discreet invisibility factor was no longer really serving us, nor
grantees or the issues we were working on. So, we in effect hung out
a shingle in April of 1998 and sent a letter to key leaders
in our issue
area and other foundations that funded in the region and formalized
our grant process.
CV: How much do you grant each year?
JS: Sad to say, we are now down just under a million dollars
a year. That's still high for a private foundation in BC focused on
environmental issues. But our grants were at about $2 million a few
years ago. Government leadership in BC has changed fairly
significantly
in recent years and when we were in the prior
administration there was
a very strong program of parks creation and all kinds of
positive moves
in numerous directions. With the markets high and with that receptive
condition there was quite a substantial amount of money going into BC
to capture some successes on a number of issue areas while
it was likely.
We were doing an extra allocation towards the end of that
administration.
Then with the combination of the shift in government, along with the
shift in markets, we made a decision to reduce our grants.
When we surveyed the landscape of our issues here, we realized that
there was an incredible shortfall of BC-based funding or
Canadian funding
of our issues. Part of our plan was to be a good host and ally with
funders from across Canada and North America, to both make
grants, but
also to help build the organizations and networking that
would encourage
grants from others who were spending less of their full time focus on
BC but were interested in BC.
CV: Are there any plans to expand your mandate to include
other regions, given your interest in fostering
relationships with funders
from across Canada?
JS: As a funder, it is continually compelling to expand and get
into other things. However, Carol made a determination early on that
Endswell would not last forever, that it would be on a
spend-down pattern.
Roughly, we work on a ten-year plan and the idea was that
we would support
the growth of a national public foundation model that would include,
as part of its umbrella, the issues that we are concerned with, but
that it would telescope out to work Canada-wide and also branch out
into social justice issues, which is our other area of concern. That
became the Tides Canada Foundation.
We have a very close relationship physically they are
across the hall
and we share a lot of services to lower the overhead costs for both
entities are save on duplication. The theory was that
someday Endswell
would declare success and disappear into the legacy of the
Tides Canada
Foundation. That is a strategy we have held from the beginning and I
think we are at the midway point. Our hope is that Tides Canada will
gradually grow and become a major institution in the country and do
things in all regions, and it already is to some degree.
CV: As government pulls back from this sector and
the issues
and challenges it faces, what is needed in BC and beyond to protect
the environment long term?
JS: The whole conservation movement here has gone
through a dramatic
shift in these last few years, for the reasons already mentioned, and
organizations have been consolidating or shrinking and
mostly have been
on austerity times, regardless of our funding. Everyone has
been faced
with picking up many more responsibilities that were formerly done by
government. That is the current state and I think we are in a lot of
trouble.
When I look at even something simple, like parks management in BC or
forestry regulations, forestry has moved to self-regulation now and
the forestry ministry has been slashed so there is no second opinion
there, and parks are being closed and privatized. I guess a
lot depends
on your point of view, of course. I'm a pro-tax,
pro-government believer
in civil society. We need strong governments and management of what
I consider the commons and the public resources.
In a free market without restriction, human nature generally tends to
want to succeed, and exploitation really increases, and it's
understandable - all of us are consumers. I think that is why there
is a need for a strong commons. In a time when regulations,
regulators, and the formal stewardship parts of society are
disappearing, we are going to create massive damage to the biosphere,
the other species, and the ecosystems that keep us alive. I always
remain an optimist, that we will find our way through it and that
things will get better, but I feel that this is not a particularly
good period in North American history, in particular for conservation
issues.
CV: Unlike many funders, who often choose to support only specific
projects, you chose the opposite, and typically fund general support.
Why did you decide to go this route? What do you hope the
overall impact
of this approach will be?
JS: Endswell is increasingly focused on funding
long-term infrastructures
and capacity building for the sector, rather than on
specific campaigns
and issues that constantly come up. So, we are funding
things that have
to do with training and career support, and the movement of capital
like Tides Canada. One of our projects with the Sage
Foundation, the
Hollyhock Leadership Institute, provides a whole training academy for
people working in nonprofit organizations, with a focus on
the conservation
area.
We made a decision early on that we would only do general support. If
a group wants to do a special project with it, that is fine but our
attitude is that the most important thing to do is support the core
operations of organizations. We also attempt to do a low
documentation
process. We feel that every time we ask a grantee for something it is
like spending a thousand dollars of their time. We also
make longer-term
relationships. We have a pretty large percentage of repeat
grantees.
We hope that the outcome over time will be the development
of a strong
sector with skillful leaders. It's really important when money comes
in for special projects and issues, but you need the organizational
capacity underneath it and the skills of negotiation,
strategic planning
and HR. We tried to think of this whole strategy of
Endswell and Renewal
Partners as a 50-year concept. At the beginning we asked 'what might
the world look like in 50 years, and how might we like to influence
that here in this region?' There are so many different
strategies, and
there is no right one, but our strategy was to focus in on a specific
area and do charitable grants and for-profit investing and movement
of assets in every way we can towards the notion of a
long-term sustainable
economy and society in a region that is particularly well suited for
it. If that can succeed it would create models and
alliances and maybe
inspiration for other areas anywhere.
That kind of strategy led us to the notion that someone who devotes
their career to these issues and gets good grounding and the skills
that are needed in leadership to carry things forward is potentially
a thirty-year career of value and impact on the issues. Whereas, the
pattern of crisis, and everyone burning themselves out to the point
of exhaustion and then picking up the pieces and trying to start over
for the next issue is important, but maybe not as useful if you are
thinking 50 years ahead.
CV: Since this is Canadian Environment Week, what
do you think individuals can do right now to help protect and sustain
the environment?
JS: I think that people need to get informed and educated, and
that is getting harder and harder because you have to look a little
beyond the mainstream media to do that. I think that they should join
organizations and get involved and realize that things that we have
taken for granted that government is looking after that that world
is changing. It's really important in our neighbourhoods and in our
local communities to look again and really understand how things are
working and get involved. I hope that people will get
involved in public
service and take their values into that sector and express themselves
and try to bring a more sophisticated outlook on 'how do I
get my taxes
reduced' and understand what that trail means. As you get your taxes
reduced, a lot of other things don't get covered. Finally,
I think people
should make themselves heard by their local
representatives, the media,
their neighbours, and make the extra effort to speak up.
Joel Solomon is executive director of the Endswell Foundation and
president of Renewal Partners. Previously, he was involved with the
Tides Foundation in the US. For more information about
Endswell, e-mail
endswell@220cambie.com.
