Funder Focus: Sandy Houston and the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation
October 6, 2003
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus, we feature the Metcalf Charitable Foundation, which was established by George Cedric Metcalf in 1960 and endowed with a $10 million gift from him in 1967. CharityVillage spoke with executive director
Sandy Houston about the evolution of the foundation and its mission, some of the innovative projects it currently supports, and the challenges that face grantmakers in the current funding climate.
CharityVillage: The foundation has undergone several shifts
in focus in its 43-year history. Currently, it provides funding in three
primary areas: the performing arts, the environment, and social services.
Why were these chosen as focus areas for the foundation?
Sandy Houston: All of them, to some degree, reflect historic
interests of the foundation. When the time came four or five years ago
to reexamine and refocus the foundation's interests and approach to
grantmaking, one of the decisions we made was that the programs should
reflect the passions and interests of the trustees. These are three
areas with which our board is concerned, and which also have an historic
connection to work we've always done.
A lot of what we are trying to do is strengthen organizations' ability
to do their work. What we are really trying to do is create programs
that will allow organizations to determine their priorities, objectives,
and aspirations, think about the most strategic, coherent, effective
way to get there, and then have the foundation support that in a significant
way on a multi-year basis.
We think that is one of the better ways to foster strength and effectiveness
in the sector. It's a big part of our arts funding, a significant piece
of our environmental funding, and that's certainly what we are attempting
to do in the community program. The next piece we are starting to think
about is what leadership means in these organizations, what the current
challenges are in the sector around leadership, and how the foundation
can begin to address them.
CV: A significant part of your support for the performing
arts is centred on professional development. What issues are you trying
to address by funding professional development in the arts?
SH: Yes, we have an internship program and what we were trying
to get at was to think about ways to encourage young people to come
into the performing arts, and to make the transition from school or
a training program into a profession in the arts something that was
educational, stimulating, and ultimately rewarding. We thought that
in order to do that there needed to be a transitional period in which
they could be exposed to the métier that they are choosing to
take on, to be in a mentorship relationship, and to benefit from some
structure and exposure to all the various challenges that engaging in
a career in the arts represents.
Much of this work took place at a time in the foundation's history when
we had grown in size very significantly. We needed to fundamentally
reexamine what the foundation did and how it did it. The first step
we went through was to determine what areas we wanted to work in. Once
we determined the areas in which we wished to work, then we had to figure
out how we wanted to work, where we wanted to focus our energies,
and what particular pieces we wanted to try and address. That was a
process of doing a scan of what was going on, where some of the needs were, where some of the real gaps existed,
and then determining how we would address ourselves to those gaps.
One of the areas that emerged was the whole area of professional development
- bringing young people into the sector, sustaining their interest in
the sector, and creating the proper kind of structure and support for
the next generation of people in arts administration, and in the arts
generally.
CV: While your funding guidelines for arts and the environment are quite specific, your criteria for community grants is much more open. What are you looking for when assessing applications for these grants?
SH: Well that's an interesting question. Again, it goes back to
the thinking that the board did at the time of this strategic planning
five years ago. In determining our approach to grantmaking, we essentially
decided that while there are great benefits and virtues of being strategic
in your grantmaking, as represented in our arts program and our environment
program, there is also value in remaining responsive and reactive to
applications as they come in. That's a much more traditional foundation
function, and more of a connection to the work we used to do.
We decided that in the community program, which is concerned primarily
with issues of poverty, that we wouldn't make our guidelines too specific
but instead would remain responsive to strong applications from strong
organization engaged in work around social services and poverty, and
also retain our ability to be responsive to extraordinary initiatives
and extraordinary individuals as they are presented to us.
CV: Are there any specific projects or new initiatives that you have in the works right now?
SH: We do a lot in the community program around straight support
to grassroots service organizations that deliver services to disadvantaged
populations. We also have the occasional larger opportunity that we
see as something we wish to support just because it is extraordinary
and, we think, valuable. Two examples come to mind. One is Walrus
magazine, which is a new magazine that launched in Canada in September.
It has created a really ambitious and thoughtful internship program
for four editorial interns and an art director internship. The Metcalf
Foundation is supporting that internship program on the theory that
this represents an extraordinary opportunity for young people in Canada
who are interested in letters, magazines, and editing to be involved
at the inception of a major new magazine and to work closely with a
professional staff around the delivery of what, I hope, will be a remarkable
and stimulating new Canadian magazine.
Another initiative that comes to mind is the Green Barns, which is an
initiative in Wychwood Park in Toronto. The goal is to reanimate a site
that used to contain the Toronto Transit Commission's streetcar repair
barns into a multi-use facility set in a small community park that would
house a variety of not-for-profit groups, community activities, green
demonstration projects, and green technology, while retaining an old
heritage site. It's a really ambitious, imaginative, and I think, very
thoughtful effort to try and come to a new understanding and interpretation
of park and the role of parks, and artists, and not-for-profit groups
in public space. The foundation made an early and significant commitment
to that project. It is now wending its way slowly through community
consultations and city approval.
CV: Your assets are now about $120 million. How much do you grant annually and is the recent uncertainty in the financial markets affecting the amount you grant each year?
SH: Yes, the last couple years have been difficult for us in the markets. Last year we granted slightly over $6 million, and this year we will grant something over $5 million, so the markets have definitely restricted our grant budgets this year. We are hopeful that this is temporary but it has caused us to pull in our grant programs to some degree this year, unfortunately.
CV: Does the foundation consider itself a conservative funder or are you willing to take some risks with your funding?
SH: I would like to think of us as willing to take some risks.
We are certainly willing to come in early on projects. We are willing
to play a seed role or a catalyst role in projects and organizations.
We are interested in organizations that have a point a view and are
attempting to foster new collaborations and new initiatives, or work
with new ideas or new populations. So, I would categorize us as willing
to engage on the issues as they come to us.
CV: As a large Canadian funder, are there certain challenges
you face? Are there common issues that grantmakers across the board
are dealing with right now?
SH: Well, I think that everyone is dealing with a community that faces a lot of really pressing needs, limited resources, and strained human resources. That's common across the sector and as funders we are in the difficult position of taking very modest resources and trying to apply them as wisely as we can to a sector and a set of needs that far outweigh our resources to be of assistance.
My sense in the four or five years that I've been doing this kind of work is that there is a far greater willingness on the part of funders to collaborate and to create groups or collective action around issues or initiatives and I think that is enormously positive. I see that emerging more and more in the sector. There is a realization that our resources are limited and that we can be more effective, and more thoughtful, and have more impact if we work collectively around trying to pursue some of these goals.
CV: In what ways do you demonstrate accountability to your
stakeholders? Do you expect the same sort of accountability from your
grantees?
SH: We view ourselves as holding a public trust and therefore
it is our obligation to be as clear and transparent in our dealings,
our decision making, and our processes as possible. We endeavour to
do that by communicating clearly with our grantees and with the larger
public as to what we do and why we do it. On the more specific issue
of dealing with grantees, I think that is a very important piece of
grantmaking. The way that we do that is by staying in close contact
with them, trying to keep the conversation and communication open, and
creating an environment in which they can be frank and clear with us
in terms of what they are working on, what they are doing, and how we
can best be helpful. Ideally they will tell us if there is an issue
or a problem.
CV: Where would you like to see the foundation five or ten
years from now?
SH: We try to look forward, and I would hope that some of the initiatives that we have launched quite recently will be fruitful and helpful and vital going forward. However, I think foundations are mutable and they have to respond to the needs of the communities they are trying to serve and the passions of the trustees who govern them. Ten years forward it would be difficult to say with certainty what we would become, but I hope we would be characterized by the kind of approach we take to grantmaking and our approach to the obligations of our field, perhaps more than the specific focus that we might be bringing at that time.
Sandy Houston has been executive director of the Metcalf Charitable
Foundation for the past four years. He has been a lawyer for most of
his career and in the past has served on several nonprofit boards. For
more information about the foundation, visit www.metcalffoundation.com.
