Funder Focus: Patrick Johnson and the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation
December 1, 2003
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus, we feature the Walter & Duncan Gordon
Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting programs that strengthen
Canada and enhance the well-being of Canadians. CharityVillage spoke
with executive director Patrick Johnson about the strategic review
that the foundation is currently undertaking, its renewed commitment
to Canada's northern communities and protecting fresh water resources,
and the importance of strengthening public policy.
CharityVillage: The foundation has been conducting a comprehensive strategic and program review for the past year. What have you learned from the review process and what changes are expected at the foundation?
Patrick Johnson: There are going to be some fairly substantial changes in the focus of our grantmaking as we go forward. That is a result of the mission that I was given by the trustees when I was hired about a year ago. They made it clear to me that they wanted to do what every organization should do every once in a while, which is step back, take a look at itself, and see whether it wants to continue to do the same sorts of things in the same way or not. As you can appreciate, it's very difficult for trustees to say 'no' and to stop doing things. It's much more interesting and easier in some ways to take on new things. To actually stop doing things you've been doing for a long time is difficult for any of us, but that was the first set of decisions that were made.
We are phasing out our involvement in the area of secondary school education,
just as an example, and there are a number of reasons. In large part
it's because we achieved what we set out to do ten years ago. In a sense,
it was declaring victory and moving on to the next set of challenges.
After we decided what we didn't want to stay involved with, it was a
matter of deciding what we did want to continue to support. On a go
forward basis, two of our major continuing program priorities will be
number one, the Canadian North, and number two, the issue of fresh water
resource protection. That's a continuation of some grantmaking we've
been doing, but it really is going to have a much more narrow focus.
Probably the most important decision that has been made is that we are
redefining, or rearticulating, our mission as a grantmaking foundation.
It will say something to the effect that within our charitable mission
our interest is supporting initiatives that will strengthen public policy.
That will be the overarching thread that will weave all of our grantmaking
together. The primary thing I've brought to the foundation, having learned
this from spending most of my career on the other side, is the importance
of foundations being very very clear about what they want to support,
and by definition therefore, what things they don't want to support.
What we're striving for is focus and clarity in terms of the criteria
we use to make our decisions as grantmakers.
CV: Why did you decide to put such an emphasis on public policy?
PJ: There are a number of factors. In many instances it's as
simple as going back to the founder. What I've always tried to do in
the year I've been here is ask myself, 'if Walter Gordon were alive
today, what decisions and conclusions would he be coming to?' Walter
Gordon, for people of my age and generation, was a bit of an icon because
he was a Canadian nationalist. He's a former federal finance minister,
but he had a real passion for public policy, broadly speaking. In a
sense, it really is about trying to honour the interests of the original
donor, even though he wasn't so precise as to say that we could only
support initiatives of public policy. That's number one, and number
two is simply about trying to figure out how we can be most effective
given the resources at our disposal.
Our grantmaking is about $3 million a year, which is great, but it's
only $3 million a year. So in asking ourselves how we can be most effective
in the allocation of that $3 million, we came to the conclusion that
while supporting individual initiatives that may help ten people, or
a hundred, or a thousand people here and there are laudable and important,
our sense is that the role that we can play is in trying to enhance,
strengthen, and improve public policy that could affect tens of thousands,
or hundreds of thousands, or millions of Canadians. It's really trying
to be strategic about the use of our resources.
CV: Why were the Canadian North and protection of fresh water chosen as your areas of focus?
PJ: The Canadian North has been a long-standing interest of the Gordon Foundation, in large part because some of the trustees visited the territories and realized that this is such a vitally important part of the country, and yet one that those of us who live in southern Canada tend not to know too much about. When we asked ourselves if we wanted to continue to be involved in the north there was no question in our minds that this is a very important role that the Gordon Foundation has and one that we want to continue to play. Almost no other Canadian foundations do any funding north of sixty degrees. So, we're going to refocus to some extent but we're going to stay involved, and perhaps become even more involved in the north.
The issue of water may seem a bit intuitive for a lot of Canadians,
but the issue of our access to available supplies of fresh water, and
fresh water that you can actually drink, is becoming a growing and challenging
problem, even in Canada where I think we have tended to take water for
granted. We think that shortages and lack of water is a problem somewhere
else in the world, but it's coming closer and closer to home. So we
began to do some support research in this area a few years ago, partly
because we felt that this was an emerging public policy issue that no
one was really paying enough attention to.
We thought that if we could seed some support, initially just for basic
research, that we might be able to help move it up onto the public policy
agenda. Again, we felt that this was another particularly unique niche.
There are a whole set of important and difficult public policy issues
here that relate to our relations with the United States because a lot
of the water that Canadians depend on is in underground aquifers that
straddle the US-Canada border. There didn't appear to be many other
foundations in Canada that had identified this area for support. We
felt that this was an area where we could make a particularly unique
contribution. What we are trying to do at the Gordon Foundation is carve
out and find a role for our grantmaking that will take us, perhaps,
where no one else has gone before in the grantmaking community.
CV: You pointed out that very few funders focus on the Canadian North. What needs are you finding there and how are you working to address them?
PJ: The one thing that I've learned in the year that I've been
at the foundation is that there are developments in the northern territories
that are much more hopeful and optimistic than the stories we tend to
hear in the south about what's happening in First Nations communities.
Not that there aren't real challenges in the north, I'm not trying to
suggest that, but there is a degree of hope and optimism that I was
quite buoyed by. Many First Nations in the territories - and it's very
difficult to be involved in grantmaking in the north without engaging
directly with First Nations - have either signed or are very close to
signing land claim and/or self government agreements. This has provided
them with a certain degree of hope and belief in themselves that is
really quite encouraging. There is a sense one gets when talking with
First Nations in the north that they are prepared to address their challenges
themselves in culturally appropriate ways.
Related to that is the fact that there are some enormously positive
economic developments, particularly in the Northwest Territories. I
suspect that very few Canadians know that Canada is now one of the largest
producers of diamonds in the world and all of those diamonds are found
in the Northwest Territories. Diamond mining contributes 50% of the
GDP to the territories and we heard about one First Nations community
when we were up there that had full employment. Everyone was working.
The north is a very different place than it was 20 years ago, so part
of what we are trying to do is adapt our grantmaking in ways that will
further support the ability of First Nations to achieve an even greater
measure of autonomy and cultural strength. For example, we are funding
the Champagne Aishihik First Nations in the Yukon, which is researching
whether or not to implement the tribal justice provisions of its self-government
agreement. We are supporting them to do a series of workshops with residents,
and particularly the elders, to determine whether they should move to
the next stage of implementing the provisions.
We're also funding the Native Communication Society in the Northwest
Territories to develop a public affairs radio program about the Mackenzie
Valley Pipeline. It will be broadcast into a number of remote and isolated
First Nations communities in five different First Nations languages.
What we want to do is make sure that the people who are going to be
the most directly affected by it have as much opportunity as possible
to learn, understand, and weigh in their views about whether it's positive
or negative. Then in Nunavut we are providing funding for what I think
is a fabulous program. The University of Victoria faculty of law is
delivering a law program in Iqaluit that will graduate about ten Inuit
with a law degree from the university without them ever having to leave
Iqaluit.
CV: Your assets right now are about $65 million and you grant approximately $3 million annually. With your change in program focus, will you still maintain this level of annual disbursement?
PJ: We're fully expecting to maintain that level of funding.
My trustees see the 4.5% disbursement quota as a floor, not ceiling.
We have no particular problem with going above that proportion and we're
really trying to divorce the level of grantmaking we do, to some degree,
from how our investments are doing. We made the decision to continue
to fund at the level of $3 million regardless of what happened in the
markets with our investments. I see no reason why we won't continue
at that level for the foreseeable future.
CV: Given that you've spent the last year conducting a strategic review of your organization, what advice might you give to other funders who are considering undertaking this task?
PJ: The first piece of advice I would give to other funders who
are undertaking a major review of their grantmaking is to spend as much
time as they think is necessary to do the job properly. You shouldn't
be rushed to do these things too quickly. I think that would be a case
of penny-wise, pound-foolish. My second piece of advice would be to
engage the help of a neutral third party to undertake an objective assessment
of people outside the foundation about how they see the foundation.
I can't stress how useful and valuable I found the survey of stakeholders
that my trustees commissioned before I got here. Thirdly, there is the
need to be as focused and as clear as possible in terms of the criteria
that the foundation uses in its grantmaking. It's a rigor and a discipline
that grantmakers often ask of the organizations we fund. We should hold
ourselves to the same standards and expectations that we hold our grantees
to in terms of being clear and focused in our mission and core purpose.
CV: Now that you are coming to the end of your review process, where would you like to see the foundation five or ten years from now?
PJ: I think the foundation will probably play a more active and engaged role in supporting public policy, and not just by way of reactive grantmaking. One of the principles that the trustees and staff have agreed to relates to leverage. We do believe that the Gordon Foundation - and I think this is true of a lot of foundations - brings a lot more to the table than just the dollars we have to provide. We can play an important role in using our good name or reputation to help foster and further discussions on complex policy issues. I think in the future we're probably going to see the Gordon Foundation play more of a role as a quasi operating foundation and not simply a reactive grantmaking foundation. We're going to see a combination of both operational, proactive grantmaking and responsive grantmaking. I think that will happen over the course of the next couple of years. That will be new terrain for us.
Patrick Johnson has been executive director of the Walter & Duncan
Gordon Foundation for the past year. Previously, he was the president
of the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy for almost seven years. For
more information about the foundation, visit www.gordonfn.org.
