Funder Focus: Barbara McInnes and the Community Foundation of Ottawa
March 1, 2004
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus, we feature the Community Foundation
of Ottawa, which enables people in Ottawa to give back to their
community in meaningful and lasting ways. CharityVillage spoke with
president and CEO Barbara McInnes about the early years of the
foundation, its influence on philanthropy in the city, and its approach
to sustainable community development.
CharityVillage: The foundation was established in 1987, making it fairly young compared to some of the community foundations in other cities across Canada. What have you learned during this initial period of the foundation's existence?
Barbara McInnes: We do consider ourselves to be quite an astonishing success. It is a really short period of time to have come from absolutely nothing but a gleam and a dream to the present $70 million in assets we are now holding. It's especially impressive because community foundations have traditionally relied on after-lifetime gifts for their growth, primarily. Of course, with such a young foundation, very little of the money we have is from after-lifetime gifts, but that will happen is due course.
We have learned a great deal along the way. One of the things that led
to our success was our ability, during the key years of the tech boom,
to work with professional advisors and high tech leaders so that they
knew about the existence of the community foundation at a time when
they were able to exercise options. [The tech boom] made several people
in Ottawa very wealthy, very quickly. It was very fortunate that the
community foundation had spent some time with people like that, showing
them how they could make gifts of stock options. We also worked a lot
with the professional community in Ottawa - lawyers, accountants, and
so on - so that they knew that the community foundation was a very viable
alternative to setting up a private foundation. As a result of that,
it was our most significant growth year and we took in close to $40
million in about six months. Success isn't always measured by dollars
of course, but it is one aspect of success.
CV: Did the downturn in the tech sector negatively affect the foundation?
BM: We didn't expect it to last and we didn't have any plans
that were based on it lasting. We saw it as a moment in time, and the
beauty of a community foundation is that it is primarily about endowment.
So when you have those really booming years, the gifts that come in
are permanent and the effect of those gifts is felt forever afterwards.
It's not like annual campaigning, which depends very much on the continuing
generosity of individuals. A community foundation doesn't ever depend
on that. It assumes that people will make one gift, perhaps two - maybe
one during their lifetime and then an after-lifetime gift.
It wasn't the downturn that affected us so much actually, it was the
upturn. As soon as we accepted all those assets we tripled in size.
We, therefore, needed to plan very carefully how we were going to manage
ourselves into the future. We needed to add staff, clearly, and we needed
to undertake a major restructuring.
CV: What role does the foundation play in enhancing the nature and scope of philanthropy in the local community and beyond? How has philanthropy changed in Ottawa because of your presence?
BM: I think it has made a big difference to have a community foundation
in Ottawa. One major difference is that it has provided local people
with a way of giving back to the community in general. They don't have
to specifically say it will be the Children's Aid Society, or the Boys
and Girls Club, or the local environmental group. They can say they
want to enhance the quality of life in general and the community foundation
can then handle that. It has allowed people to make more substantive
gifts in a more flexible kind of way, and people have taken advantage
of that.
The other thing though, is that because the community foundation is
here, we become a source of information that is completely neutral.
People are increasingly comfortable coming to the foundation saying,
'I have X amount of dollars I'd like to give and here is my general
idea about that. I'd like some advice from you on how to have the biggest
impact.' So, we've become a trusted source of philanthropic information
and advice. It's not all about the money that the community foundation
manages; it's becoming more about the money that the foundation can
influence.
CV: In 2002 your Board endorsed a grantmaking approach based on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) to support initiatives in affordable housing, micro and small enterprise, training, and education. Why did you decide on the ABCD approach and what results are you seeing so far?
BM: When the Board endorsed that approach it was partly because
the grants committee had been doing it for quite a long time anyway,
and it then became an organizational philosophy instead of just a grantmaking
philosophy. It wasn't a sudden move. Asset Based Community Development
was something that was very much on our minds, and I must say that from
the very beginning the community foundation has always felt that the
heart and soul of our work was in the grantmaking. We've always spent
a great deal of time thinking about that. So, when we decided that we
would take an asset-based approach, it allowed us to look at the community
through a slightly different lens.
We're very concerned about putting our money where it will have an impact
in terms of sustainability, and encouraging people to move into the
economic mainstream rather than just supporting them while they stay
outside of it. Those are the kinds of issues that we felt were very
important. We've got some wonderful examples now in Ottawa of that kind
of thing. The first one that comes to mind is the Ottawa Community Loan
Fund. It's now showing real results. It's still early days but so far
they have a 100% payback rate, and they have been able to help little
businesses ratchet themselves up to the next level so that a family
can actually be supported through a small cleaning company or corner
store.
The
other thing that they are doing, which is really important in our community,
is that they are providing small loans to foreign-trained professionals
who need to get accreditation here. One of the hurdles immigrants face
is that it costs them money to get accredited and there are no sources
for them to get that money, so the Community Loan Fund is a very good
place for them to go.
CV: What was your total grantmaking for 2003? Do you anticipate the same level of granting this year?
BM: It's astonishing. Last year, we gave away $5.85 million. It probably won't be at the same level this year because in 2003 we gave away a large number of funds on behalf of donors who simply used the foundation for flow-through. These are people who already have an endowment with us and they supplement that endowment sometimes with flow-through. It's very unpredictable. Some years we do a great deal of that, and some years less.
CV: Your general grant program is quite broad, focusing on social services, health, education, and environmental sectors. You also have several other funds to support the arts and literacy. Why were these areas chosen for more specific granting?
BM: We started our Community Arts Fund - it's not large but it's
important - several years ago when our grants committee, and then in
turn our Board, struggled very hard with what to do with the arts in
terms of grantmaking when the requests from arts organizations were
competing with things like homelessness and hunger. It's a very difficult
conversation for any grantmaker to have. So we decided that we should
at least relieve some of that by setting up a separate community arts
fund. That way, the arts are competing against each other for funding,
and that's a much easier thing to deal with. We have a number of donors
who will be making after-lifetime gifts to the fund, so it's small during
my lifetime but I think in the next generation it will start to make
a significant difference.
In the case of literacy, we work closely with the Ottawa Citizen.
Several years ago, they decided that they wanted to set up a corporate
foundation focusing on literacy. They looked at the community foundation
as one option, and decided that that was the way they would do it. So
we actually run the Ottawa Citizen Literacy Foundation. They
put money into that fund on an ongoing basis and we manage it and also
manage the grantmaking on their behalf, as well.
CV: You recently held a panel discussion and town hall meeting about work in the not-for-profit sector. What was learned from this discussion and what are the issues facing the sector in Ottawa?
BM: It was a very, very successful panel. We had a capacity crowd
and we are still getting feedback from it. It was extremely successful
from a number of points of view, but primarily because we had some of
the best people you could get anywhere sitting on that panel. We had
three people addressing three aspects of work in the not-for profit
sector. Lynne Toupin, from Community Foundations of Canada, talked about
the human resources issues in the sector, which are really quite astonishing
in terms of benefits, who the sector is attracting, and why the sector
is not able to retain people in midlife. The second person was Ron Robertson
of Ray & Berndtson Robertson Surrette, one of Canada's leading not-for-profit
executive search firms. He talked about what it takes to become a leader
in the nonprofit sector. The third person was Bibi Patel, our director
of development and donor services. She is the poster child for the person
who moves from one industry to another. She spent 18 years in the high
tech industry at Nortel and we enticed her away from that into our little
organization, where she is thriving. The switch from that sector to
this one is something that is of interest to a lot of people, especially
here in Ottawa where the meltdown has meant that there are a lot of
unemployed high tech people.
CV: In your discussion did you talk about what the sector as a whole needs to do to attract more people?
BM: We did, and Bibi in particular talked about how she made
the decision to move into the nonprofit sector, what the considerations
were. There is no point in people getting into this sector if what's
really important to them is benefits and high salary. We can't compete
in Ottawa especially, because government is our main competition here.
When we are trying to attract people into the sector it's important
to ask, 'what's your bottom line?' For Bibi, and for many others like
myself who thrive in this sector, the bottom line for us in the values.
It's knowing everyday that everything you do affects something fairly
directly, and that you can have an impact on the quality of life in
your community and in the lives of individuals. Ron Robertson talked
about recruiting executives for the nonprofit sector and trying to figure
out whether there is an emotional connection, because if it isn't there
it isn't going to work.
CV: Where do you see the community foundation movement heading? Will this model continue to flourish?
BM: Community foundations are springing up all over the world
and it's fascinating to watch. We're very interested in what's happening
in the rest of the world and in promoting that and learning from it.
All of it comes back to benefit us in our own community. For example,
if we know what's happening in community-based philanthropy in Poland,
then we will know more about how to serve the Polish people in our community.
We've been very fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in
the Trans Atlantic Network of Community Foundations. We've learned a
great deal from that and I think we've been able to pass on a great
deal as well.
The other answer to your question about the proliferation of community
foundations is that we can't keep creating new community foundations
in Canada without there being consequences. All of the major centres
in Canada are now covered by a community foundation and what I think
is likely to happen is that we are going to start to see groupings of
community foundations so that they can share the back office support.
We are starting here in Ottawa, and I know we're not the only ones,
to do outreach to the communities around us. We now manage the Brockville
Community Foundation's funds, and the Deep River Community Foundation
has the intention of getting us to manage their funds once they reach
a certain size. That may be the way of the future.
Barbara McInnes has been with the Community Foundation of Ottawa
since its inception in 1987. For more information about the foundation,
visit www.communityfoundationottawa.ca.
