Funder Focus: Robert Veitch and the Mennonite Foundation of Canada
April 5, 2004
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus, we feature the Mennonite Foundation
of Canada, which provides stewardship education and service from an Anabaptist perspective. CharityVillage spoke with general manager Robert Veitch about the many different ways that the foundation serves the Anabaptist community and the charitable sector, the challenges and responsibilities of being a religious funder, and the unique perspective that fuels the foundation's mission.
CharityVillage: The foundation operates from an Anabaptist perspective. Perhaps you could begin by explaining what that means.
Robert Veitch: Even internally we struggle with what that means
and question whether others understand what it means. In the truest
sense, it refers to people who are baptized as adults, but there are
a number of things that I think are important. As Anabaptists, we hold
important the idea of joining your faith and beliefs with what you do.
In other words, it's about walking the talk. The other aspect that we
hold in high regard is pacifism. We are a peaceful people and we think
that it is a critical aspect of our Christianity and our faith. We express
that peace not only verbally but also in our actions - the kinds of
things we do, the kinds of service we perform, and the ways in which
we try to help people. There's also the whole sense of community. We
do things in community. We gather together as a community on Sunday.
CV: Stewardship education has been a primary mandate of the
foundation since its inception in 1973. Why do you feel this is so important?
RV: We feel it's important because it's really the starting point for generosity and giving. If people don't have a concept of what it is to be generous, or it's not something they grew up with, education is a very important part of helping them understand the impact that generosity can have within our churches and the communities we live in. We feel it's important that we continually talk about generosity, the ways in which people can be generous, and how that can be a fulfilling part of your life. I've often said that I have never seen a miserable generous person.
It's important to talk about this and to educate people in this whole area of stewardship, which is managing all that God has given to us: time, talent, money, assets, whatever you want to call it. It's a lifetime of management of the generosity of God. Out of that comes our generosity toward other people. Education comes in the form of teaching Sunday School, preaching sermons, holding seminars on topics such as financial management, estate planning, and charitable gifting. We also have a broad range of written materials, and of course, our web site. A very significant part of our consultants' work is getting out there and talking about stewardship and generosity.
CV: Aside from stewardship education, the foundation also offers a whole range of financial services, from RRSPs to estate planning, to personal financial management. Why did you decide to get directly involved in these types of services?
RV: For people who are part of an Anabaptist conference, who are
part of our constituency, we offer our services free of charge. We also
work with people outside our constituency but they are not the majority.
We offer these services because it's part of walking the talk. We believe
that it's important for Christian people, as stewards of all that God
has given to them, to manage their affairs appropriately and properly.
We don't consider ourselves to be the top-level professionals. We see
ourselves more as working with professionals, than instead of professionals.
Our goal is to help people understand more clearly the importance of
working with professionals and how that can best be facilitated. Our
goal is not to be financial planners. What we find is that many people
don't understand how to work with these people or what the importance
is of working with them. We see ourselves as an unbiased group that
can come in, work with an individual, discuss some of the needs they
may have - personally and financially - and encourage them to connect
with professionals who can help.
CV: What types of activities and organizations do you support?
RV: Typically, we give about $3 million a year to approximately 250 charities across Canada and a few in the US that are approved by the Canada Revenue Agency. About 80% of that $3 million goes to charities that have some religious affiliation and about 20% goes to community charities.
CV: Do you accept unsolicited funding proposals from charities?
RV: Well, we get tons of them. Because we are a donor-advised
foundation - 95% of the money that goes out of the foundation is donor
advised - the donor has some input into the charities that receive that
funding. This means that unsolicited requests don't fit well in that
context. We only distribute about $70,000 a year of what I would call
grant money that the foundation decides on exclusively. For that, we
do solicit grant applications, but from within the context of the church.
An outside community or constituency would not have access to those
funds.
CV: As a funder of religious charitable activity, is it difficult
to attract support for the foundation and its mission?
RV: No, because we are working with a constituency that believes
in giving and believes in supporting church-related agencies - churches,
conferences, seniors homes, elementary and high schools, colleges and
universities. There is a lot of activity happening within the Anabaptist
community that is both religious and community oriented. They see supporting
those kinds of things as part of who they are and what they do. So we
have no trouble attracting support.
We are a donor-advised foundation, which is a channel for donated dollars.
Basically, our job is to facilitate the charitable needs of the individual
who wants to donate. Sometimes that means they want us to retain funds
for management, such as an endowment. In other cases, it's strictly
a flow-through. They send us a cheque for $10,000 and say, 'send it
to these five agencies'. That's the kind of job we work at. Right now
we are managing about $62 million in charitable assets.
CV: In a lot of ways you function very much like a community
foundation.
RV: Oh, for sure. We are a charitable public foundation. The difference between us and a community foundation is that most community foundations have a focus that is very close to the community. Our focus is very broad, right across the country. We are a national organization and we function that way.
CV: What is your take on the Bush administration's faith-based initiative in the United States and its efforts to direct more funding to religious organizations?
RV: That's an interesting one. I hate to be absolute and say it won't do any good. I'm sure there will be some good things that come out of it. What I always wonder with government initiatives like this is how long the funding will be there. If Bush doesn't win the next election what are the odds that the funding will be there the next year? Governments change funding at a whim and you can do a lot of damage by initiating something if you can't see a way to sustain it in the long run.
I'm not aware of anything like it in Canada and I don't see any of the Canadian governments that might be elected moving down that road. Canada and the US are significantly different in how you can talk about religious activity in our society. It's much more acceptable to use religious language and talk religion in the US, in government and in society. Canadians are much more sensitive to the diversity of religious beliefs across the country and I think there is a high degree of sensitivity that we don't want to emphasize one and offend another one.
All you have to do is ask charities how easy it is for religious agencies to get funding from secular foundations. It's very difficult because I don't think it's popular in Canada to be seen as funding religious activity. However, I don't think it's an ill will thing. I think it's seen as prudent not to fund religion because where do you stop? I think [secular funders] have taken the approach that they just don't fund anything religious. That puts some very good programs in financial jeopardy. They are really providing a very critical service in a community that might be much broader than just the church community, such as halfway houses and hostels. There are lots of those that are run by church agencies, but try to get funding from a secular foundation and it's almost impossible if it has a religious connotation to it. A lot of times it's the church that's doing it. The people within the church believe in it; they believe in that cause and are willing to put up the money to fund it.
CV: Where do you see the foundation heading in the next few years?
RV: Last year was one of our best years. We grew by 13%, which
is about double our annual growth. We've had unsurpassed activity with
our consultants. We're working with another group that is considering
joining the foundation and they will bring another 140 churches to our
constituency across Canada. So there are a lot of things that are going
very well with the foundation right now. We're in a bit of a growth
mode and I think that bodes well for us.
We're pretty conservative in our growth. Clearly, we don't want to jeopardize
the strength we've built on in the past, but we also don't want to stick
our heads in the sand. We try to be as dynamic as we can with due diligence.
Maintaining integrity within what we believe and how we act is very
important. I feel that even though we are functioning within a faith
community that is a small segment of our society, we still live in our
communities. We need to be aware of, and participate in activities within
the general community as citizens of that community. It's important
for us to function in that community and focus on the group that we
have the most impact on.
Robert Veitch has been with the Mennonite Foundation of Canada for 17
years, and has been its general manager for the past five years. For
more information about the foundation, visit www.mennofoundation.ca.
