Funder Focus: Nathan Gilbert and the Laidlaw Foundation
January 4, 2005
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Laidlaw Foundation,
which was established by Robert A. Laidlaw in 1949 to benefit charitable,
educational, conservation, and cultural organizations in Ontario. CharityVillage
spoke with executive director Nathan Gilbert about the evolution
of the foundation and its mission, its unique and targeted approach
to grantmaking, and the importance of transparency in all its activities.
CharityVillage: Robert A. Laidlaw established the Laidlaw
Foundation in 1949. How are his legacy and his vision reflected in the
work of the foundation today?
Nathan Gilbert: Robert Laidlaw was an institution builder associated
with many major projects in the Toronto area. He was on the board of
directors of the Hospital for Sick Children for 50 years. He was one
of the co-founders of the National Ballet of Canada and the National
Ballet School. He was an angler and a hunter and was involved in the
founding of a number of conservation initiatives.
He was also president of the R. Laidlaw Lumber Company, and it is from
that company that the family generated its wealth. There was never any
family connection to Laidlaw Inc., a company associated with yellow
school buses, cartage and waste disposal. The Laidlaws are an old Ontario
family that arrived from Scotland in 1818. Robert A. Laidlaw and his
brother Walter ran the company from the 1920s to the mid-1970s, and
it was Robert - with a $50,000 gift - who set up the foundation with
his two sons, Nick and Rod, to run. These four members of the family
- now deceased - contributed just under $12 million to the foundation.
Today the value of the foundation's endowment is about $55 million.
In a general way, the three streams for the foundation - the arts, the
environment, and children/youth - were present in the interests of the
founders but weren't put into place programmatically. I think I can
make the case that we haven't ignored the interests of the family. They
may not agree with the application, but the three streams are consistent
with where we started.
CV: Are family members still involved today?
NG: Well, we have a very unique structure, the most unique, probably,
amongst any foundation in this country. We have elements of community
foundation and family foundation. First of all, we would not define
ourselves as a private foundation. We define ourselves as a private-public
interest, or as a public foundation. Very early on in the history of
the foundation, there was a decision that the majority of directors
be non-family, and that continues to this day. The two brothers (Nick
and Rod) who co-led the foundation felt that the responsible thing to
do with this philanthropy was to engage and assist the people who knew
something about the particular fields of interest.
Currently, there are twelve directors on the foundation's board and
three of those seats are reserved for family members. Everyone serves
for a term that can be renewed once. The current term is four years,
and family members' terms turn over in the same way as other directors.
So we have just begun to engage the next generation - the fourth generation
- of Laidlaws on the board.
Rod Laidlaw, in assuming the leadership of the foundation, visited a
number of large foundations in the US and decided that the type of model
they operated with ought to be the model that Laidlaw operated with.
So the foundation adopted some of that culture, which was professional
staff and advisory committees that were made up of people who had the
technical expertise, had the knowledge, and the networks within the
particular fields, who would be in a good position to assess applications
and provide programmatic direction. And that continues, so that this
foundation involves about 80-90 volunteers. It has a governance board
that oversees policy and investment issues. Each of the program fields
that the foundation is involved in has an advisory committee made up
of eight to twelve people who have knowledge about the field. Once appointed
by the board, they have the authority to make the grant decisions on
behalf of the foundation, and those decisions are final.
CV: Transparency seems to be an important aspect of the foundation's
values and principles. Has it always been that way or did it evolve
over the years?
NG: It has evolved and continues to evolve. Fundamentally, we
start with the principal question, 'whose money is this?' I think this
is a critical question to ask any funder and I think it divides the
field significantly. Some of our family members may feel quite differently
than some of the community or public members about the response to that
question. But the way this foundation has been run, certainly with me
at the helm, is that it's the public's money and a privileged few have
been given an opportunity to disperse the public's money. Therefore,
we feel accountable and that's part of where the transparency comes
from. Program guidelines, application procedures, deadlines, the identity
of the program advisors who make the grant recommendations, recent decisions,
annual reports, etc. are all accessible on the foundation's web site.
For us, transparency is a work in progress. Most recently, we began
to post on our web site the companies that we hold in our investment
portfolio. We do this, again, as part of our commitment to full disclosure.
The board recognized that in doing so, we might be questioned from a
corporate social responsibility perspective about some of the companies
we invest in. So far that hasn't happened.
CV: Through your Performing Arts Programme, you support Ontario artists
and not-for-profit arts organizations in the development of repertoire
that expresses socially relevant ideas. Can you elaborate on what you
mean by 'socially relevant ideas'. What types of initiatives have you
supported through this grant program?
NG: The arts program was initiated in 1981. At the time, there
was a burgeoning cultural nationalism and there were emerging artists
who had something to say. There was a notion of 'what constitutes a
Canadian culture?' and that we had something that was distinct and needed
to give it expression. Funding was needed to invest in emerging Canadian
talent. So the feeling was that this is what Laidlaw could and should
do, that we should invest in emerging and burgeoning artists and provide
encouragement - through money - to these alternative theatres that were
beginning to emerge, and provide them with opportunities and resources
so they could showcase Canadian talent. The idea was to build a canon
or repertoire of Canadian work over a period of time and invest in emerging,
mid-career, and senior artists.
Many emerging artists continue to get their first grant from Laidlaw,
even before they get a grant from any of the arts councils. More recently,
we have begun to ask ourselves what is our broader contribution to the
community? How do we move from the narcissism that can be associated
with creativity, to asking artists this wicked question: what is the
intrinsic value that you believe to be part of your work? Is there a
big idea that you want to explore? How do you want to engage your audience?
We've just introduced this set of questions and it's proving to be a
challenge for some of our grantees. We just had a granting round and
there was a lot of disappointment on the part of some artists who are
saying that Laidlaw is no longer the easy touch for an arts grant. We
were concerned that some artists and companies were beginning to feel
a sense of entitlement, but we're not an arts council.
For the past two years the foundation's board has sought greater program
alignment of the program streams to core foundation values and principles:
creativity, inclusion, diversity, sustainability, and youth engagement.
Greater interconnectivity across the foundation's programs has been
a goal. I think that movements towards a creative city within a globalized
context is the way that we are going, and each of the foundation's streams
has an important contribution to make to that.
CV: What are the goals of your Inclusive Communities for Children,
Youth and Families Pilot Project? What have you discovered through this
project so far?
NG: First we invested in getting people to talk about it and
to try and develop the concepts a bit further. We did this by commissioning a number of working papers, convening symposia with the release of each paper, and co-convening national conferences. What would inclusion look like as a policy outcome?
Is inclusion any more useful as a social policy strategy, ie. as a process,
than others? While we will continue to commission a few new working papers, we have turned to funding projects on the ground. For example, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is
interested in working on it with us. The disabilities community have been Canadian leaders in this area. The strongest response
has come from settlement communities. We are also beginning to do some
work with Aboriginal communities, who are wary of the term inclusion because it may represent nothing more than assimilation by another name.
While we are trying to ground the concept, we remain open to the possibility
that it might not prove to be any more helpful in advancing a human rights-based approach to inclusion. Even with all the rights in hand, there
may still be no one to greet a disabled person at the door. You can have accessibility
to the building, but if you don't find ways of including that disabled
person in the workforce, in schools, and in the community then so what?
I'm willing to say that this is a good use of part of the foundation's
money, even if it doesn't bear fruit. Testing new ideas is a privilege
that foundations have, in fact I would argue that it's an obligation. I would like to see more foundations commit to bringing forward new ideas into the marketplace of ideas.
Democratic pluralism rests on a rich marketplace of ideas and foundations
can invest in these ideas and concepts over a longer term without penalty
or consequence, while most other funders [corporations and governments] can't.
There is very little imagination, I think, on the corporate and government
side to think intergenerationally, whereas foundations have the resources and the wherewithal, but many lack the courage. But I think they are probably
the only resource that can afford to take on big problems, big issues,
and also dare to fail, without serious consequences other than opportunity cost.
CV: Your environment program was redesigned in 1996, with
a new focus on the intersection of environmental contaminants and children's
health. What did you learn from your recent evaluation of this program?
NG: A number of things have been implemented since that review.
First, to be more strategic and to focus on two streams rather than
the broader 'environmental contaminants'. The first stream has to do
with air quality, the second with food, as these are the primary pathways
that affect children's health. We know that the science on air quality
is far more developed than the food side, so they are at different stages
of development. We are going to fund organizations to do one of two
things: either for community-based activities and how to change people's
behaviours, or policy research and advocacy. We have decided that we
are not going to fund basic research.
We have now introduced the notion of multi-year grants, focusing on
core capacity and less on projects. Areas that we haven't yet gone to,
and which we need to address, are issues of engagement of underrepresented
communities. Most environmental organizations are lily-white, middle
class. So if we have an inclusive agenda we want to see that through
all of our programs. And that was picked up in the evaluation. So we
have work to do there. It was also identified that we should have much
deeper youth engagement. Even more importantly, there is the need for
knowledge transfer. How do we create learning circles among those who
we fund and other partners and share the lessons learned? The weakest
part of the foundation's work is in that area of knowledge transfer
and communications. I think this is an area that a number of progressive
foundations are struggling with. It has emerged as a critical area where
the field has been chronically underdeveloped.
CV: What are some of the other trends you are seeing right
now in terms of philanthropy?
NG: One thing that I think is emerging in philanthropy, for some,
is this issue of building effective organizations. If we have a mission
or a vision of where we want to go, we can only get there through the
relationships, through the organizations that we fund. The grantees
are the ones doing the work in the field, not us. If they are effective,
we achieve mission; if they are not, then we don't. So, we have an obligation
in the selection process to choose those organizations that we believe
can be the most effective. And then sticking with those organizations
for a longer period of time and funding them differently than we have
been funding things in the past. We have to move away from project funding
to core funding and build capacity within organizations to be effective.
But that's relatively new. Well, actually it's come full circle; that's
the way it used to be. When Robert A. Laidlaw was on the board of the
Hospital for Sick Kids, there was no question about funding the core
capacity of that institution. It wasn't about funding projects. So in
a way, the old has become new...in a different context. That's a relatively
new challenge for us all.
The there is also the whole issue of branding, and how strategic funders
have found their niche, like Laidlaw. But there are very few good models
of collaboration among foundations. We do a lot of things solo and I
don't think we have enough money to continue doing that. We are all
good at being in the driver's seat; we are less adept at being in the
passenger's seat. So, I hope that is something that we would learn to
change.
CV: Where are you headed in the next few years? What's coming
up?
NG: Well, I think we are making progress but still have a long
way to go in terms of the engagement of underrepresented communities.
The other piece of this foundation is that we walk the talk. For example,
as part of our Youth Engagement Program we have young people involved
on the board and on all of our committees. We have people of colour.
We are probably the most diverse foundation in Canada. There is no community
foundation that compares to our diversity. We are moving in that direction
and we will move more strongly in that direction. You have different
conversations at the table when you have people there who have generally
not been represented before.
The Laidlaw Foundation makes a special effort to recruit members from generally underrepresented communities to serve on the board and its advisory committees. At the time of their appointment, some of these members may not have a high public profile. By the end of their term, however, many will be sought out to serve on other boards and agencies. I think that is one of the pieces that we need
to do more of. I think the knowledge transfer is critical, as I said
before. I think that harmonization, or moving across silos, and looking
at how we frame things is important. A radical change of the definition
of charity in this country is long overdue. So issues around that definition,
changes in the notion of what constitutes advocacy, the democratization
of this sector is critically important. I see changes...I have to be
optimistic.
Nathan Gilbert has been executive director of the Laidlaw Foundation
since 1982. Prior to that he was head of the Ontario Municipal Social
Services Association. He was also a community and neighbourhood planner
with the City of Toronto. For more information about the Laidlaw Foundation,
visit www.laidlawfdn.org.
