Funder Focus: Mark Petersen and the Bridgeway Foundation
May 2, 2005
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Bridgeway Foundation,
a family foundation that collaborates with innovators to grow healthy
and productive nonprofit organizations, and to help them engage in transformational
projects, both within Canada and the developing world. CharityVillage
spoke with executive director Mark Petersen about the foundation's
philosophy, its belief in creating partnerships with charities, and
its support of innovation and capacity building within the nonprofit
sector.
CharityVillage: The foundation was founded in 1980, but it
wasn't until 1997 that it was endowed with significant resources. At
what point did you begin distributing grants, and how much do you grant
annually?
Mark Petersen: There was an initial endowment to set up the
foundation in 1980 and granting was done prior to 1997, but it was a
very small amount each year. There were a couple years where Reg and
Carol Petersen, the founders, operated at that larger level, but they
realized fairly quickly that they needed someone else to come in and
manage the foundation for them. So I came on board as executive director
in 2000. Last year, we granted $3.4 million and we hope to grant a similar
amount this year.
CV: The foundation identifies itself as a Christian organization and is a member of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. How does this influence the work that you do?
MP: I would say it is foundational to what we are doing. My mentality
in running the foundation is really flowing out of my view of stewardship.
There are a number of ways to look at that, but I see it as being very
much a spiritual activity. I view the resources not as the foundation's,
but belonging to God and it is our family's responsibility to steward
it wisely and effectively. That is the point I start from. Even though
there is a lot of mundane stuff to do day-to-day, I see all of it as
being a very spiritual activity.
CV: You don't refer to grant recipients or grantees, but rather to 'your partners'. How does this impact the relationships you develop with these organizations?
MP: I really try not to have that condescending attitude. The
way I view it is that they have a number of gifts, abilities, and talents
that they are offering to effect change in society, just as we do. They
just happen to be different kinds of abilities and resources. So, I
see us as collaborating with them in what they are doing. We provide
the financial side of things and they actually do the work and implement
the plan. I think with our partners there is a growing sense of working
together. I'm especially talking about this in terms of our program fund,
which is a larger, multi-year grant program where there is a big commitment
on our part to be involved with them. Rather than act in a passive manner
as a foundation and wait for them to come to us, we will go to them
and say 'hey, let's work together on a project'. This is obviously with
the organizations that we've developed a lot of confidence in over the
years and trust highly.
CV: I'm assuming, then, that there is a lot of back-and-forth between
the foundation and these partners.
MP: There is. With those in the program fund - this is just new this year - I am working with them on the front end, in the design phase of their projects. I'm not an expert by any means, but it's a priority for me that they develop indicators. We set up the project so that they know how they are going to be reporting back and both sides are comfortable with the reporting schedule. As the years go on, we are able to get more and more of a sense of the progress that has been accomplished through the grant.
CV: At a time when many funders seem to offer only program or project grants, you dedicate 40% of your overall grant budget to capacity building. Why do you see this as a priority?
MP: We want this to be a healthy sector, and we're not successful if the charities out there aren't healthy and successful themselves. My view is that if we are involved in projects and program funding, that's great, but these projects are going to be much more effective if they are within healthy organizations. So, it behooves us to fund the capacity building side of things. A lot of funders have different approaches and this is the one that we have carved out as being what we really want to contribute to.
The feedback we get from organizations is very positive. We often get the report back that they haven't met anyone else who is interested in this area, so I'm finding great support for it. I feel it's meeting a need that, maybe, hasn't been met before. I've actually been inspired by CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) for the capacity building. I know that in a lot of their projects they allocate a certain amount of funding towards building capacity. As I was thinking through that, I felt it was something that we can contribute to all of our partners, not just the international development organizations.
CV: Innovation seems to be very important to the foundation,
so much so that you created the RL Petersen Award for Non-Profit Innovation
in 2003. Tell me about the award and this year's recipient.
MP: The award is named after my dad, and it's a way to honour
him as the founder of Bridgeway. The idea is that within the nonprofit
sector innovation is not often encouraged and it's not really an environment
where innovation is rewarded. In the private sector, innovation is rewarded
in many ways, through increased market sales and that kind of thing.
I think it's important that we honour and promote those nonprofits that
are most innovative, which is why we created the award. We just presented
the second set of awards - $25,000 for the main recipient and $10,000
each for the two honourable mentions. Any organization that receives
a grant from us is automatically eligible for consideration. We narrow
it down to ten finalists and then an independent committee takes a look
at those top ten and selects the three winners.
This year’s main award of $25,000 went to National Service Dogs. It's a really cool organization, actually. It was founded in 1996 in Cambridge, Ontario, so it's a fairly new organization. We only happened to discover it this past year. What they do is train and provide dogs for autistic kids. Autistic kids are so tactile; they just love having this animal next to them. It settles them down and gives them confidence, while also keeping them safe. Sometimes people don't know how to interact with an autistic child, so having the dog there also helps break down barriers when the family is out in the community. It is quite an innovative organization and they were recently asked to take this model to Ireland, so it is gaining some international exposure as well.
CV: You have a very streamlined grant application process. Everything is done electronically, and proposals are accepted by invitation only. How well is this process working for you?
MP: It's great to have a process. It gives you boundaries and
security, and it makes things run smoothly. I've been working with the
MicroEdge product GIFTS for about four years, initially just as my grant
management software. Then a few years ago, I purchased the IGAM (Internet
Grant Application Module). This is linked to your web site and then
any applicant can apply online. The beauty of it is that the charity
does the input and it automatically comes into your system and gives
you a record of the grant application. It is very easy to then track
payments out, reports due, all of that kind of thing. There are a couple
of 'glitchy' things about it, but overall I've been happy with it.
CV: Where would you like to see the foundation ten years from now?
MP: I think I would like to know that we have contributed to
enhancing how charities are run in Canada, through the funding we've
done, and through some of the issues that we've emphasized. I'm working
right now on a new strategic plan and what I would envision is continued
refinement of what we are doing. We are not experts, and we are not
the last word on this at all. We just want to keep learning and growing.
I love what can be done through the charitable sector. I think it's
so powerful in our culture and we would like to be a model for others.
If we are doing it, you can also do it.
Mark Petersen has been executive director of the Bridgeway Foundation
since 2000. Prior to that, he spent ten years working with a number
of different charities, living in the developing world for part of that
time. For more information about the Bridgeway Foundation, visit www.bridgewayfoundation.ca, or to
download their 2004 annual report click
here.
