Funder Focus: Nada Ristich and the BMO Corporate Donations Program
July 4, 2005
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Bank of Montreal Corporate Donations Program,
which distributed $16.7 million in grants last year and supports between 2,300 and 2,800 Canadian nonprofits annually. Recently, Corporate Knights magazine also named BMO the best corporate citizen in Canada. CharityVillage
spoke with Nada Ristich, senior manager of corporate donations, about the company's approach to granting, common misconceptions that nonprofits have about corporate funders, and what it takes to create an effective donations program.
CharityVillage: As a large corporation, do you encounter any common misconceptions among grant applicants about corporate funding and your role as a funder?
Nada Ristich: We work for a bank so people just assume that the bank has lots of money. We get thousands of requests every year and applicants automatically think we are going to fund them. I think a lot of nonprofits don't do their homework in terms of finding out what a corporation funds. In general, I tell them - especially smaller nonprofit organizations that don't necessarily have the resources or the staff - to phone beforehand to find out exactly if we will fund them. They need to be a bit more direct about that because, if not, they are going to be declined.
CV: What are you looking for in a grantee?
NR: There are a number of things we will look at. Number one, does it fit with the corporate program? Before you even get there though, you have to look at the viability of the organization. You have to look at its structure, its board of directors, its financial stability, the success of the programs that it operates, how they measure the short and long term goals of those programs, the number of volunteers it is dependent on, and who funds them. Then you look at the governance, the accountability, and the stewardship side of it.
Applications come in from across the country, and we have a number of people who look at the grassroots programs at the divisional and provincial levels. We also have a corporate donations committee that looks at the larger donations. But they don't look at all the factors I mentioned. That's all been vetted before it gets to them. It's my job, and the job of our regional people, to do the due diligence on it.
CV: Are there things that nonprofits could be doing to make their applications better?
NR: I think quite often what most of them don't do is phone ahead of time to find out what the procedure is. As I said before, a lot of these organizations - the smaller ones in particular - don't have the resources. They end up writing long, complicated documents that they waste their time and energy on when they could be doing something else. Sometimes I might only need a two-page summary. We welcome phone calls and inquiries; that's how we operate. From our perspective, it's also about developing community relationships. There is a lot more you can learn about people over a telephone conversation. That's why we don't take online applications. Online is a very specific, formatted approach.
CV: As a major bank and a large corporation, do you feel any responsibility to set an example in terms of corporate giving?
NR: No we don't feel any responsibility to set an example for other corporations. We do it according to what our business objectives are, our mandate, and our own corporate image and reputation. If other corporations choose to emulate us then I'm flattered by that. We are approached quite often by other corporations about our corporate donations program. It could be about how we implement a specific program, how we manage it internally, what we've done to communicate that both internally and externally, or how it's structured.
CV: What components are necessary to operate an effective and successful corporate giving program?
NR: I don't think you can put adjectives in there. Most not-for-profits are happy they are getting money. Is that successful? I presume it is. But I think what you have to do is to have criteria in place. I think you have to have a vision for it, you have to have a policy behind it, and you certainly have to have the buy-in and the approval of senior executive staff.
CV: What would you say to critics who think corporate giving is all about public relations and image building?
NR: I don't believe in that at all. We've been giving out donations since our founding in 1817. Although it might sound corny or untrue, it very much is true that corporations, and I can speak particularly for the Bank of Montreal, do believe in giving back to the communities in which they do business. They support them. Even in terms of the volunteer element, from the very senior executives right down to employees, they are encouraged to volunteer. So it is very much an innate culture of the bank and has been for many, many years.
Having said that, public relations does play a part, but it's really about doing good in the community and working in partnership with the not-for-profit sector to effect change. We try to be as transparent as we can with organizations and help them to be successful. This is not a criticism, just a general observation on my part, but I think that quite often corporations put too much emphasis on their brand and moving their business objectives ahead with an organization. I don't think you can do that. It has to be a mutual relationship with agreed upon objectives. That means sitting down with the organizations and ironing out how you are going to make that relationship a success.
CV: You contribute to both large and small organizations across a variety of areas including education, health, arts and culture, civic and community, and sports and athletics, but your focus is on learning. How are you supporting learning within these different areas?
NR: Within education we have a number of very large scholarship endowments across the country. Scholarships and bursaries provide access to education for young people to pursue their learning objectives. In the arts, that can mean anything from student outreach programs, sponsoring student support programs. It can also mean pre-performance lectures for the general audience that comes in. In the healthcare sector and hospitals, it's fellowships and research grants for young scientists to pursue their work. Most recently, we made a huge donation to the University Health Network in Toronto to establish a chair in health professions education research, which is going to have an impact on health professionals and how they communicate, as well as patient outcomes.
CV: You also sponsor many events and organizations each year. From your perspective as a corporation, what components are necessary to make a sponsorship agreement successful?
NR: There may be times when I am looking for industry exclusivity or something like that, and if it's a commercial sponsorship it could be to raise awareness for a cause you want to be involved with or side with. We work closely with each nonprofit to define the terms of a sponsorship. It depends on the amount of money you are putting into it. It depends on the organization. It depends on the scope and whether the event is volunteer-driven and we can engage our employees. Is there room for client entertainment? There are all kinds of different factors to look at and we look at each of them on a one-by-one basis.
CV: In your opinion, how has corporate giving evolved and changed in the last ten years?
NR: In the past, companies had a broad-based giving approach. What we've now begun to see in the last decade or so is focused giving, aligning your giving to business and marketing objectives of the corporation. We've also seen the onset of things like cause-related marketing.
CV: How would you like to see your own corporate giving program evolve in the next ten years?
NR: Well, I don't have a crystal ball so that's a hard thing to determine. The reason I say that is because there are a number of factors you have to look at. The whole socio-economic environment that we live in is changing. It's a very complex and diverse situation and it's constantly changing and emerging. Our job is not just giving out cheques, but monitoring what those social issues and trends will be. We don't do that in isolation; we work in partnership with the not-for-profit world, business associations, and policymakers who define what that is. You have to remember, too, that we are a corporation. We watch it the same way that we watch the markets. What happens in business eventually has an effect on the not-for-profit sector two or three years down the road. As corporate governance was a big issue, and it still is, you are seeing that effect now in the nonprofit sector, for example.
I think there are also a number of social factors that we all have to be aware of that could affect our giving and the programs we support. We have an aging baby boomer generation. That, over the next decade and longer, is going to affect healthcare, community infrastructure, housing, palliative care and long-term healthcare facilities. It could even affect education and learning. This is a well-educated population that is going to continue on. Another issue that we see and that isn't going anywhere is the issue of the environment. I think that is going to come to the forefront in a much stronger way. I think other issues that you must constantly monitor are education, youth, and racism. And I think the issue of poverty is going to continue to be a big one.
We don't make our decisions in isolation about who to fund. And part of that due diligence that I mentioned earlier is monitoring what is going on in society. Where is healthcare going to be two, or three or five years down the road from now? Where is education going? At one time, corporations made donations almost blindly. Now we look at them as an investment.
Nada Ristich is the senior manager of corporate donations for Bank of Montreal. Previously, she handled corporate donations for Kraft General Foods and has been working in the area of corporate giving for the past two decades. For more information about BMO's corporate donations program, visit www.bmo.com/community.
