Funder Focus: Joy Spencer-Barry and the Queen Alexandra
Foundation
August 2, 2005
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Queen
Alexandra Foundation,
which was established to support the physical, mental and
social well-being of children, youth and families on Vancouver Island.
CharityVillage
spoke with executive director Joy Spencer-Barry
about the foundation's evolution and historic roots, its efforts to
encourage collaboration among like-minded organizations, and its
ongoing pursuit of excellence and innovation as a grantmaker.
CharityVillage: The foundation has roots that go
back almost 80 years. How does it position itself in the community
today? What role do you see yourself playing?
Joy Spencer-Barry: Although the foundation was
established 20 years ago, the grassroots organization that started
the Queen Alexandra Solarium - the old solarium for children with TB
and polio - was the Women's Junior Service League. That started in
1926, and only 20 years ago did we decide to establish a foundation
and take over the work of the Junior League. So we have a very long
history of these pioneers who started the solarium and we have simply
taken over the good work that they began.
We did start as a traditional hospital foundation, meaning we were
there to raise funds for equipment for children. Then with the needs
that arose, we decided to expand to include program funding that
wasn't provided by government. Then, about ten years ago we changed
our constitution since we knew things were changing in how services
were being delivered to children and youth - moving from hospital
residential settings to more community-based. We decided to change
our constitution to allow us to be a foundation that would support
other child and youth agencies on Vancouver Island. Our primary
responsibility is still to our grassroots, to the Queen Alexandra
Centre, but we are a public foundation and we operate in the best of
both worlds. We operate with the highlights of a traditional hospital
foundation and the good work that's done by community foundations.
It's all for children and youth.
CV: The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA)
receives the bulk of your grants. What is your relationship with the
VIHA?
JSB: The government has established health
authorities in many provinces. In British Columbia there is one
health authority for all of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands,
which takes in a population of about 750,000. It's responsible for
everything from acute to public health, to long-term care, from
babies to seniors. So it takes in all aspects of health care. They
are classified as a nonprofit, so although they receive their money
from government, they managed the money and use it at their
discretion. In our case, our support to the Vancouver Island Health
Authority is only so far as we support their child, youth and family
portfolio.
CV: Do you receive any support from the
provincial government for the work you do?
JSB: We've been very fortunate. I think it's that
the good stewardship of our organization has been recognized; we have
received some community granting money from the Ministry for Children
and Family Development (MCFD) to establish arms-length grant
allocation committees in two areas. One is for Aboriginal children on
Vancouver Island. That's $2 million, and we share $1 million with the
Victoria Foundation. So we work together there, which shows a good
partnership with a community foundation. Then there is $2 million
that we manage ourselves for Non-Aboriginal children. It was our job
to find independent individuals from across the island to administer
those funds and allocate them as grant requests came in. We are
really the trustees of those funds.
The provincial government also approached us about some new
initiatives that we undertook on southern Vancouver Island around two
new children's centres. They liked the approach of bringing agencies
together to collaborate to do something more than just cohabitate,
but to extend it to ensure that instead of families coming into an
area and telling their story five or six times to five or six
different agencies, that there would be a one-stop shop of agencies
available to the families. The agencies would work together so that
if there was a need that one agency couldn't accommodate, just down
the hall there would be another agency that could support it. The
MCFD liked that idea and they approached us as they were starting to
decentralize some of their child and youth services. So they have
become a partner with us, along with twenty other child and youth
agencies that we are partnering with for these two new child centres
in Sooke and the West Shore.
CV: How did the idea for these child centres
evolve?
JSB: The number of grant applications we were
receiving at the foundation was becoming horrendous, and the
duplication was unbelievable. We thought it would make sense to send
all of these applications back and say 'come and meet with us. There
has to be a way that we could partner so that you could work together
and your dollars will go much further if we decide to grant'. So we
brought the agencies together and we established a major gift
campaign for $7 million. During that process the Ministry of Children
and Families approached us to say 'we like what you're doing; here's
$2 million. Can we have space in both those buildings.' As a result,
we had to increase the size of the buildings, which of course bumped
the cost up to $9 million; $7 million however, is from the generosity
of donors to our foundation.
It's been a five-year project; it doesn't happen quickly. Autonomy is
an issue - respecting the other boards and the agencies with their
own individual boards of directors. Now, we've turned that around so
that with any grant application we look at, agencies have to show
that there has been an attempt to speak with like agencies in their
community. We don't give a grant unless they can show some
partnership or at least that they are talking to one another. The
beauty of this process is that agencies that were folding their arms
at the first table are now truly embracing the thought of working
together on other projects. The lessons learned around this
collaborative process are to be realistic and respect the autonomy of
various agencies.
CV: What are some of the most pressing needs of
children and families on Vancouver Island right now?
JSB: We have been approached by a small community
west of Victoria called Port Renfrew. It's a community divided by a
number of economic challenges; it had fishing and forestry and those
industries have now disappeared. It has a very high First Nations
population and the town is struggling. Suicides and drug abuse are
very high in that particular area, so we have put some goals in place
to assist them with their child and youth needs. Through the
partnerships we've developed in Sooke and the West Shore, we are able
to use those agencies to support us in what we are trying to do for
Port Renfrew.
CV: Aside from the VIHA and the Child, Youth and
Family Centres, you also fund several small community organizations
each year. What do you look for when reviewing grant
applications?
JSB: Once again, one of the things that we've
learned over the last five years is that [these agencies] are not
stand-alone. If they are the only organization in their small
community that provides, let's say, literacy opportunities for
children, that's fine. But if they come from a larger market, what we
are looking for is that they must speak to other organizations and
attempt to partner. They have to show a sustainability plan because
our funding is only for one-year, and they have to show that they are
willing to be entrepreneurial. We are trying to encourage communities
to be less dependent on government funds and gaming funds.
CV: One of your values is the pursuit of
excellence and innovation. How is the foundation living up to this
value? What innovations have you incorporated into the work you
do?
JSB: In addition to the strategic planning that we
do, we have initiated long-range planning. So we are continually
evaluating what we've done before. Has it made a difference? That's a
key question. How can we improve things for communities on Vancouver
Island? Bringing agencies together to collaborate beyond cohabitation
is something I think our board should be commended for, and to keep
that momentum going, to encourage communities to work together. So
that's where I think one of our major roles has been identified - to
show communities the benefits of working together.
It's important to note that we have a small team, and as a small team
we work so well together. Each person has their own expertise in an
area and they take ownership of it. We have weekly meetings where
it's not 'this is what I'm doing', but rather, 'this is what I'm
doing, this is where I may need some support'. So I have to give
credit to the staff team in addition to the board. We can't do it
without them.
CV: What are you working on right now? Where
are you headed in the next few years?
JSB: First of all, we have made some commitments to
Port Renfrew. They are looking at a new community centre that will
house children's services there. We are now looking for some partners
because we can't do it alone. We are also working with the University
of Victoria and the Vancouver Island Health Authority on a children's
research institute. That's very exciting. So we've done three years
of work on that already. Following our own message, we don't want to
duplicate what's already happening at BC Children's Hospital, or Sick
Kids in Toronto, or CHEO in Ottawa, but there are certain unique
childhood needs on Vancouver Island. There are unique communities
where fetal alcohol syndrome, mental health issues, and autism seem
to be prevalent. Our goal is to work with VIHA and the University of
Victoria to establish leadership research chairs to look at these
issues. That should keep us busy for a while!
Joy Spencer-Barry has been executive director of the
foundation since it was established 20 years ago. She volunteered at
the Queen Alexandra Hospital before becoming executive director of
the foundation, and prior to that, she was involved with nonprofits
from a marketing perspective. For more information about the Queen
Alexandra Foundation, visit www.queenalexandra.org.
