Funder Focus: John Kay and the Columbia Foundation
March 6, 2006
By Elisa Birnbaum
This month in the Funder Focus, we feature the Columbia Foundation of Vancouver, BC. It was established in 2000 with a mission of investing in human and social capital for the benefit of all Canadians. The foundation works to fund innovative social research, to develop and fund new scholarships that promote retraining and lifelong learning, and to promote the inclusive involvement of citizens in decision-making and community building. CharityVillage spoke with executive director John Kay about the challenges of a being new foundation, the labour movement that founded and defined its mission, and some of the foundation's recent projects.
CharityVillage: The Columbia Foundation has a very unique history and origin. Can you explain how it got started?
John Kay: The Columbia Foundation was founded in late 2000 with a large endowment from Working Enterprises, a private corporation owned by a group of seven trade unions. Working Enterprises came about in 1991 and has operations across Canada.
CV: Considering its origin, has there been any concern over a perception of impartiality by the public with regards to your funding decisions and programs, etc?
JK: There really hasn't been any issue. We have been very clear that we are not partisan and clearly our perspective is one that you can term a more progressive one, and one that's more oriented to the concerns of average citizens than others. But beyond that, no, we haven't had any issues. Certainly we are interested in policy solutions and recognize in a positive way the role that the labour movement plays in Canadian society and the Canadian economy. Aside from that, we're not pushing any particular message and we really haven't heard any concern either.
CV: What prompted this group of trade unions to come together and create a foundation? What were they hoping to achieve?
JK: I think that one of the largest reasons behind the foundation is that when they looked out at the landscape of think tanks and those types of charitable organizations, they saw a lack of organizations speaking to a progressive voice and really speaking to issues more at a grassroots level, a street level, and a social change perspective. I think their feeling was that to the extent that there are progressive foundations or public policy organizations in the country - and there are not many to begin with - many of them are oriented toward producing more academic level research and research that's primarily aimed at opinion leaders rather than at the grassroots or street corner level.
CV: What do you see as the most significant challenges facing a young organization such as the Columbia Foundation?
JK: There are a couple of challenges. There's no question that fundraising is a major challenge, especially in the last few years where we're seen a real reduction in the amount of charitable dollars available. That's partly due to business conditions and declining stock markets. And, because of stock market conditions, even building a profitable endowment is a real challenge. It's really hard to get the dollars off the ground.
Another real challenge that's important for foundations and institutes like ours is related to the charitable law in Canada. There are very severe restrictions on the amount of budget dollars that can be allocated to anything that is remotely considered political work. So, if you're building a foundation or a policy institute that is really trying to effect some type of social changes, it is extraordinarily difficult to effectively stay within the 10% rule and still carry out your mission.
CV: I hear this frustration a lot. Are you at all hopeful that these restrictions will be relaxed somewhat in the future to help nonprofits take significant and effective steps?
JK: I guess I'm not terribly optimistic. We're been both a funder and a participant in IMPACS Charity Democracy Project and we tried to press policy makers to make changes. Our sense of that process was that there really wasn't a lot of appetite - certainly not at the bureaucratic level in Ottawa - to see any substantive change. I guess now it's a wait-and-see process to see whether or not the new Harper government will be inclined to take a second look at the charitable sector. Given that they are a minority and that they've got some larger issues on their plates, I'd be doubtful.
CV: Since the foundation is based in BC, is all your funding focused in that province or does it have a greater reach?
JK: Our funding is national, though we started in BC and it tends to be our testing ground for new programs. We are actively working on taking everything national.
CV: Considering you unique perspective and origin, what are the objectives of the Columbia Foundation?
JK: Overall, what we're trying to do is to build a more inclusive participatory democracy in Canada. On the one hand, [we want to] produce the research that lays out progressive policy alternatives that also have some obvious program or practical project that can be carried out at a grassroots level. On the other hand, we want to look at how we can help empower individuals in communities to fully participate in some of the critical social and public policy issues of the day, whether it's medicare or pension security or access to quality education. Those are our main objectives and that was the outcome of a pretty comprehensive planning process we went through about two years ago.
CV: Can you give an example of a research program that can translate into something on a practical level?
JK: About four and a half years ago we did a study in partnership with the Canadian Council on Social Development. It was called Boomerang. The study looked at the impact on the labour markets from the coming baby boomer bulge - the retirement bulge. One of the things we identified is the whole issue of older workers who have a great repository of skills and who would like to contribute to the workforce, but because of technological change or downsizing or other factors, find themselves essentially transitioned out of a job.
Out of that we created, initially in BC, a scholarship fund specifically aimed for older workers. [This was] to actually provide them with some money in order to be able to relearn or retrain for what they felt was their career goal or where they wanted to make a contribution to society and the economy. We were a little different than other programs in that we didn't put down any specific parameters or framework on the kind of programs that we would fund. Essentially we said to them, "Tell us your financial needs, tell us what your goals are, what you want to study, and why you think some money from the foundation would be helpful to you meeting those goals. And we'll leave it to you to decide whether or not that's the best career." So, we've funded anything from high school completion right up until an MBA, or put some money toward those programs. We made available fourteen $1,000 scholarships each year, which were renewable for a second year and put directly toward the cost of tuition and books.
CV: Why did you not try and place some parameters or limitations on their choices? What lessons did the foundation learn that influenced the non-restrictive approach?
JK: If you take a look at a lot of the retraining programs the government has tried, typically they try to focus on very narrow sectors of the economy that have been identified - generally by the business community - as being the ones with the greatest area of immediate need. And all too often, people will come out of those programs assuming that there is a job waiting for them and there isn't. Or, the job that they trained for is not really what they want to do. So, rather than get into that trap, we said, "Let's leave it to individual applicants to decide what's best for them and to decide where there is a job opportunity or a logical career goal for them."
Then what we'll do is look at their application and see if the individual has been doing this all their life and if it makes sense for them to go to this career - if it's a logical step. That is some of the criteria we use in evaluating. But we've specifically kept it very open and overall what we try to do with the program is, one, to give older workers the opportunity to remain productive by seeking retraining and, two, to try to help foster a culture of lifelong learning so people understand that you don't just get a bachelor's degree and that's it. Because the economy and the nature of work have changed, you're going to spend most of life constantly learning and constantly retraining and constantly changing what you do. We want to make an important contribution to that process.
CV: Is this an ongoing project? Are you happy with its results?
JK: Yes. We funded fourteen a year for the last four years and probably 25% of our recipients applied for renewals. It's quite successful and we're thinking of expanding the program on a national basis.
CV: It seems like the foundation has evolved over the six years since its inception. Can you take us through that evolution?
JK: Yes, it has. In the very early years, we had a very broad mandate to develop Canada's human and social capital. Like many foundations in their infancy, we tended to give money out to a great number of projects, not all of which always fit well with our mandate. And not all of the initiatives produced a real sense for us that we had a coherent forward-looking vision that was well-focused to maximize the dollars we had to carry out that vision. So, about two years ago, we embarked on a very comprehensive strategic planning process to better define how we would meet the initial goals and initial reasons that the foundation was set up, and then define the program that we found was most capable of carrying out those objectives.
CV: And where has that evolutionary process brought you? Where is the focus today?
JK: Our focus is on research, governance, and community development and education and training, as seen by the scholarship program I discussed.
CV: Are you presently accepting funding proposals?
JK: Not presently, and there are a couple of reasons. First, we do a great deal of quasi-internal funding through the Columbia Institute, our sister organization. [It] carries out the on-the-ground policy and program work on behalf of the foundation, and that does take up a big chunk of our budget. We have, for many years, funded an organization called the Shareholder Association for Research and Education and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the reason funding is frozen right now is the board is in the process of looking at where we're going to channel dollars. One of the things we have been working on is a fairly comprehensive research program, but we're really just in the initial stages now, defining what type of research we're going to carry out and how that fits in with the overall strategic mission. Once we've completed that exercise, we'll begin to determine how we're going to do external granting.
CV: Where is the foundation headed in the next five years?
JK: Over the next five years, we want to see a foundation that is well recognized in the media, in academic circles, and in the community generally, as a strong voice for constructive, progressive, public policy solutions for organizations; and one that carries out innovative programs that flow from its research and its source of insight - an organization sought out by media and by policy and decision makers for its contributions.
With a background in the public sector and business, John Kay never expected to be sitting in his current position of executive director at the Columbia Foundation. Originally based at Working Enterprises, his association with the foundation began in the early summer of 2001. However, his involvement remained hands-off and indirect until four years ago when a number of sickness and maternity leaves threw the title of executive directorship into his capable lap. For more information about the foundation, visit: www.columbiafoundation.ca.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance print and broadcast journalist living in Toronto.
