|
|
|||||
|
|||||
| Path: Main Street : NewsWeek : Archive : Funder Focus : Article |
This is an archive of CharityVillage NewsWeek. To find a word on the page,
use your browser's "find" feature (CTRL-F or CMD-F). Please note: While we ensure that all links and e-mail addresses are accurate
at their publishing date, the quick-changing nature of the web means that some
links to other web sites and e-mail addresses may no longer be accurate.
To view other articles in the archive, use our Chronological Index.
Funder Focus: Pat Letizia and the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation
August 8, 2006
By Elisa Birnbaum
This month in the Funder Focus, we feature the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation. which began distributing grants in 1992. One of the first environmental grantmakers in Canada, Alberta Ecotrust raises and distributes funds to registered nonprofit organizations. Their funding, in turn, helps groups implement innovative and meaningful grassroots projects toward sustainable environmental impact. CharityVillage spoke with executive director Pat Letizia about the environmental landscape in Alberta, the projects they support and the relationships they help build.
Charity Village: Alberta Ecotrust started up in the most intriguing fashion. Can you explain its origins and how they paved the way for future partnerships?
Pat Letizia: Well, it was a bit of a combination of timeliness around a burgeoning interest in the environment and the brainchild of two individuals, one from the environmental community and one from the corporate community.
In the late eighties there was a general movement toward awareness about environmental issues. At the time, the one environmental group most people could identify with was Greenpeace. Environmentalists were still perceived as pretty much focused on activism and advocacy.
There were two people in Alberta - one on the NGO side [Rob Macintosh from the Pembina Institute] and the other working in industry [Michael Robertson from Petro-Canada] - who were at opposite sides at review meetings and hearings but they came to know and respect each other and talked about how at the end of the day, regardless of where you work or what you do for a living, the environment was important to you. They talked a lot about the disparity between corporate resources and community-based environmental groups. And so they came up with the idea of forming this trust fund for the environment. It would be based on a mutual partnership; an organization that would create a new platform for consensus dialogue, something that did not exist anywhere else in Canada.
They spent about 18 months selling this idea around the community and actually came up with the name Ecotrust because that was the biggest issue in forming this partnership - the fact that it was difficult for both sectors to have complete trust in the other. So the trust part is not just about the money, it is also the fact that we were forming a collaborative partnership, a unique model of partnership at the time. There still isn't another organization like it in Canada.
CV: What do you look for in grantees? Are there specific criteria to which they must adhere?
PL: We are basically a grantmaker. We raise money and redistribute it back out to the community as grants. But there's nothing specific in terms of criteria. We will provide funds to any nonprofit organization, which means they don't need to be an environmental group, but it does have to be an environmental project.
In 2004, we did a major piece of research on environmental priority issues in Alberta, which resulted in the report, Maximizing Effectiveness: An Assessment of Environmental Priorities and Voluntary Sector Capacity Needs in Alberta. Based on that research, we reformulated grantmaking quite significantly, opened it up quite a bit and moved to three different grant streams. One stream is now for multi-year grants, recognizing that environmental community groups often need more time. If they are doing any kind of data analysis or gathering, one year is not enough. At least this would give them core funding for a specific period of work so they could use that money to leverage additional grants.
We also separated our grant program into smaller grants and larger grants because we heard from the community that it was the same amount of work to apply for $2,000 as it was for $20,000. The major grants we increased to $30,000 as a maximum and the multi-year grants have a 2-step process. That helps reduce the amount of work the groups have to put in. The results so far have been positive.
CV: Are there any groups, such as the government, with whom you align? If so, what type of partnerships do you establish with them?
PL: We are working quite closely with the provincial government. We are trying to look at a model of collaboration to be able to participate in the policy process of public consultation. But I don't think we would ever be open to the government as a partner. Unfortunately, with public money there are sometimes restraints that we don't want to deal with, although it's not a negative thing.
The model of Ecotrust has actually been quite phenomenal in that our partners contribute and it comes with no strings, no designation of the money; the money is pooled and redistributed back out. And every corporate and NGO partner participates actively in grant decisions. We have a multi-partnered grant review committee. So it's not just a donation to us, it's a real partnership. They sit on the board and make decisions about the future of the organization. The grant consultations are an excellent platform for that dialogue between the two sectors.
CV: What are the main obstacles toward achieving your mission?
PL: We give out between $300,000 and $350,000 dollars a year but we never have enough money. In Alberta there is a significant lack of environmental funding available. We have a provincial lottery foundation but they do not fund environmental initiatives. We don't have a provincial funding program for the environment other than a general lottery fund that's open to everybody. There's a perception outside Alberta about this booming economy and that environmental groups are rolling in money but that's really not the case.
Because of our significant environmental expertise, we have a really good understanding of the sector and we work very closely with NGOs in the community and other funders and community leaders. We understand the challenges in the voluntary sector as a whole, and particularly of the environmental community. So our challenge is that we can't do enough to help.
CV: What steps are you taking to overcome this challenge?
PL: We have a long-term strategy to set aside dollars and we hope we will eventually have an endowment that will help us offset our operations so that all of our dollars go back out into the community. We run a very tight ship and keep our staff small but we are still recognized as an important and significant grantmaker in Alberta.
We're leveraging our influence more and more to try and increase environmental philanthropy. So we're making it easier for other foundations to support environmental initiatives as can be seen by the report we published. We liase a lot with private and community foundations as well as with corporate funders to bring issues to the forefront and to build a sense of awareness.
We're now working on a few funder forums in different parts of the province. We bring other funders together to hear about local issues and to meet local groups. Because of our partnership model, we see ourselves as a real facilitator of collaboration and partnership. We utilize our own expertise and resources to leverage others into the community.
CV: How do you perceive you role in the community? Is it one of advocacy?
PL: We do not take a position on environmental issues. And we don't participate in environmental projects; we are really working on the philanthropy side. But we do represent and speak on behalf of the environmental community at certain forums where it's important to make that case. Typically, if you are looking at municipal forums on community development or sustainability planning, they tend not to even know who the environmental groups are because the social service sector is usually very dominant.
In Calgary, at least, we've been able to get on that kind of community map. And we ensure that the environment component of sustainability is represented. We are trying to do that in other communities as we go along. So we advocate for the environmental community and the environment in a very general way: we bring groups together. We're doing that also as a capacity builder. We recognize that there are many excellent capacity building initiatives in the country, but because environmental groups are typically very volunteer-based, very few of them have paid staff or a lot of paid staff. So they are not really connected in the environmental sector loop and they are not even aware sometimes of the programs or training available to them. What we are really focusing on here is being a capacity facilitator and bringing in experts.
As a small grantmaker, we are much more conscious of the impact of our dollars and we see that those dollars will go a lot further if groups have maximized their effectiveness. If they are more strategic and collaborative, that means we are stewarding our donors' dollars better as well.
CV: What do you consider to be the most significant environmental issue in Alberta today?
PL: I think there's a consensus in Alberta that the biggest issue of importance is water. It's not a new issue but it's becoming increasingly significant in that everybody is starting to realize that they're affected - all the industries. We don't have very much water in southern Alberta, where all of the agricultural activity is pretty much centred, and we have a lot more water in the north where we have a boreal forest. So because of the changes in climate, there's also concern that the glaciers that feed our headwaters are diminishing. As well, we're becoming very urban, and with the intensive growth of livestock operations you get a lot more impact on water quality. So we're looking at both water quality and water quantity issues.
CV: Where do you see Alberta Ecotrust heading in the future?
PL: I don't know if we see ourselves getting bigger, but we certainly want to grow our grant budget. It's our 15th anniversary in 2007 and we have some plans in the immediate future to go back to our original partners to talk about reinvesting in the organization. I think we've proven ourselves and transformed ourselves enough in the last 15 years. So we want to go back to the original model and clarify that it was a great idea at the time and surpassed everyone's expectations and now we are looking for reinvestment. Our partners are primarily in the oil and gas community so [we're] trying to make some lateral moves into the industry. We are also talking to land developers, forestry companies and other industries who would like to be included in this unique partnership in order to expand our ability to support more projects.
An active community volunteer and engaged in the nonprofit sector for many years, Pat Letizia also brings a background in environmental science to her outstanding resume. Starting out as a program manager ten years ago, she rose through the ranks of Alberta Ecotrust, eventually taking on the role of executive director in 2000. For more information about the foundation, visit: www.albertaecotrust.com.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance print and broadcast journalist living in Toronto.
|
|||
