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Funder Focus: Kathleen Weil and the Foundation of Greater Montreal

By Elisa Birnbaum
August 7, 2007

This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Foundation of Greater Montreal. Dedicated to the well-being of Montreal’s varied neighbourhoods, the city’s first community foundation was founded in 1999 and opened its granting door in 2000. CharityVillage spoke with Kathleen Weil, president and chief executive officer, to discuss how the organization and some of its very philanthropic donors continue to assist charitable organizations working in the areas of health, social services, arts and culture, education and the environment.

CharityVillage: As the first foundation of its kind in Montreal, how did it all get started?

Kathleen Weil: There were many people involved in starting it up, including Tim Brodhead from the McConnell Foundation, Michel Lamontagne, of the Quebec City Community Foundation and various other Montreal community, business and philanthropic leaders. And then Centraide got involved in the process too, which was a major step. Centraide got involved in thinking through the process of starting a community foundation from scratch.

Then YMCA, Centraide and Red Feather pulled their endowments together and created a common investment of $20 million. That was a really strategic move because it gave us instant credibility in the business and community sector. We could tell people, for example, that Centraide had representatives on our board and actually pooled the money with us; it really helped open doors as people immediately felt confident with us. Similarly, as the YMCA is the oldest Y in Canada, it also has a strong community profile in Montreal. By pooling its endowment fund with us, it also gave us credibility in their network.

CV: The foundation has seen pretty strong growth since it was founded. To what can this be attributed?

KW: One of the keys to success and rapid growth for any new community foundation is to have a strong board. Our permanent board came in 2001 and, like any strong organization, it was very strong and dynamic. We called it a working board and it still is. It also has a good mix of people with strong financial, legal and community backgrounds; people involved in the community and with good reputations.

Another key to our success is our partnerships with the YMCA and the United Way/Centraide. The third element is that we got significant support from two of Canada’s largest private foundations. The McConnell Foundation, mentioned above, and the Chagnon Foundation - the largest private foundation in Canada - both endowed a million dollars as revenue to be used for operations. And we got about 20 large Montreal corporations, banks, SNC, Bell Canada etc., to support us in our operations for three years, with some of them renewing for another three years.

What’s interesting about our foundation is that there is a very experienced, dynamic grant committee, all of whom are volunteers. The selection of volunteers is always key, but they are very knowledgeable about community, with many years of experience. I’m always amazed with the level of discussion at those grant committee meetings.

CV: What were some of the challenges you faced in starting up the foundation?

KW: We were created in a milieu that doesn’t really know community foundations and we could have been perceived as a competitive structure. So, it was important for us to repeat that we don’t do fundraising; we just build endowment funds. People do understand now that community foundations are different. We tell them we’re like the savings account, while Centraide is the chequing account. The other big difference is that we really focus on the long term and we’re not focused on money that you raise annually, like most charities.

Also, when we started up, many people told us community foundations wouldn’t work in Montreal. This was the setting, the challenge we faced. There was a sense that philanthropy just wasn’t well developed here and that it would be enormously challenging. But what we’re all noticing is that there is a big change happening in Quebec as people realize that government just can’t do it all and that it’s actually very dynamic to get communities involved in their own fundraising and supporting initiatives; it’s a very creative process. When you give, you can get more involved and you get interested. You need to get people to feel that level of involvement. And they like the thought that they can create their own fund in their name or to honour someone.

CV: How does the foundation go about achieving its mission of promoting the well-being of the communities of Greater Montreal?

KW: We have two streams: donors that create endowments as part of the granting program, and organizations that pool their funds with us and the money goes right back to them. It’s a designated fund, no questions asked. They just get the revenue from their fund at the end of the year, or twice a year.

So, toward achieving those streams, we continue to do two things. First, we meet organizations and charities that might be interested in starting up endowment funds. They don’t have to have millions of dollars and we support them in building their own endowment if they endow with us. Second, we do presentations and we meet with lawyers, notaries and financial planners. That is our main strategy for development. We don’t do fundraising. We meet with them to tell them about the kinds of funds donors can create. And, of course, a lot of these people have clients who are looking for these kinds of solutions. They may have sold a business, or are preparing their will, or have shares they want to donate and they may want to get involved with philanthropy during their lifetime. So they end up referring those clients to us. We’ve learned this strategy from other community foundations that have been around for a long time. That’s probably the key strategy for community foundations: meeting these professional advisors.

CV: What are the most pressing needs facing the Greater Montreal community that the foundation is trying to address?

KW: Well, there are already some big players, like Centraide, targeting youth intervention and poverty prevention, which are big issues today. So we are an add-on and Centraide, which sits on our granting committee, may offer us interesting projects to get involved in.

The other area with a lot of needs, an area that is not new to me since I used to chair the Montreal Regional Health Board, is anything to do with the handicapped: mentally, physically, children or adults. There are huge unmet needs in that area and it is also under funded publicly. Many of these people live in poverty so its worse for them. Or, there are families that need respite because of their autistic or severely handicapped child. Or there are summer camps for these kids that need to be supported.

CV: The foundation enjoyed a great year in 2006, with a number of new gifts, including a donor-advised fund of $24 million from an anonymous donor. How will all this affect your granting decisions?

KW: Yes, we had a large gift for $24 million, and the donor is actively involved in selecting the charities that he’s interested in. He’s designated certain areas of interest but he’s very flexible. All kinds of different charities can apply and if the project is good, they will be eligible for a grant. We’re still in the early days of granting but it has increased dramatically because of that gift. And since returns were really good, we added on a second grant cycle that we are doing now.

We are always going to be evolving over time. For instance, the gentleman mentioned he wanted to donate to arts and culture. For that, you really need more orientations. So that’s what we are going to be looking into doing. We are consulting the artistic community and specialists in the arts and culture field, including government representatives, municipal, provincial and federal. But we are not going to duplicate what governments do; we’re going to look at the unmet needs.

Arts and culture is a very important field in Quebec. It’s our oxygen. But, that said, it doesn’t get enough in the way of donor dollars - only one percent, while the rest of Canada gets 3% or 4%. Even though government support is stronger here, the private philanthropic contribution is less. So we have an important partnership with the Quebec government where they give one dollar for every dollar that an arts organization gets from an endowment fund. Other governments, like BC, have also launched this type of program. It really stimulates philanthropy. And the partnership with the Quebec government ensures that all the arts organizations pool their funds with us so that they can get the benefit of an investment fund and it costs them less. And arts organizations now have access to our fund managers, which they wouldn’t normally have access to.

CV: What about the general priorities of the foundation today?

KW: Well, we’re also going to be creating an environmental fund. We’ve been doing some environmental granting with our discretionary money and we have a few donors who’ve identified the environment in their wills, but we really want to get a large endowment fund dedicated to this area so we can give more money to environmental groups. And that requires people to put money into a particular fund. Right now, we don’t have that but that will certainly be an important area.

The other important priority is Vital Signs. It’s a broad scan of the community and how we fare. It’s the way to capture some of our important needs and to help donors decide where they want to put their money. It started in Toronto about five years ago. Then, last year, some other community foundations decided to launch Vital Signs as well. This year, five more got involved. So now we’re all launching Vial Signs together on Oct 2, 2007. Community Foundations of Canada, our national organization is coordinating a lot of it.

Last year, was our first launch and it was really well received. It stimulated a discussion and allowed us to partner with other public or para-public organizations to help us get a read on the story and what we could be doing. Toronto has been doing it for five years now and it’s allowed them to make their granting program more strategic. That’s our bottom line as well.

We are actually developing programs to respond to some of the things that have emerged last year. For example, dropout rates are high in Montreal but initiatives that get kids to re-enroll are successful. So, we are developing a program to work with the school boards to support programs to keep kids in school. Another area identified was integration of immigrants. In Montreal, immigration is a big component of the quality of life and economic development. We look at how immigrants are faring, how they are integrating, what we can be doing to do a better job. And we are in consultation with those groups to focus on new orientations in that area.

So it’s a very evolving process, but in each area we want to be strategic and not duplicate what others are doing or what government is doing. We need to keep our ear to the ground and, mostly, we consult with organizations to get a better read. We’re in that process right now and will be for the next few years.

CV: What are some of your future goals?

KW: Community foundations are always evolving because you’re touching on so many different areas. So being more strategic and evolving is key. Of course, fund development is always so important because you’re not going to be able to do much in your community if you can’t convince people to get involved in philanthropy. Our key mission really is the long-term horizon. Meeting people that want to set up succession planning is so important. We’re going to continue to put lots of energy into that.

We’ve been getting a lot of organizations to create endowments with us but that doesn’t feed our grant program, so our major goal is to target people who want to either create a deferred gift or get a fund up and running now. There’s a younger profile of donor that we’re noticing who has been very successful in business. We have to reach those people and let them know that they can get their fund up and running and don’t have to pay the full amount right away. Getting that message across is important.

In addition, most people outside of the charitable sector don’t know we exist. So we have to get better known. It’s challenging because we don’t do much advertising; we’re very discreet creatures. Our goal is to publicize ourselves. We have some marketing material targeted to professional advisors. We did an ad campaign in the Globe & Mail and we’re planning on doing something more local here in the next few years.

I think reaching out to the community and getting better known, is two-fold. Every community foundation has to do that, but we’re also introducing philanthropy in many respects to a lot of people who may have been giving very traditionally, to their hospital or Centraide etc., but who were not involved in this kind of philanthropy. It’s about opening up their minds to get involved in this kind of active philanthropy. We’re finding that those who do know about it and get involved in it, love it. It will be interesting to see in 10 years, at least in the Montreal area, what kind of dent we will make. There are many players; we’re not the only one. But a community foundation is a very broad-based philanthropy so we can get involved with all kinds of issues.

A lawyer, Kathleen Weil first worked in private practice before catching the public sector bug - and she hasn’t looked back since. A first stop on a cabinet committee promoting the economic and social development of Montreal led to her work chairing the Regional Health Board for five years. It was here where Weil’s commitment to health and social services was solidified. Her strong profile and continuous involvement with government and non-governmental organizations led to Weil’s current post in 2000, as the Foundation of Greater Montreal’s first CEO. For more information about the foundation, visit: www.fondationdugrandmontreal.org.

Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance print and broadcast journalist living in Toronto.

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