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Funder Focus: Bruce Greyell and the Bowen Island Community Foundation
By Elisa Birnbaum
April 7, 2008BOWEN ISLAND, BC // This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Bowen Island Community Foundation, established in 2001 and dedicated to improving the social, cultural, artistic, educational and recreational well-being of its island residents. CharityVillage spoke recently with foundation chair, Bruce Greyell, about the foundation’s mission, its challenges, and the varied programs it supports toward achieving its objectives.
CharityVillage: What inspired the founders to start up the foundation; what is the history behind its formation?
Bruce Greyell: What drove us to get started is the fact that we are a small island community and we have no industrial base and only a small commercial base. We also have a very strong sense on Bowen Island of volunteerism and community caring. It’s the kind of community where, if there’s a problem that develops for an individual community member, the community really stands up and looks after that member, be it a fire or some other disadvantaged circumstance.
I was chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission at the time that the idea for the foundation began. Given the strong sense of volunteerism and the vast number of community organizations that were pulling together through volunteerism to meet some of these needs, and the fact that we didn’t have any formalized mechanism for fundraising on the island, a group of us got together and conceived the notion of a community foundation. We discussed a number of alternatives as to what would work best in our community, ranging from a United Way-type of drive, to the concept of community foundation. We landed on the principles underlying community foundations as best fitting our community.
CV: Tell me a bit about Bowen Island and the specific challenges it faces.
BG: The island population varies, given the summer population, but there are probably 4,000 to 4,500 permanent residents. In the summer, that number climbs by 1,000. Historically, it’s been a summer retreat for many families from Vancouver.
One challenge is that we have no industrial base, so our tax base is residential. And, while municipalities certainly do what they can, we have many volunteer organizations and they are not nearly sufficient to really assist our community in all the respects where these organizations need help.
The other issue is that resources are tight. Because we are a very rapidly growing island [community], and infrastructure for the municipality is an issue, the tax dollars that are gathered are generally required to be put into infrastructure issues like water, roads, etc.
Another challenge is that we are an island and we rely on the ferry to commute. Many residents work in downtown Vancouver and our high school-age students go to school in West Vancouver, which is a ferry ride away. So, the overloaded ferries and the increasing cost of the ferries presents a challenge to many islanders.
Then there’s the development challenge: how quickly Bowen Island develops. We have some very pristine natural areas on the island, many of which are in private hands and subject to development. So there’s that challenge of how quickly we are going to develop and what needs to be protected. It’s a constant point of pressure and a very live pressure right now. And the challenge that the municipality and the island are facing is, in what manner is that development going to proceed, while at the same time protecting public access, park lands, and sensitive environmental areas.
CV: In the past five years, you’ve established a few different funds. Please describe them and how they help the foundation meet its mission goals.
BG: We administer four funds. First, there’s our general community endowment fund. Second, there’s the Bowen Island Junior Golf Scholarship fund. Members of the golf club contribute to it on a regular basis and, in conjunction with and on the recommendation of the golf club, we will be utilizing the interest from that fund to provide scholarship monies to junior members. The third fund we administer is for the arts council on the island. We have a good working relationship with them and they recently set up a matching grant fund with $100,000 and they are continuing to build on it. The interest from that fund will go to support the operating expenses of a community hall and arts centre that’s planned on the island.
We are very excited about our fourth fund. A long-time island resident who was very involved in parks and trails has recently left us a bequest. We received the first instalment, in excess of $200,000, and the balance is unknown at this time since it depends on the development of certain real estate, but the interest from that fund is directed to go into three areas. One is a scholarship for a Bowen Island student, the other is for activities in a planned seniors residence. And the third and major portion is to support the development of greenways on the island.
So when you combine all those together, we can say we administer funds that are in excess of $400,000. Our foundation has been successful in establishing a good level of credibility and confidence in the community, and we’re working to deepen and broaden it. We’ve proud of what we’ve done. We have an incredibly committed and dedicated board.
CV: You fund a broad range of sectors. What does the foundation look for in a grantee?
BG: We ask two questions of our grantees. First, whether the grant will lead to a more sustainable organization that’s seeking the funding. We don’t support operational funding. But we do support funding that goes to the organization being able to fulfill its mandate in the community by being a more sustainable organization. Second, we ask whether the grant builds capacity within the community, and by that I mean: does it involve other organizations, does it bring in other people, does it expand the role of volunteerism in the community?
CV: As a young foundation, did you experience any growing pains? How were you able to overcome them?
BG: Yes, we had some growing pains. Without support from the Vancouver Foundation and Community Foundations of Canada, we would have had a much more difficult time in establishing our credibility and viability in our community. The support from CFC came in the form of guidance regarding governance, structure, and policies and procedures.
Likewise, the support from the Vancouver Foundation involved being there at the end of the phone to answer questions and to provide an amazing amount of financial assistance. The latter came, firstly, from their lead grant program whereby they essentially granted us $5,000 dollars annually over the last three or four years to plough back into our community.
Second, the Vancouver Foundation provides a participatory matching grant program whereby if we raised $25,000 in our community, they would match that fund. Our community responded hugely to that incentive. In two years, we were able to build our general endowment fund with an additional $100,000. So that was a wonderful support and enabled us to really launch ourselves into the community and gain a huge amount of credibility and visibility.
CV: Does the foundation align itself with other groups or government agencies?
BG: We have a really strong network of organizations. There is a group of roughly six community foundations within our immediate geographic region that we are networking with and with whom we share thoughts and program ideas. Our contacts have to do with governance issues and policies and procedures that they have that we feel we should have. So we look to them for some guidance. There is also some joint programming and an environmental initiative we’ve embarked on under the Vancouver Foundation and the Community Foundations of Canada - we call ourselves the Sea to Sky Foundations
CV: What do you see as the next five-year plan for the foundation?
BG: One of the things that we will be looking at in the future is to endeavour to channel our grant-giving into areas that we identify as being more needy than others, and to identify emerging needs in the community through consultation with the community.
I think there are three elements to our next five years. One is the broadening and deepening of our donor base. For every year that passes, it’s amazing for the board to see the breadth of acceptance for the idea of a community foundation in our community. For example, recently, the realtors on Bowen Island gathered together and put on a burger and beer dinner and sold tickets. All the realtors were there serving the tables; it was a sold-out event. They raised $3,000 dollars for us to add to our general community endowment fund. We’ve also had one of the local artists on the island donate a certain percentage of the sale of his art to the foundation. So it’s like dropping a pebble in the water and the ripple is ever-widening.
The second objective flows from that first one; it’s the building of our endowment fund. We’ve got about $150,000 in our endowment fund right now and that’s our general endowment fund. Our objective is to reach one million in the next five years, and we think that’s a realistic objective.
The third one is also important. It’s to identify community needs and to engage in activities and projects that enhance community capacity. So we’re doing that in a couple of respects. We put on a grantwriting session for all the nonprofits on the island and brought in the Vancouver Foundation to assist in putting on that program. [The aim was] to enable the various charitable organizations to gain some knowledge on how best to write applications for grants because that’s a difficult skill. And we’ve established a network of organizations that came to that meeting and intend to broaden that type of program to assist the organizations. The other aspect that our board is looking at is the granting program of the municipality; it gives away funds annually. They’ve asked us to get involved in that to assist them.
A labour and employment lawyer, Bruce Greyell became inspired by the idea of forming a community foundation while acting as chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission. It was during that stint that Bruce gained a strong appreciation for volunteerism, the needs of the island he adoringly calls home, and the best way of addressing them.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She can be reached at: esbirnbaum@gmail.com.
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