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PFC - Philanthropic Foundations Canada

June 2011 E-newsletter

Letter from the President

On a hot last day of May, PFC members gathered in Montreal for the Annual General Meeting of the association. After hearing from PFC’s Chair, Shira Herzog, about our strategic directions and activities in 2010-2011, members broke for lunch and to hear our guest speaker André Picard, the Globe and Mail’s national public health reporter, who recently won an award from the Public Policy Forum for his outstanding contribution to public policy in journalism. André was provocative and frank in his discussion of the challenges facing the public health system in Canada. His remarks, along with copies of the remarks made by Shira and by myself, are available for members in the Member Area.  At the Annual Meeting, we also tabled the 2010 Annual Report of PFC, describing the association and its activities in 2010-2011. The report can be found on our web site, along with our 2010 financial statements.

An annual meeting, even if it comes in the middle of a year, is always a useful time to take stock of the strategic directions and achievements of the association. At 106 members, PFC is growing as a centre for exchange among peers and colleagues in the grantmaker community in Canada. We see ourselves as a connector, a node in a developing network, channeling information and brokering connections. For this reason, we titled our Annual Report this year Connecting Philanthropy. In the report, we describe some of the ways in which we played a connecting role for our members in the past year. But we realize that there is much more that we can do to be effective in this role on behalf of members and partners. The PFC Board is developing a new strategic plan for 2011 to 2014 that envisages an expansion in our connecting activities, and more collaboration with other key nodes in the philanthropic network. We have plans for investing in our capacity to deliver even greater value to our members in coming years.

One of our major opportunities for connection of course is our biennial conference, coming up in October in Toronto. We are pleased to announce that the program is now available and that registration is open. We are particularly excited about the line-up of speakers and sessions for this conference. It is shaping up to be a compelling event, one we hope that all of our members will be able to attend. We look forward to connecting with you there!

Hilary Pearson
hpearson@pfc.ca

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Grantmakers Roundup

Capacity-Building: Investing in Not for Profit Effectiveness 

The PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada Foundation has been exploring the issue of capacity building in the nonprofit sector, asking:

The Foundation wanted to deepen its own knowledge, raise corporate sector awareness and understanding of the capacity challenges of nonprofits, and build collaboration within the corporate community and across sectors to help build more effective community organizations. The Foundation pursued this interest by hosting a series of roundtable discussions in the fall of 2010 with members of not-for-profit sector organizations, private foundations and major corporations. It shared the results of the roundtable dialogues in a paper, Capacity Building: Investing in not-for-profit effectiveness. The paper itself not only reports on the dialogues of the roundtables but also includes a helpful model of organizational capacity building and some very useful resources appendices that are helpful to any funder interested in capacity-building investments.

The Foundation plans to continue the conversation cross-sectorally with corporate and not-for-profit stakeholders, and to create a National Funder Map to help re-shape how corporations look at investing in community partners. Most recently, James Temple of the PwC Canada Foundation presented the paper at a gathering of corporate grantmakers and not for profits at Montebello, co-hosted by Imagine Canada and Volunteer Canada. This gathering, the 2011 Canadian Business and Community Partnership Forum, brought together major corporate funders and nonprofits from across the country to promote more discussion of effective corporate philanthropy and more sustainable community partnerships. James will also be moderating a panel on this topic at the PFC Conference in Toronto on October 3-4.

 

On Evaluation and Learning from your Work as Grantmakers

There is much to offer this month on the topic of learning from your work (also known as evaluation).  PFC held a webinar on June 7 on the subject of evaluation as learning, with presenters Joanne Duhl of The Philanthropic Initiative and Lisa Jordan, Director of the Bernard Van Leer Foundation of The Hague. The widely-appreciated presentation is available in the Member Area of the PFC web site. A recording of the session is also available by checking with Jacqueline Reid.

Lisa Jordan also spoke about evaluation at the recent conference of the European Foundation Centre in Portugal. Her lively take on the challenges and jargon of evaluation is summed up in a mythical “Impact Island” map which can be found in the presentation made to PFC and which is supplemented by an excellent set of resources on various aspects of the evaluation and learning challenge for foundations on the home page of the network Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace.

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations held a Learning Conference in early June in Baltimore. The Learning Conference convened more than 200 leaders in philanthropy to explore ways to improve learning and evaluation so that grantmakers and nonprofits alike have a better understanding of what works. For comments and reflections from conference participants, check out the GEO Blog. GEO has made available the presentations from the conference on their site.

GEO has also developed a learning “wiki” or electronic commons where grantmakers can go to exchange information and resources on building systems for learning, and manage stakeholder data and metrics needs. GEO notes that “this wiki will help inform our upcoming learning publication which will feature the deep learning and evaluation knowledge of the GEO community.”

 

The Giveaway: A New Blog for Foundations

There are new philanthropy blogs emerging all the time. One of them is The Giveaway on the site of The Chronicle on Philanthropy. This blog provides topical news and analysis on how people and foundations (mostly American) are donating their money. Makes for some interesting browsing.

 

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Interesting Reading 

Learning on the Job

One of the reasons that grantmakers give for not learning enough on the job is lack of time. As Grantcraft, the online organization for grantmakers, notes, “learning ought to get high priority, yet it’s often the case that learning gets squeezed out when time gets short”. So Grantcraft asked its readers to answer the question: How do you build in learning when there’s no time to learn?

The results of their survey are summarized in a short (4-page) report. The report provides some lessons and tips for building learning into the time available, even when time is in short supply: build learning into routine processes; notice learning when it happens, even informally; cultivate personal habits of learning every day.” These are easily applied suggestions in a report that contains much wisdom in a few pages.

 

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PFC Family News and Events

PFC Publications, Reports & Stories

 

Upcoming Events

  • July 12, Toronto member lunch, noon-1:30pm ET: Join colleagues for PFC’s regular and informal lunch at The Counselling Foundation.

Member News

Welcome to new PFC Member TRICO Charitable Foundation (Calgary). The Trico Charitable Foundation was established in December of 2008 by Wayne and Eleanor Chiu to support entrepreneurship in the nonprofit sector. The foundation sponsors four awards under its Social EnterPrize program. The awards are intended to recognize and support entrepreneurial nonprofits and individual social entrepreneurs.  Winners of the wards will attend a conference organized by TRICO Foundation, Enterprising spirit: creating value and social good on November 17, 2011 in Calgary, Alberta.  Early bird registration begins June 16th.

 

The Lotte and John Hecht Foundation has been supporting InspireHealth since 1983. InspireHealth is a world leader in cancer care, using an integrated approach that combines nutrition, exercise, emotional and spiritual support with standard cancer treatments. The model, piloted in Vancouver, is now being added to cancer care in B.C. with five new integrated cancer care centres opening around the province as part of Healthy Families BC. There is growing evidence that integrated cancer care approaches support health and immune function and can significantly reduce the risk of cancer recurrence and increase survival.  This is a great example of how an initial foundation investment can be scale dup significantly with public funder endorsement.

 

The George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation has announced, on a recently redesigned web site that is worth a visit, that it is launching a new Innovation Fellowship Program.  In the Foundation’s words, “the Metcalf Innovation Fellowship is directed at supporting new “thinking and doing.”  We believe fresh insights and true experimentation often happen on the edge of an issue, out beyond where organized and traditional efforts are being made.  We want to create opportunities for this work to be developed, disseminated, and heard.  This Fellowship gives individuals of vision and creativity, people with outstanding talent and originality, the freedom to pursue powerful ideas, models, or practices that have the potential to contribute to building a healthier, more resilient southern Ontario.”

Check out the web site for more on the Fellowships and on the other components of Metcalf’s work on the environment, the performing arts and poverty reduction.

 

The Lyle S. Hallman Foundation Access to recreation for children and youth is an important, timely issue in Waterloo Region, and the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation is interested in learning as much as possible from the experiences of its grantees in this area. The Foundation convened a meeting of grantees recently to discuss evaluation measurement guidelines, including what kinds of information should be shared, how and when. Coming out of this meeting, the Foundation produced a 6-page report, Increasing Access to Facilities Offering Recreation and Character Building Programs for Children and Youth From Low Income Families which it is sharing with PFC colleagues through a posting on our web site.

 

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation has announced the latest round of Trudeau Scholarship, awarded to fourteen scholars who will join a community of creative, accomplished thinkers and doers tackling issues of fundamental importance to Canadians. Trudeau Scholarships are granted to social sciences and humanities students who are examining matters of present-day concern to Canadians in key areas such as the environment, international affairs, responsible citizenship, and human rights and dignity.  Since 2003, The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation has granted a Scholarship to 128 doctoral students

Meet the 2011 Trudeau Scholars.

 

Comings and Goings

On July 16, Tim Brodhead will officially retire from The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Stephen Huddart will become the new President and CEO starting July 18. We wish Tim the very best in his many new activities and we welcome Stephen in his new role and as an incoming Board member of PFC.

 
Hulene Montgomery, Executive Director of the Lyle S Hallman Foundation, will  retire from the Foundation at the end of June.  Laura Manning will be taking over the helm as the new ED.

 

Katharine Harmsworth was recently appointed the Manager of Social EnterPrize for the TRICO Charitable Foundation.

 

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Other News and Events

The Faculty of Education at the Université de Montréal offers a certificate in Philanthropy Management. As a complement to this program, it has recently created L’Observatoire de la gestion philanthopique. The web site includes a blog, a bilingual resources section, news and a newsletter Le Philanthr-Obs. Although primarily in French and devoted to fundraising, the observatory disseminates practical information for fundraising professional, donors, students and volunteers interested in the nonprofit sector in Quebec.

 

Highlights from the European Foundation Centre’s 22nd Annual General Assembly and Conference in Cascais, Portugal, are now available from its website.

 

Diaspora giving from North America to the developing world is becoming increasingly important. The National Network for Diaspora Giving (NNDG) is a new U.S. network that aims to connect the many players in the United States that are concerned with diaspora giving. Its site features resources for diaspora donors. Philanthropy Australia has also turned its attention to diaspora giving, devoting the Autumn 2011 issue of its journal Australian Philanthropy to the topic of Investing Offshore: Giving Beyond our Borders.

 

Upcoming Conferences

 

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