Canadians like to think of themselves as generous people, as givers, not recipients of charitable services.
But consider this: the median level of giving among Canadians is only $150 annually. At the same time, the voluntary sector delivers services worth more than $3,000 per citizen.
The simple explanation for this colossal gulf between perception and reality is that Canadians lack basic knowledge about the voluntary sector and the role it plays in delivering the services and reflecting the values that define us as a nation.
Have you ever had surgery? Had a child enrolled in amateur sport? Gone to the opera? Studied English or French as a second language? Watched public television? Attended university? Gone to a church or other place of worship?
Had a family member with arthritis, Alzheimer's, cancer or heart disease? Gone to the zoo? Played with your kids at a playground? Eaten at a soup kitchen?
If the answer is yes to any one of these questions, you have been a beneficiary of "charity." And if the answer is yes to any of these questions, you, too, will soon feel the impact of government cutbacks.
The reality is that, with three of every five dollars coming from the state, the sector is quite dependent on government. Canadians are indeed generous and civic-minded, but those traits are not expressed so much by dropping coins in the Salvation Army bell or writing a cheque to the Canadian Cancer Society as they are through paying taxes and supporting the maintenance of a social safety net and universal medicare system.
Charity today is far removed from the notion of alms for the poor. Canada's voluntary sector delivers a vast array of health, social, cultural, educational, recreational and spiritual services.
There are already 75,000 charities in Canada -- double the number that existed two decades ago -- and 10 new groups being registered each week.
An analysis of registered charities according to categories set out in the law reveals the following breakdown: places of worship, 40 per cent; welfare organizations, 16 per cent; education, 15 per cent; community benefit, 14 per cent; and health, 8 per cent.
More than $90.5 billion passes through the voluntary sector each year -- the equivalent of the gross domestic product of British Columbia -- and governments are "off-loading" more programs every day.
As they seek to balance budgets and reduce taxes, however, most governments are obsessed by the bottom-line. They have little concept of the impact cutbacks will have on charities, and no coherent plan for ensuring that services -- in particular basic entitlements -- will be maintained.
While it is politically expedient to hail increased giving and volunteerism as a panacea for society's financial and social ills, most elected officials, mandarins, business leaders, social scientists and even key players in the charitable field itself would be hard-pressed to articulate the scope, the economics and the limitations of a sector which plays a central role in the lives of citizens.
The favoured approach of governments, expecting ever more from charities for ever less funding, is driven more by wishful thinking than thoughtful policy, more by candy-coated nostalgia than by coherent vision, more by a desire to slash spending than to build communities.
This informational and policy void is troubling, and becomes more so when you realize that the voluntary sector is struggling for recognition and respect at a time when it is increasingly expected to fulfil society's desire for collective assistance -to replace faceless bureaucracy, and serve as a cornerstone of civility and a social anchor.
As Judith Maxwell, president of the Canadian Policy Research Networks, a non-profit think-tank, says: "The voluntary sector is the glue that holds everything together. Charities are the only institutions in society that have as their specific mission to do good."
Until recently, little attention was paid to other benefits of doing good, namely the sector's contribution to prosperity, as a source of economic activity and key contributor to social stability.
Despite the moniker "voluntary," the sector employs more than 1.3 million Canadians, one in every 11 jobs. Charities already pay out salaries and benefits of more than $40 billion a year; most of the other $50 billion that passes through the sector goes to program delivery (65 per cent) and administration (15 per cent) and they are repeatedly touted as a principal growth area in the so-called "new economy."
In addition to paid employees, more than 1.6 million people do volunteer work for charitable organizations every month, a contribution valued at $12 billion a year to the economy.
More important still is the increasingly accepted notion that activities promoted by the voluntary sector build social capital, that business cannot prosper where basic health and social services are not assured, where the arts do not flourish, where children cannot play, where neighbours do not speak, and where you cannot safely walk the streets.
Registered charities own equipment and buildings ranging from the Optimist Club hall to the volunteer ambulance, that, in countless towns and villages is the foundation of community activity or a lifeline to the outside. The value of those assets is conservatively estimated at $109 billion.
Consider that the voluntary sector has revenues that are 3 1/2 times the value of all crops and livestock. Charities in Canada have revenues about eight times as large as the transportation sector (and many more clients).
Yet, there are no federal and provincial ministers for the voluntary sector, but there are ministers of agriculture. There is a National Transportation Safety Board, but there is no Canadian Charities Commission.
In short, despite these staggering statistics and the indisputable role of the voluntary sector, it has not been given its political due nor the social clout it deserves.
"It's quite unconscionable that government is overlooking a major component of our economy," says Michael Hall, director of research at the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy. "There is a huge amount of activity in our society that is not adequately understood. It's really an invisible sector."
If there has been a positive impact of government cuts, it has been to awaken this sleeping giant to the fact that it is being marginalized. The charitable sector is realizing that if it is going to survive -- let alone thrive -- in an era where fiscal concerns seem to take priority over social justice, it has to start flexing its muscle and mobilizing its army of volunteers. The first step has been to increase its visibility, and to begin demanding a place at the table as governments and corporations reshape the social and economic agenda.
"A new era has begun for the voluntary sector because of political, fiscal and economic realities," says Shira Herzog, vice-president of the Calgary-based Kahanoff Foundation, which has sponsored much of the research on the sector in recent years.
"The social contract is changing, the relationship between citizens and government is changing and civic engagement is changing. Yet, the basic information is not there to allow for informed debate," she says.
For example, Statistics Canada compiles monthly data on unemployment, but no statistics on the voluntary sector, the guardian of the country's social safety net. In fact, the last time it even measured something as pervasive as volunteer work was 1987. (A new survey is now under way and should be released in the new year.)
What leaders in the voluntary sector believe they can offer is not miracle solutions, but options and alternatives at a time when debate at the political level has become almost monolithic.
As the Kitchener-Waterloo Social Planning Council pointed out last year in a research paper, it is fallacious to think that the sole choice available to governments is deficit reduction or tax cuts. It noted that, had the $4.5 billion in income tax cuts by the Ontario government instead been invested in job training and programs, 155,000 jobs could have been created in the voluntary sector.
The issue is really one of choices. In building a social welfare system that is the envy of much of the world, Canada has chosen, quite wisely, to fund most basic services through tax collection, while contracting out much service provision to community-based groups.
Unfortunately, many politicians today conveniently ignore the first part of the equation, promoting the fiction that charities can miraculously fill the gap if we all "dig a little deeper. "The truth is that we have to lower expectations or make tough choices about our priorities as a society.
Right now, those choices are being made in a back-handed fashion, by dumping programs on groups that cannot afford to maintain them, rather than make strategic decisions.
The first casualty of blindfolded cutbacks has been the infrastructure of compassion. Food banks find themselves unable to purchase vehicles that would allow them to pick up donations of food; hospitals are laying off their volunteer co-ordinators and discharging patients to home-care programs that don't exist; job training programs are eliminated and participants churned back into provision programs whose resources are shrinking; institutions like universities and nursing homes are steadily hiking their fees and systematically limiting accessibility despite the fact that the bulk of their funds come from state coffers; billions are spent on treating illness and disease while investments in research and prevention are phased out.
Al Hatton, executive director of the National Voluntary Organizations, an association of some of the country's biggest charities, says the ability of the sector to articulate its importance in society is fundamental to its survival.
"We used to just take the money, say thank you, and do what we could. Now, we're starting to insist that we have a role in influencing policy decisions. We want to sit down at the table with government and our other partners and say: 'This is a sound investment so let's commit to it,'" Hatton says.
The road to respectability, however, has been a rocky one, and the pain is far from over. Cutbacks have left thousands of groups in dire straits. Fundraising, always difficult, has become cut-throat. As damaging as the drying up of government money, has been the void in leadership, notably in establishing priorities and standards.
Susan Phillips, a professor at the school of public administration of Carleton University, says that, after long ignoring the voluntary sector, governments suddenly have grand expectations. "It is anticipated that voluntary organizations will enliven a spirit of community, foster a sense of self-sufficiency, provide new avenues for training the unemployed and deliver services in cheaper, less bureaucratic and more targeted ways."
She warns that governments cannot continue to off-load costs at the expense of social justice. "We are making some fundamental, and possibly irreversible, choices about the future of the country," Phillips says.
Yet, as the voluntary sector increases its profile and carves out its rightful place in the public policy framework, Canadians and their elected leaders will be forced to grapple with a host of difficult issues.
The toughest question is one of the most fundamental, that of definition.
Later this year, the Supreme Court of Canada will decide whether the Vancouver Society of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women is a charity. On the surface, the ruling, which will clarify the definition of "charitable activity" for tax purposes, will interest only a handful of accountants.
But the fact that a cash-strapped community group needs to turn to the highest court in the land for an answer to the question "What is a charity?" points to a much larger problem. Deciding who is "in" and who is "out" is an exercise replete with potentially divisive dilemmas. And making such choices is doubly difficult when there is a virtual absence of basic information, and no proper forum for discussion.
Despite their omnipresence, we treat charities from a policy point of view as nothing more than a minor taxation issue, an approach that is laughably out of date and belies the complex role the voluntary sector plays in Canadian society.
The common law that guides our tax laws -- and, by default, much of our social policy -- has its roots in two ancient documents, the preamble of the Statute of Elizabeth of 1601 and the ruling of Lord Macnaghten in the Pemsel case, an 1891 decision that set out the principal categories of charity.
Elizabethan poor laws may have been considered adequate for all-white, male-dominated feudal England, but they are hardly a sensible foundation for the social policy of an advanced democracy heading into the 21st century. Reform is long overdue.
Under our tax laws, charities fit into six principal categories: Advancement of religion; health; advancement of education; relief of poverty; culture; other purposes that benefit the community. Matters that have come to the fore in recent centuries, like women's rights, civil rights, multiculturalism, free speech and national unity, are excluded.
Consider that the University of British Columbia, a $1 billion public institution, the Fraser Institute, a right-wing economic think-tank, the Native Communications Society of B.C., a small newspaper publisher, and the Vancouver Regional Free Net Association, a community computer utility, are charities, but Greenpeace, an environmental group, Positive Action Against Pornography, a women's group that does education work about the harmful effects of pornography, the Polish Canadian Television Production Society, a group producing TV programs for the Polish community, and Canada UNI Association, which promotes tolerance of linguistic and cultural differences, are not.
The Vancouver Society of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women, which helps marginalized women find employment and tap into social services, is arguing that this kind of distinction violates the equality provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that the common law, no matter how ancient, should be interpreted in a progressive manner. If the court agrees, federal Revenue Minister Herb Dalliwal will find himself having to deal with a volatile issue that governments have side-stepped since income tax was introduced.
Don McCrae, head of the Voluntary Action Directorate of Heritage Canada, is one of the country's most knowledgeable and eloquent civil servants. He says bluntly that the governments' failure to deal with fundamental issues like that of definition is keeping the voluntary sector from achieving its potential.
"The system, as it exists ... not only encourages the status quo, it practically institutionalizes it," McCrae says. One need only examine the list of the country's top 100 registered charities, which is dominated by universities, school boards and hospitals, to realize how the line between public and charitable organizations has become blurred.
What the public often forgets is that most money spent by charities comes from the public treasury. Fifteen cents of every tax dollar paid, about $50 billion, is transferred directly from government to charities, and the state forgoes at least $5 billion more by providing various tax breaks.
As in society in general, there is an unstated class system within the charitable world, a few haves and a lot of have-nots. Half of Canadian charities have revenues of less than $50,000, and fully 80 per cent have revenues of less than $250,000. Almost two-thirds of charities have one or no employees. As competition grows more fierce, they sometimes have trouble being heard.
The big charities (the 10 per cent or so of groups with revenues of more than $1.5 million), on the other hand, are not only the most adept at getting government funds, they scoop up three-quarters of donations. At the same time, they are the most likely to charge revenue-generating user fees and the only ones with the capital and expertise to enter into income-generating business ventures.
The Canadian Red Cross Society, the country's biggest charity in the classic sense of the term, has revenues of $500 million and more than 7,000 full-time employees. While it has another 2 million volunteers, and raised $34 million in donations in 1995-96 (half of it from United Way), 90 per cent of its revenues came from government.
As a society, we have to ask ourselves, is that a charitable organization, or a de facto government agency that is not accountable in the same manner as public institutions? The question is as pertinent for para-governmental institutions like universities and hospitals, which, technically at least, are charities. Between them, teaching and health-care institutions account for 58 per cent of "charitable" revenues, but less than 5 per cent of charities, and that skews the true picture of the voluntary sector. Another little-analyzed fact is that the charitable sector is clearly dominated by religious institutions.
More that 40 per cent of registered charities are places of worship. Almost two-thirds of individual donations in Canada go to religious institutions, making them the biggest beneficiaries of tax credits for giving.
Churches, temples, mosques and the like are also granted exemptions or discounts on property taxes. Consider that in the Montreal area alone, more than $14 billion in properties have reduced tax rates because they are owned by charitable institutions.
The appropriate distance between church and state is just one of the tough questions that needs to be asked when you try to define the place of charities in modern society.
Another controversial aspect of Canada's regulation of the voluntary sector is the restriction placed on advocacy, the fancy name given to speaking up for what you believe in. In an era where lobbyists are an accepted part of the political process, and where governments provide funding for various groups to advocate on behalf of consumers, charities still risk losing their status if more than 10 per cent of their receipted donations are spent on advocacy. (There are, interestingly, no restrictions on non-receipted donations.)
Lynne Toupin, executive director of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, says the advocacy rule creates an absurd situation that is particularly detrimental to small, activist organizations. Her group, for example, could spend its entire budget buying bread and handing it out to poor people amassed on Parliament Hill; but, if the same group purchased bullhorns and marched to demand that MPs allocate more money to the poor, it would risk losing its status.
But, again, fundamental decisions about politically charged issues like advocacy are difficult to make without basic information about the activities of charities today and without an infrastructure to facilitate its collection and dissemination.
In the U.S., this task has been taken up by a number of groups who are funded by wealthy foundations. The U.K., on the other hand, has created an independent, government-funded body called the Charity Commission, an approach that would be quite workable in Canada.
The commission is not only responsible for the registration of charities, but for making information available to the public. At a time when we are all being bombarded with fundraising appeals, this clearing house for factual data would be most welcome, especially in a country where regulation is virtually non-existent -- Alberta is the only province that has legislation designed to curtail abusive fundraising activities -- and where unethical groups can hide behind the secrecy provisions of the Income Tax Act.
Given that the voluntary sector is not an adjunct to the lives of Canadians but rather an essential component of everyday living and quality of life, we need a forum in which to address these issues.
Charity today is far removed from the collection plate and the outstretched tin cup. It is about building an inclusive, caring community.
Just as we are willing, as a state and as individuals, to invest in traditional infrastructure like roads and sewers, so should we be willing to make a commitment to organizations that uphold our values of compassion, social justice and generosity, organizations that put people first.
Social marketing is the new buzz word, but some companies focus more on marketing than on social causes
Like many of their corporate brethren, executives at Glaxo Wellcome Inc. in Mississauga were frustrated. They were spending millions of dollars a year on charitable causes but couldn't shake the feeling that it was little more than a drop in the bucket.
Rather than throw up their hands, they threw open the boardroom doors, turning to their employees for guidance and advice on how to have an impact in the community. The result is a revamped giving strategy that features one of the most extensive social marketing campaigns that Canada has seen. The pharmaceutical company is setting out to create awareness and support for hospice care.
"We aren't giving money to specific hospices; our goal is to change society's view of hospice care," says Tara Addis, manager of community relations at the Glaxo Wellcome Foundation. "This isn't traditional philanthropy, it's social marketing." The cause was chosen by Glaxo Wellcome's 1,200 employees after extensive consultation and a company-wide vote. The process was the brain child of Eric Young, president of E.Y.E. Inc., a Toronto-based company that works with a number of corporations and charities.
"Social marketing is very hot, but it's misunderstood as a concept," he says. "Many corporations are harnessing a cause for marketing effect, but what I'm promoting is harnessing marketing skills for a social cause."
The idea, Young says, is becoming much more attractive and important as charities grapple with cutbacks and companies look for ways to spend their limited charity dollars more wisely.
"The reason this is interesting is because when you look at the mandate of many organizations in the voluntary sector, a lot of it can only be achieved if they engage large numbers of people, if they really change attitudes," he says. "And for corporations, it's a way of making a significant contribution, of getting away from giving by rote."
Canadian corporations have a reputation not only for conservative giving habits, but for being miserly, and soaring stock markets and record profits have served to underline that image. Corporate Canada gives only about $1.2 billion of the $10.5 billion donated to Canadian charities annually.
The big five banks have served as a lightning rod for critics of philanthropy. Among them, they recorded profits of almost $6 billion in 1996, and gave a total of about $51 million, less than 1 per cent of their profits.
While that is not a particularly impressive figure, the banks are nonetheless among the country's most generous donors -- which speaks to the lack of philanthropic tradition in corporate Canada.
"For some reason, people tend to think of us as public institutions instead of corporations," says Nada Ristich, corporate donations manager at the Bank of Montreal. "There is this mindset that the corporate sector should pick up everything, that we should make up for government cuts."
Realistically, that is not going to happen: For every 1 per cent in government cuts, corporations would have to increase giving by 50 per cent. And, between 1991 and 1995, a period when governments started cutting grants to the voluntary sector in earnest, corporate donations also fell, from about 1.4 per cent of profits to 0.8 per cent. There is anecdotal evidence, however, of increases over the last couple of years, owing in large part to public anger.
In 1988, the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, a non-profit group that promotes the voluntary sector, launched Imagine, an initiative to increase charitable giving. At the time, "there was a sense of malaise in the corporate world," says Martin Connell, the former chair of Conwest Explorations Co. and co-founder of Imagine. "Government was almost the sole provider of funding and philanthropy was dying . . . but we could see that the party was coming to an end."
Under the program, more than 400 companies (including four of the Big Five banks, the Toronto Dominion being the exception), have pledged a minimum of 1 per cent of their pre-tax profits to charity. Connell, who now owns Ace Bakery in Toronto, continues to lead by example, giving 10 per cent of his profits to charity.
Chris Pinney, the director of Imagine, says the program has been successful not only in generating new money but in helping change attitudes. "There has been a cultural shift. It's now accepted business practice to donate corporately."
The process was not an easy one. Before government started slashing, corporations were doing so, and their charitable budgets shrank dramatically. Imperial Oil, which in the mid- 1980s was Canada's biggest giver at $12 million annually, cut its giving by more than half. (Today, it is creeping back up, with a budget of $7 million in 1997.)
While charitable giving is now accepted, however, giving is far from universal. Consider that fewer than 5 per cent of companies report charitable contributions to Revenue Canada, and that more than half the 3,200 Canadian corporations with assets of more than $25 million do not give a penny to charity. Consider that the profit of the Royal Bank last year, $1.43 billion, exceeded all corporate giving in Canada combined.
Unlike in the U.S., Canada's super rich are particularly stingy. Ted Turner's gift of $1 billion to United Nations agencies (over 10 years) was widely publicized, but he is still far from being the most generous American business leader. Currency trader George Soros already gives about $350 million annually and he has just announced a new $500 million gift to promote civil society in Russia.
By contrast, of the three Canadians on the Forbes list of the world's richest, only one is renowned for his generosity. Charles Bronfman, Number 98 on the list, is worth an estimated $3 billion (U.S.), and is probably the country's most generous individual giver, while his Seagram Co. is estimated to give a modest $4 million annually, making it one of the country's biggest business givers.
Kenneth Thomson, Number 16 on the list with a net worth of $11 billion, is better known for his parsimony than his philanthropy. Similarly, New Brunswick's Irving family, with assets of $3.5 billion (Number 84), has never distinguished itself through its giving habits.
Still, there are signs that role models are emerging. Jim Pattison, the flamboyant Vancouver entrepreneur who is worth an estimated $1 billion, has made it known that, when he dies, his wealth will go to charity, not to his children. And a number of Hong Kong entrepreneurs are bringing their generous giving habits to Canada along with their investments, putting many of the old money families to shame.
Pinney readily admits that the challenge is to expand the donor base, but cautions that "we can't look strictly at cash. If corporate cash donations doubled overnight, it wouldn't have much impact on charities, given government cutbacks." Increasingly, companies are giving in kind and providing much-needed expertise, up to and including ,10 CEOs sitting on boards of directors.
"Companies increasingly understand that in order to be successful, to improve performance, and to remain competitive, they must incorporate the consideration of public perception, confidence and trust into their business development process," says Janet Rostami, senior research associate at the Canadian Centre for Business in the Community.
She says companies are beginning to recognize that charitable giving is not so much an expense as a strategic investment and a long-term asset. Put another way, business is accepting that it can flourish only in communities that are healthy, well-educated, culturally rich and socially secure.
While the voluntary sector has long made this argument, it is now being put forward by leading business thinkers. Rosabeth Moss Kantor, a business professor at Harvard University, has become one of the leading proponents of the notion of business investing in social capital out of enlightened self-interest.
She argues that the factors that are important for cities to attract and retain business are "magnets and glue." The magnets are the usual business stuff such as low taxes, good transportation, a skilled work force. But the glue is social capital, social agencies, sports groups, cultural institutions and a sense of community.
To get a grip on the "glue" that matters, companies have turned increasingly to their employees, and to citizens.
Take a company like Canadian Pacific, whose success has always been linked directly to the health of communities along the railway. In 1883, William Van Horne made CP's first donation, $2,000 for construction of the Winnipeg General Hospital. For more than a century, donations were dictated largely by the chair. But in 1994, the Canadian Pacific Charitable Foundation was created to ensure a more sustained and imaginative giving program.
Earlier this year, that new philosophy bore fruit when the foundation unveiled its "adopt-a-shelter" program, in which each of the 26 CP Hotels paired with a shelter for battered women, providing furniture, bedding, toiletries and volunteers. Everyone attending the announcement was asked to donate a women's business suit, and the hotels collected donations from customers at Mother's Day brunches.
The foundation also decided to underwrite a $150,000 violence prevention program sponsored by the Canadian Women's Foundation. "We had been giving to shelters for years," says Sheila Carruthers, donations officer at the CP Foundation, "but this new focus allowed us to reach into the community, to reflect the interests of our employees."
It also caught the attention of top company officials, who increased the foundation's annual grant by 50 per cent, to $4.5 million from $3 million.
Another eye-catching project is that of Saturn Canada, which completed 41 "play-oriented projects" across the country in the past year, including building 24 playgrounds and refurbishing soccer fields and baseball diamonds.
Chuck Novak, advertising and promotions manager at Saturn, says the company had a tradition of customer appreciation but people wanted something more community-oriented.
"The feedback from the playgrounds has been tremendous," he says. "This idea has legs, so I think we're going to repeat it. And, if we can accomplish nothing else, this will inspire other companies to do something for the communities they do business in, too."
Novak is quick to point out that the Saturn project "is not charity in the classic sense." But the classic type of giving, with big cheques going to universities, cultural groups and perhaps to a disease charity that the chair felt an affinity to, is quickly falling out of favour.
Take the example of Texaco Canada, which has made room at its corporate headquarters for both convicts and wildlife. The oil and gas company provides a $15,000 annual grant, free office space and staff support to the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society. The charitable group, in turn, hires prisoners from a nearby minimum security prison to care for injured or orphaned wild animals.
The notion that business gives to conservative, risk-free causes is increasingly being challenged. An analysis conducted by the Canadian Centre for Business in the Community found the following breakdown of donations among 143 corporations surveyed: 28 per cent give to education (almost exclusively post-secondary); 22 per cent to social service charities (most of it via the United Way); 21 per cent to health organizations; 12 per cent to arts and culture; 8 per cent to civic causes, and 4 per cent to environmental projects.
At Noranda Inc. facilities like the Horne smelter, members of the community actually decide how charitable dollars will be spent. Sensitive to public perceptions, the company has also invested heavily in the environment, creating the Daly Point Reserve at a salt marsh in New Brunswick and the King George IV Ecological Reserve on sensitive land in Newfoundland.
Noranda chair Courtney Pratt has also become a high-profile spokes-person for corporate philanthropy, and for investing in education in particular. Among other volunteer roles, he is chair of the Learning Partnership, a non-profit group committed to improving public schools, which he calls the "foundation of democracy in our neighbourhoods."
As Pinney of Imagine says: "Business is jumping into education with both feet because they're scared. They realize there is a link between social infrastructure and their future prosperity."
This realization is not taking place only in large corporations. For example, Tecsys Inc., a software firm based in Dorval, Que., invests more than $100,000 annually in Education Plus, a school for high school dropouts. In addition to spending at least 10 per cent of company profits on educational causes, chair Dave Brereton has purchased a summer camp that he makes available free of charge to a number of community groups.
The other reason there is a growing shift to social causes is that customers generally approve. Research by the Centre for Corporate Community at Boston College found that consumers reward socially responsible companies; 80 per cent of those surveyed said they "decided to do business with a company because of its community involvement" and 74 per cent said they "chose not to do business with a company or buy products from companies" that were not acting in the best interests of the community.
Molson Cos. Ltd., a company known for its marketing savvy, is quite aware of consumer perceptions. The beer maker raised eyebrows years ago when it become the country's biggest corporate sponsor of AIDS groups. But the biggest per capita beer sales are in gay bars, and three of the five biggest bars in Canada are gay bars, so the commitment made good business sense.
Similarly, Avon Canada has thrown its considerable sales expertise into raising money for the Breast Cancer International Centre. The sale of Avon Flame Circle of Hope pins for $3.50 has raised about $3.2 million for cancer research, but also served as a good ice-breaker for the sale of other products.
While the lines between marketing, sponsorship and charity are becoming blurred, corporations are also expanding the ways they give beyond the traditional cutting of a cheque for a photo opportunity.
WIC Western International Communications Inc., which operates 14 radio stations and 10 TV stations across Canada, donates an estimated $20 million a year in air time for advertising and for fundraising vehicles such as the Variety Village Telethon. "Through corporate facilitation, we have been instrumental in helping charities raise money, more money than we could ever give them," says John Lacey, president and CEO.
Corporate citizenship does not begin or end with paying taxes or with voluntary giving. It entails a myriad of responsibilities, social and economic -- from promising employability (if not employment) through to community health -- a notion that corporations have been even slower to embrace than the seemingly simple act of philanthropy.
As Noranda boss Pratt says: "There is a striking difference between just making money and really creating wealth. As we look ahead, social capital is the foundation of economic success in the civil society."
In the new world of fundraising, targets are soaring to dizzying heights
On April 7, the B.C. Cancer Agency Foundation launched one of the boldest fundraising initiatives in Canadian history: Raising $100 million during the last 1,000 days of the 20th century to fund the search for a cure for cancer.
Not to be outdone, B.C. colleges and universities have begun preliminary discussions about joining forces to kick off the millennium with a $1 billion fundraising campaign.
Welcome to the new world of fund-raising, where the campaign targets are soaring to dizzying heights, but where the dollars sought cannot keep pace with demand.
Don't be fooled by the number of zeroes and glitzy campaigns.
While universities, hospitals and a few mega-charities can afford professional fundraisers with six-figure salaries to aggressively seek out million-dollar gifts, most fundraising is still done by volunteers, racking their brains for new ways to persuade you to donate a few more dollars for a good cause.
You can give by fasting, eating, surfing the Net, rolling the dice, rowing -- or the old-fashioned way, by writing a cheque or stuffing a few dollars into the kettle.
Canadians already give more than $10.5 billion a year to charity, 80 per cent of it in gifts from individuals. Corporations kick in a another $1.2 billion and private and community foundations just under $1 billion more.
Despite all the letters you receive, the phone calls that interrupt your dinner, the pleading advertising, the proliferation of special events, and the lottery tickets and sundry merchandise being sold for charity, only 11 per cent of the voluntary sector's revenues come from fundraising.
A little bit comes from service fees, less from investments. The vast majority comes from taxes.
For every dollar donated, the government contributes $5.80 to charitable organizations, which in return provide Canadians with social services, health care, higher education, recreation and cultural events.
But in this age of downsizing and budget balancing, fundraisers have to increase donations by $6 for every dollar the government cuts, just to keep services at their current level.
The competition is so fierce that charities are spending big dollars to get your gift about $1.2 billion annually and growing.
At the same time, charitable groups, particularly the smaller ones, are taking big risks to make a buck and turning to dubious sources of income like fundraisers paid on commission. There are horror stories, but also tales of innovation and success.
The B.C. Cancer Agency created a foundation only last October. Before that, it received modest gifts, about $2.5 million a year, without much active solicitation. Its 1,000-day Millennium Campaign, which aims to raise $100,000 daily, is a "quantum leap," admits Michael Petrie, the vice-president of development.
Harvey McKinnon, president of Vancouver-based Harvey McKinnon and Associates, is a former Oxfam employee who has become one of the country's best-known fundraisers. He now spends much of his time training others in the burgeoning field.
Over the past 20 years, McKinnon has experimented with virtually every approach to fundraising, but retains two simple truisms.
"The single most important thing to do is listen to the donors," he says. Second, is to ask for money for a cause they care about, and to do so in a simple, straightforward manner.
"That's why the best fundraisers come out of causes. You can teach anyone basic skills, but you can't teach commitment and sincerity and, ultimately, that's what donors respond to."
In today's world, asking is anything but simple.
In Canada, the most successful form of fundraising by far (notwithstanding the public's professed hatred for junk mail) is direct mail. It accounts for one in five dollars raised and serves a key "prospecting" function -- identifying donors who support the cause and will give in other ways.
McKinnon says nothing beats a well-written letter -- about 10% of recipients give and it costs only about 8 cents on the dollar once the campaign is established. The problem is "there are a lot of bad letters being mailed out."
His personal favourite form of giving, however, is monthly donations.
"If you really want to get a bang for your buck, this method is virtually cost-free," he says. And, as an added bonus, monthly givers, many motivated by environmental reasons, are removed from mailing lists.
The most popular form of fundraising is special events, an approach used by two-thirds of charities, although it accounts for less than 15 per cent of money raised from the public.
The best-known recurring special event is the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope, which started as one man's dream and ended up as a mass participation event of unparalleled scale, with more than 4,500 runs in 60 countries this year.
To date, the Terry Fox Foundation has raised almost $195 million for cancer research -- with negligible overhead costs, making it the envy of charities around the world.
It has benefited from the fact that Darrell Fox, Terry's younger brother, has remained intimately involved as the executive director. As driven as his hero brother, Darrell Fox shuns the spotlight, but his managerial brilliance has turned the annual run into the phenomenon it is today.
The problem with special events, however, is the unpredictability of their success.
"To be honest, if Terry Fox had come to me with this cockamamie idea to run across the country on one leg, I would have said: 'You're nuts. Use your energy to do something more useful,' " says Patrick Johnston, president of the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy.
"Thankfully, he proved people like me wrong. But he also proved that giving is a very, very personal thing. No amount of market research will allow us to find the magic formula for enticing people to give."
Today, many cash-strapped charities are actually cancelling events rather than use precious volunteer labour for an event that might not have a big payoff.
The drive for cash has sent many charities into the commercial realm. Product sales, everything from chocolate bars to furniture, are a mainstay of many groups, but the scale is getting grander and the risks greater.
The Salvation Army, for example, has gone from thrift shops to superstores. The Victorian Order of Nurses has spun off a for-profit healthcare company to fund its tradition of charitable assistance to seniors.
Countless groups sell trinkets like cookies, pins and T-shirts, but it is an expensive and inefficient way to raise funds. The money-maker tends to be the manufacturer or wholesaler. The charities, if they are lucky, are left with a few dollars. Unlucky, they are left with rooms full of melting chocolate bars or rotting fruit.
Even established charity businesses have run into trouble. When they are successful, they raise the ire of for-profit business, which can bring challenges to their charitable status and the costly loss of tax advantages.
Versatech Industries Inc. of Winnipeg was started by families of adults with mental disabilities as a job-creation and socialization project. Now, it has become a successful recycling business -- and the target of competitors and Revenue Canada.
In these times when the bottom line is paramount, charities are shutting down services that serve other important functions. The CNIB, for example, closed Caterplan -- a cafeteria-newsstand that was, for 40 years, a training ground for blind workers -- because its profits were deemed inadequate.
Increasingly taking the place of product sales are alliances with businesses, and they are no longer limited to huge corporations. When the Great Canadian Bagel Co. wanted to celebrate its 100th store late last year, it decided to give away 100 cents for every dozen bagels sold, a move that raised $30,450 for juvenile diabetes.
Only 4 per cent of fundraising revenues come from product sales. The only popular methods that bring in less are door-to-door canvassing and telephone solicitation.
Again, there are exceptions. The Canadian Cancer Society, for example, raises tens of millions of dollars going door-to-door and many other disease charities do proportionally as well. Their secret is a vast network of volunteers that ensures that many donors know the canvasser personally.
Similarly, phone solicitation, while an irritant to many, can be lucrative. The trick again is calling on people who already have given to the cause. Cold calls, where telemarketers phone randomly, have a deservedly poor reputation for being the preferred method of fraud artists.
Charities have long turned to gaming as an easy source of money, but they have become increasingly dependent in the five years since governments began seriously budget cutting. More than half of non-religious charities now raise a percentage of their revenues from gambling.
At the same time, there is a move away from homey bingos to high-stakes casinos, and from $1 raffle tickets to $100-a-ticket lotteries. As the prize money increases, however, so do the risks, with potentially disastrous consequences. For example, the United Way in the Peel Region last year lost a whopping $1.6 million on a lottery because of poor ticket sales.
Most fundraisers are quick to admit that there is no philanthropic impulse at work in this form of "donation." The voluntary sector is rushing into the area because it is seen as new money; gamblers are not typically donors to charity.
After a few years of raking in this new cash, however, there is a realization that the bounty is limited.
For example, when video lottery terminals are introduced in a province, proceeds from bingos and break-open tickets tend to fall about 75 per cent.
But while charitable gaming brings in about $4.5 billion a year (a fraction of Canada's $27 billion-a-year gambling industry), even success can be problematic. A small charity that has a windfall $100,000 casino night has a legal obligation to spend 80 per of that money delivering charitable services. It also may have to wait two years for its next turn. (Casinos and bingos are now assigned by government and with demand growing, so is the wait.)
As well, three-quarters of charities receive unsolicited donations, accounting for one in every 10 dollars raised. The vast majority come in the form of bequests.
No other area of fundraising is hotter than so-called planned gifts. Many fundraisers get positively giddy when they cite research about the "$1 trillion inter-generational transfer of wealth" that will take place when Baby Boomers move to the great beyond. This purported legacy has become a sort of Holy Grail for charities.
Less than 5 per cent of people leave money to a charity in their will, which is why it is such an area of opportunity. Today, the big charities have lawyers, accountants, tax planners and actuaries on staff to help donors plan the financial details of their demise.
Another major trend in fundraising is the rejection of the traditional hard sell and "open wallet extraction."
Charities are learning that holding on to donors, rather than continually looking for new ones, is the key to keeping the money rolling in. The way to do that is to ensure that donors are active participants in an institution rather than mere cheque-writers.
At UBC, which collects an impressive $33 million to $40 million annually even in down years (between major campaigns), almost half the money that comes in now is in planned gifts, says Shannon von Kaldenberg, director of the development office.
UBC still runs the country's biggest fundraising campaign for its $280 million World of Opportunities campaign, which ran from 1989 to '92 (although the University of Toronto will largely surpass that figure when its current campaign winds up).
The reason the big cheques tend to go to institutions like hospitals and universities is that they listen to the donors and answer their questions, says Blake Bromley, a Vancouver trust lawyer who helps many of Canada's wealthiest people plan their philanthropic gestures.
"My clients tend to be straightforward people. As an outsider, you often think that the problem is writing the cheque, but it's not. When you have a certain amount of wealth, it's philosophical, it's about making a commitment to a cause."
For many charities, however, getting into the fundraising game is getting in the way of the cause. The quest for new sources of revenue eats up a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money.
Lynne Toupin, executive director of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, says her group's foray into the field was almost the death of it. After seeing its federal funding cut by one-third overnight and being told Ottawa was phasing out its grant entirely over three years, the group hired a professional fundraiser.
The organization had 4,000 small donors and set a target of 20,000 more with an aggressive direct mail campaign.
"The short version of the story is that it bombed entirely. We lost $90,000 just like that," Toupin says, shaking her head in disgust. "But you know, one of the results of cutbacks is that we're being forced to gamble, to take crazy risks."
Laurie Beachell, executive director of the Council of Canadians With Disabilities, says the group mulled over the issue for a long time before it decided fundraising was more trouble that it was worth.
The council also refuses to engage in any campaigns that portray the disabled as objects of pity, up to and including the Jerry Lewis Telethon. In fact, telethons have fallen out of favour as fundraising vehicles. They are extremely expensive (about 40 cents on the dollar), even if air time is donated, and largely ineffective in the 100-channel universe.
As a general rule, groups with revenues of less than $250,000 cannot afford to have a fundraiser on staff -- and that's 80 per cent of them -- so many contract out the business. While there are many honest, credible private-sector fundraisers, this is the one area of the charity business to which the unethical and the criminal are attracted.
According to the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, one-quarter of charities that hire outside fundraisers pay them on a commission basis. The fundraising equivalent of clear-cutting, commissioned-based programs (almost all by telemarketers) irritate donors and burn many of them forever.
"With the growth in the field, there are bound to be some poor practices and that hurts us all," says Bill Hallett, vice-president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Toronto. "One of my pet peeves is the cost of fundraising, the groups that hire fundraisers who take 95 per cent for themselves. We really have to educate the public so we can put these people out of business."
One of the main obstacles is that most groups that have been ripped off refuse to speak out, fearing the attention will hamper their efforts even more. And while the practices employed are unethical and disgraceful, they are rarely illegal.
The National Society of Fund-Raising Executives has a strict code of ethics, and charities whose fundraisers are members must adhere to those rules.
The best protection for consumers, however, remains knowledge. Get to know a charity before you give them money, and don't hesitate to ask questions if you have any doubts.
Don Livingstone, president of the Vancouver General Hospital Foundation, which launched a $52 million campaign in September, says good fundraisers welcome the questions.
But there are many worthy causes today battling for the same commitment and the same cash, and that is the real challenge, Livingstone says.
"Whether it's $10 or $1 million that someone is willing to donate, I hope I can get to them before somebody else does."
Firms even give workers time off so they can help community agencies
CALGARY
"I don't intend to learn to golf and move to Arizona," says James Gray, with a self-deprecating laugh, answering a question about his retirement plans.
Given the energy and enthusiasm of the 63-year-old chairman and CEO of Canadian Hunter Exploration Ltd., it is not surprising to learn he will not be putting his feet up. But it is noteworthy that, as he eases his way out of the corporate world, Gray is planning to flip over the hour glass, increasing his already-formidable workload as a volunteer to make it a full-time vocation.
"People have to move from the earning phase of their careers to the giving phase. The theory is called reciprocity," he says, quoting Daniel Yankelovich, a U.S. social scientist and author of Making Democracy Work In A Complex World.
He sees volunteerism flowing naturally from paid work, and urges corporations to free up time for employees to allow them to be active in social causes beginning at age 50 and continuing the relationship through retirement on to age 75 or beyond.
Gray is one of the leading proponents of corporate volunteerism, an idea that is attracting a lot of attention in the era of the changing workplace.
"I've been deeply engaged in the community for decades and there is no question that it's a business advantage -- and not in an indirect way. Employee involvement is good for morale, it's good for the community, and it's good for the company," he says.
Gray's twin passions are the Calgary Academy, a school for disabled children, and the Calgary Women's Emergency Shelter for battered women, and he has flexed his corporate muscle to fill their coffers. He has been a board member of the YMCA for more than a quarter century, and an active volunteer at the Indian Friendship Centre, Child Friendly Calgary, the Achievement Centre for Youth, the United Way and a host of other charitable endeavours.
Gray jokes that his lunchtime conversations tend to be a little different from others at the Petroleum Club, but he remains convinced that other CEOs will come around to his way of thinking about community involvement.
"If I had done nothing but talk about the oil and gas business for the past 40 years, it would have been a pretty damn boring life," he says with his legendary frankness.
Not too far down 5th Ave., Chevron Canada Resources has created one of the country's most active employee volunteer programs, called Employees In Action.
Under the program, employees can take paid leave (up to 10 days annually but negotiable upward) to do volunteer work, and the company makes cash donations to groups where its employees volunteer. Chevron organizes three annual events in which employees fan out into the community and do good deeds such as painting shelters and cleaning up the banks of the Bow River.
Gillian Ramsay, Chevron's community affairs representative, says a well-organized volunteer program can boost morale, improve employee skills and build the company's image in the community. "We believe inherently that there is a sense of pride that develops in employees. I know when I do volunteer work, I feel proud, I feel good," she says.
Ramsay says the influx of talented people is as valuable to most charitable groups as a cash contribution. "While money is great, they need more bodies."
At a cash-poor company like Canadian Airlines, employee time is one of the few contributions that the company can make (aside from air travel), and its most dynamic initiative is called PROPS, Proud Retirees Offering Positive Support.
Dan O'Grady, the manager of community investment, says: "Retirees are getting younger, and they have a lot of skill and energy, so we provide them with a structure and some basics." Some of the initiatives of Canadian Airlines retirees include distributing used blankets from planes to street people, a free wheelchair repair service and a meal program for senior shut-ins, as well as group participation in the Easter Seals campaign, Children's Wish Foundation and UNICEF.
"For us as a company, it's a win-win situation," O'Grady says. "We help retirees ease out of the paid work world, and they are out there in the community making a difference."
At Flint Canada Inc., a private construction firm, an impressive 75 per cent of head office staff volunteer regularly, and the company pays for the training of anyone who wants to improve their skills.
An employee committee chose three charitable groups that it would focus on, Child Find Alberta, Wood's Homes and William Roper Hull Child and Family Services, the latter two centres for mentally and physically disabled children. They raise money and do other work at the charities.
"I first got involved because I wanted to build my leadership and management skills," says Danny Stephen, chairman of the Flint Cares committee. "You go out there, you have fun and you become a better employee at the same time."
Martha Parker, executive director of the Calgary Volunteer Centre, says volunteers used to emerge out of religious institutions, but today the workplace is becoming a primary entry point.
The challenge is to "convince corporations they are not just edifices of concrete, they are filled with people who are members of a community," Parker says. And, in an era when people no longer expect to remain employees for life and where opportunities for promotion are rare, volunteerism gives workers a way to showcase their talents and broaden their employment options.
There is even a link to downsizing and early retirement packages. At Nova Corp., for example, employees who are laid off are eased out more gradually, with the company offering to pay half their salary for working at a charitable agency.
Nova, Flint, Canadian Airlines, Chevron and Canadian Hunter are all members of the Workplace Council on Volunteerism, formed to share their experiences and ensure that they and newcomers get the most out of their volunteerism programs.
Now, the Calgary council is exporting that knowledge, helping to establish workplace councils in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
Watch for it, coming soon, to a workplace near you.
147 Minnesota firms promised to donate at least 5 per cent of their profits to charity
MINNEAPOLIS
Entering the main lobby of the international headquarters of Honeywell Inc., you expect a gleaming, high-tech display, or some such paean to corporate success.
What you find instead is a high school and day-care centre that cater exclusively to unwed teenage mothers. New Vistas School pays no rent for the prime real estate; Honeywell pays to bus the students and their children, provides each girl with a mentor, and hires the teen mothers for summer jobs.
This is corporate philanthropy Minnesota-style: bold, innovative, generous and public.
"Business people cannot sit back and say: 'That's not my problem.' They are needed to solve community problems, and it's in their best interest to do so," says James Renier, the now-retired CEO of Honeywell, who got New Vistas up and running in 1990.
While he is a compassionate individual, he prefers to argue the merits of New Vistas and other philanthropic endeavours in terms that his peers understand -- stressing the bottom line and the need for leadership.
"The best return on investment we can get is by spending on the little ones, giving them a decent education and keeping them out of poverty. For every dollar we spend on these kids today, society will save six. Those are good numbers," Renier says.
In his home state, he doesn't have to do a lot of convincing. The notion of corporate philanthropy is so ingrained that it has been dubbed the Minnesota Tradition. Last year, 147 members joined the Keystone Club of the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce promising to donate at least 5 per cent of their pre-tax, domestic profits to charity. Another 90 corporations pledged at the 2 per cent level.
The granddaddy of givers is the Dayton Hudson Corp. The retailing giant, which operates more than 1,100 Target, Mervyn's, Dayton's, Hudson's and Marshall Field's stores in the U.S., has given more than $350 million since it established a charitable foundation in 1946.
In that year, the government allowed corporations to write off charitable contributions up to 5 per cent of profits. In the decades before, founder George Draper Dayton had given generously, but it was not recorded.
A decade after the tax laws changed, then Senator Lyndon Johnson complained to one of the five sons, Bruce Dayton, that corporations weren't doing their part, and said that, if business wouldn't take advantage of the 5 per cent rule, it might be eliminated. (The figure is now 10 per cent .)
Dayton took up the challenge. Not only did the family company never waver from the pledge, but it also set out to convert others. One of the first on board was John Cowles, a newspaper publisher and owner of Cowles Media Co.; this is important because the media has played a key role in publicizing and perpetuating the Minnesota Tradition.
In 1976, the first "Five Per Cent Club" was formally created in Minneapolis, with 23 corporate members, and membership has grown ten fold since.
"Some businesses are so bottom-line driven that the idea of giving up a nickel is unthinkable. We think that's very short-sighted," says Christine Park, director of the Dayton Hudson Foundation. The company gives about $37 million annually to arts and social groups, with its focus increasingly on retraining unemployed adults. She says stores have thrived, even in hard times, because customers are loyal to firms that care about the community.
Robert MacGregor, president of the Minnesota Centre for Corporate Responsibility, says business executives cannot simply sit back and complain that the education system is inadequate and that cities are deteriorating, they have a responsibility to their shareholders, employees and clients to counter that deterioration.
"Our own cash registers do not ring as often if the community is not healthy," MacGregor says.
That philosophy has helped make Minnesota an economic powerhouse. Despite its relatively high taxes, cold climate and isolation, MacGregor notes that it is the envy of many a state: It is home to 32 of the Fortune 1000 companies, sports a 2.7 percent unemployment rate (half the U.S. average) and a $2 billion (U.S.) budget surplus, all the while maintaining relatively generous social programs.
"Encouraging volunteerism is part of our corporate culture," says Barb Elfrey, volunteer programs manager at the Pillsbury Co. Foundation. Its biggest grant is to Big Brothers/Big Sisters, where many employees are mentors. It also funds KAPOW (Kids and the Power of Work), a program that creates partnerships between schools and businesses.
"Philanthropy and volunteerism have a direct tie to the bottomline," Elfrey says. "It matters to consumers that we're out there in the community. It influences their product choice."
Renier, the ex-CEO of Honeywell, says Minnesota's business leaders are blessed because they have a home-grown tradition of giving.
But he is convinced that any senior executive who does his homework will soon become a committed giver. "The Minnesota tradition can be exported," he says. "This isn't rocket science, you know. It's common sense. And it's in the corporate interest."
Volunteering proves 'one person can make a difference'
In 1977, Pat Power was working as a switchboard operator at a Toronto law firm. Her husband, Steve, a construction worker, wanted to go home to Newfoundland to try his hand at fishing again.
Power agreed to give life in a tiny southern shore village a try for six months and set out "looking for something" to pass the time. That "something" was volunteering, now a life-long passion.
She started by getting involved in the 4-H Club, then helped establish a Home and School Association and Brownie and Girl Guide troops that her daughters could join.
In the early 1980s, Power started attending meetings of the Southern Shore Development Association, soon to find herself on numerous committees. That led to volunteer work at the local folk festival, to the establishment of the Folk Art Council, a seat on the community health board, and to a key role on the Newfoundland and Labrador Development Council.
In places like Calvert, volunteerism is part of the social fabric.
For hundreds of years, fishermen and miners have depended on their neighbours to lend a hand. Public institutions are built by volunteers and social events are planned by them.
There is an informal care network for children and the elderly, an unofficial social safety net that ensures no one goes hungry or lacks firewood, no matter how unforgiving the sea or the bureaucrats have been that year. Fire brigades, municipal councils, school boards, health boards and sporting associations are all led by volunteers.
In other words, volunteers are the extended family of the modern world. "Why do I do it? Because I believe what all volunteers believe, that one person can make a difference," Power says.
Today, volunteers are tackling their biggest challenge yet, trying to reshape an economy devastated by a cod moratorium, trying to keep communities like this one alive.
The ray of promise, oddly, is a pile of ruins up the road in Ferryland.
The archeological site, featuring the ruins of an early 17th century colony intermingled with evidence of Portuguese mariners and Beothuk encampments, is one of the richest in the country, attracting big crowds and spawning dozens of new businesses like bed and breakfasts, craft shops and bird-watching tours.
The dig attracted thousands of visitors during last summer's Cabot celebrations and expanded to include an interpretation centre.
Pat Power has been a central figure in the volunteer initiative, dubbed the Colony of Avalon Foundation. Yet, she downplays her role.
"I've been part of some wonderful things over the years and this is one of them. We didn't set out to create hope but I like to think we increased people's sense there is a future," she says.
In any given month, an estimated 1.6 million Canadians are working, without remuneration, in soup kitchens, blood-donor clinics, ringuette leagues, hospital wards, libraries, schools, zoos, seniors' homes and art galleries. They canvass for arthritis research, clean up the ravages of flooding, build parks, do bookkeeping, dig wells overseas and so much more. Consider, for example, that 80 per cent of Canada's firefighters are still volunteers.
About 27 per cent of adults across the country do volunteer work for an established organization, on average 190 hours a year -- half an hour daily. Half as many again regularly do informal volunteer work, like shovelling an elderly neighbour's driveway.
Two-thirds of volunteers have jobs and the most active age group is 35-45. Most have kids, but women are still more likely to give their time.
In 1987, Statistics Canada estimated the value of volunteer work at more than $12 billion annually. (The research is now being updated.)
More important than the economic impact is the social one. Just try to imagine what the community you live in would look like without volunteers.
"It would be a pretty poor place, and not just economically," says Sylvia Manning, executive administrator of the Newfoundland and Labrador Women's Institutes.
"A community without volunteers would have no heart. It would be unlivable," she says.
Sandra Murphy, executive director of the Volunteer Centre of St. John's, says far too little attention has been paid to the role volunteers play in building community and democracy and as promoters of social discourse.
"Volunteering is more powerful than casting a vote. It allows you to mold your community and your country in a very real way," she says.
Murphy, who has worked in the field for 25 years, can also rhyme off a seemingly endless list of benefits to the individual, including getting work experience, learning new skills, making contacts, making friends and personal fulfilment that comes from helping others.
She also points to U.S. research that shows volunteers are happier and healthier.
"It's better than aerobics," Murphy quips.
While these matters are getting far more attention, and there is a sense that many more people are willing to volunteer today, be it for reasons of career advancement or altruism, there are also real concerns at charitable groups that depend heavily on volunteers. (In fact, most charities in Canada have fewer than five employees and they would be unable to function without unpaid help.)
"One of the things we have to remind government is that volunteerism does not come free," says Moyra Buchan, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Newfoundland and Labrador.
"And volunteers aren't a panacea. There are appropriate and inappropriate uses for volunteers."
Paddy Bowen, executive director of Volunteer Canada, echoes those sentiments.
"The biggest enemy of volunteerism is short-sighted government," she says bluntly.
In fact, there is evidence that since cutbacks began, volunteer activity has actually fallen because the infrastructure of voluntary and non-profit groups is crumbling.
For example, when the Ontario government cut hospital budgets, one of the first positions cut was the volunteer co-ordinator.
What charities need, in the jargon of bureaucracy, are "enabling funds," money to hire professional staff to recruit, screen, train, supervise, motivate and recognize volunteers.
When those base funds are available, the payoff is great: It is estimated that one paid employee is required to oversee every 40 volunteers.
Another worrisome trend, Bowen says, is that volunteers are being asked to perform more complicated tasks, too often without adequate training. For example, people who acted as companions to shut-in seniors are being called on for home-care duties like changing dressings, and Children's Aid volunteers are being asked to monitor supervised parent visits involving violent abusers.
She fears that when someone dies in one of these situations, the backlash will be against volunteers rather than against underfunding.
And governmental and social service agencies are dumping their clientele on voluntary organizations in other ways.
For example, severely disabled people who require a care-giver are sent to do "volunteer" work and groups, not wanting to discriminate, spend tremendous resources trying to accommodate them.
Similarly, instead of providing new immigrants with language classes, they are sent to volunteer, leaving cash-strapped groups to scramble for translators and tutors.
Non-voluntary "volunteerism" also is posing a dilemma in the milieu. Increasingly, courts are sentencing criminal offenders to community service, but what agency wants to take on a petty criminal?
Governments are introducing workfare programs that oblige recipients to "volunteer" to get their cheques, and a growing number of schools are making volunteer service a requirement of graduation.
Again, these programs add a tremendous burden of supervision and paperwork, and it is doubtful that participants will remain loyal after they have done their time, making them a poor investment of resources.
"Regardless of what you think of these programs, mandated volunteerism is a contradiction," Bowen says.
Michael McKnight, executive director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Canada, says many people have a romanticized view of volunteerism, one in which heroic figures breeze in off the street to do good deeds.
The reality is that recruiting, screening and training -- particularly in agencies that work with so-called vulnerable clients like children and seniors -- are complex, time-consuming and expensive.
The organization, which provides mentoring to 10,000 children of single parent families, has a budget of $17 million. "If you divide that into a cost per child ($170), it looks expensive, but most of the money goes to screening," he says.
Police charge about $100 to do a criminal background check of a potential volunteer and trained staff do interviews and verify references. (Some groups also are turning to psychological testing to root out potential abusers.) But McKnight says the key is education of children and their parents about sexual abuse.
For dedicated volunteers like Loyola Hearn, a long-time hockey coach in Renews, Nfld., the increased scrutiny is a negligible inconvenience. "When a kid walks up to you at the end of the season, shakes your hand and says, 'Thanks a lot, coach,' that's a feeling that money can't buy. It's really special."
In many parts of Canada, sport is the glue that holds community together, it is an important part of social life and the team spirit carries over into everyday life, Hearn says.
Myrle Vokey, executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador School Boards Association, is a legend in the voluntary world.
He grew up in the mining community of Bell Island -- "a place where volunteers were the backbone of the community" -- and worked his way up from Church Brigade volunteer to be the voluntary president of the Canadian Red Cross Society, a $500 million-a-year charitable organization.
After 40 years in the trenches, he suddenly finds himself vulnerable to legal liability, another new source of grief for volunteer directors. (The Red Cross is being sued by victims of the tainted blood tragedy and there is a remote possibility of directors being dragged into the proceedings.)
"At this point in my life, I'm going to take my chances. Nothing is going to discourage me from volunteer work because the rewards are too great," Vokey says.
Governments can't do everything for society. Business has its own agenda. That's why we must empower the community-based voluntary sector.
The planned Lifetime Advocacy Network is a small group of parents with adult intellectually challenged children. When the parents die, they want their kids to remain fully integrated members of the community, not merely to be "taken care of" by a faceless system.
To that end, the Surrey, B.C., group is building a network of friends and volunteers that will rally around and offer support like the extended family of old.
Food 2002 is a different kind of network, one that brings together such social-welfare agencies as food banks and community kitchens, food retailers and wholesalers and various levels of government around the same table. Their goal: to develop a plan to make nutritious food available to all Ontarians within five years.
RESO Investissements Inc. is a $5 million venture capital fund created jointly by the Quebec Federation of Labour and the Corporation for the Economic and Social Revitalization of Southwest Montreal. Its projects include a literacy program for factory workers, a clean-up plan for the Lachine canal, and training programs for jobless and employed workers alike.
Teen mothers are often the poorest of the poor. But at Black Creek Community Centre in Toronto, the members of the Teen Moms group are leaving a rich heritage, joining together to ensure their own babies are well cared for and delivering a powerful prevention message in local schools.
For its part, knowledge @ work is a group of cyber-volunteers determined to stimulate discussion and come up with creative solutions to problems tossed their way, particularly those coming from the voluntary sector.
What these disparate groups have in common is that they are charities of the future, on the cutting edge of the revolutionary transformation taking place in Canada's voluntary sector.
What makes them different from the more traditional groups that dominate the 75,000 charities in Canada today -- such as the Salvation Army and the Red Cross -- are a few important traits. They are, in the words of management experts, "cross-sectoral," meaning they rally business, government and volunteer leaders into coalitions. Rather than depending heavily on government, they get funding from a variety of partners. Their approach is to prevent problems rather than solve them.
The charities of the future embrace technology, they are financially astute, they are fearless advocates, and they are profoundly attached to their communities and causes.
These groups have sprung up in response to a growing sense of longing in society, one that finds echo in citizens' worries about crime, their disillusionment with organized politics, anger that the social safety net is fraying, concern about the changing nature of work, sadness about the breakdown of families, and bemoaning lost values. It is not so much a longing for what was as it is for what could be. It is, in essence, a longing for community.
"A vision-driven social system is what we need, as opposed to a problem-driven one," says Julie White, executive director of the Toronto-based Trillium Foundation, which distributes some of the proceeds of Ontario lotteries to community-building projects. "We have to tap into the strengths of communities rather than focusing on the weaknesses."
That means creating jobs instead of cutting welfare, preventing disease rather than treating it, making streets safer instead of building gated neighbourhoods, forming community kitchens instead of building food banks, fashioning education programs to reel in dropouts instead of abandoning them to poverty and prison.
It means expanding co-op housing, not building homeless shelters that can accommodate families, investing in community centres instead of hiring more riot police, shielding children from abuse rather than healing their scars as adults, building pride instead of trying to quell despair.
White says many of the systems in place have ceased being solutions, and become part of the problem. As a wealthy society, we used to paper over our inefficiencies with money; today, in large part as a byproduct of the deficit battle, we are forced to confront them.
White and many others believe the voluntary sector can lead the way in shaping a fundamentally different approach by developing projects that proactively build a more just society instead of perpetually reacting to injustice in a piecemeal fashion.
A striking example is the new approach to child poverty, like the United Way-initiated early intervention programs Success By Six and 1,2,3 Go. By feeding, vaccinating, nurturing and protecting children from abuse, it is expected that the number of high school dropouts, prisoners, physically and psychologically ill and drug addicted adults can be dramatically reduced.
Studies have shown that for every $1 invested in an "at-risk" child, $6 can be saved down the road.
"Our notions of prosperity are changing. There is increasing evidence that our economic well-being is dependent on our social well-being," White says. "The sector has a role in creating social capital, the potential to become a vital player in shaping our future instead of being perceived as the dumping ground for society's problems."
In this brave new world, charities would be forward-looking and innovative. Ideas would rise up from the grass roots rather than rain down from the boardrooms of bureaucrats. In this model, individuals, corporations and foundations would also have to dig a little deeper, but they would supplement, not replace, funding from the state.
Governments would also have to change their approach radically, funding infrastructure, adapting to local concerns and making long-term commitments. Politicians would recognize that building social capital is as important as traditional economic concerns, and they would tout community not as a substitute for government involvement but as a starting point for establishing the priorities of a compassionate society.
Much of this is already happening around the country, but it is the latter point, the need for elected leaders to recognize the charitable sector not as a collection of special interest groups or a motley bunch of low-wage service providers but as a living expression of participative democracy, that will require a quantum leap in thinking.
Richard Mulcaster, chairman and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation, says for that to occur, politicians -- many of whom began their public lives in Kiwanis Clubs, hockey associations, YMCAs, parent associations, Girl Guides, church associations and theatre productions -- have to get back in touch with their own communities, and realize the potential for tapping into the forces of citizen involvement to shape a better society.
"I've never heard a politician speak out intelligently or positively about the voluntary sector, but it affects people more than governments, unions and corporations. This is where people lead their daily lives, and not a day passes when they are not touched by the sector in a very real way," he says.
Patrick Johnston, president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, says the sector has to take some of the blame for failing to convey its importance, and inability or unwillingness to speak with a coherent, united voice.
When money was plentiful, he says, charities were complacent, but when they began to adapt creatively to cuts -- which started in the 1970s with deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients but increased in scope and ferocity beginning in 1993 -- they did a poor job of explaining their shifting roles.
"Philanthropy is an awful word for what the sector does today. Our challenge really is to reinvent the notion of citizenship and personal responsibility, to build on this notion -- even if it's become a bit of a cliche -- that it takes a village to raise a child, or to help out a war vet." It is a puzzling paradox that Canadians keep clamouring to maintain their beloved social entitlements while voting in governments committed to dismantling the welfare state, Johnston says, but part of the answer may come from educating the public that there is a middle way, that with proper support and a vision of the future, the sector can do a lot.
"Governments can't do everything; the private sector can't or won't do things; so we need to think of how to shape the third sector so that it can. The health of our communities depends on meeting that challenge," he says.
Yet, there are bureaucratic, legal and legislative problems that exacerbate the sector's political invisibility and misunderstood public perception.
Community economic development is far removed from the concept of charity that exists in Canadian tax law, which is rooted in Victorian mores. Official government policy is to discourage advocacy; groups lose their charitable numbers, their lifeline, if they spend more than 10 per cent on championing causes publicly rather than delivering services. But it is precisely at a time like this that we need to stimulate public debate.
Building civil society seems far from the minds of politicians as they fixate on deficit elimination, and doing things differently. Investing public funds more wisely does not seem a high priority as governments turn the corner, chalking up surpluses and musing about social dividends.
For their part, many of Canada's 75,000 charities are also enmeshed in the present; trapped in a social, economic and technological maelstrom, they have little time to digest such high-minded concepts.
Many can barely keep their heads above water, never mind perform a marathon synchronized swim called the shift to capacity-building in communities.
Yet, there are strong indications that good things will come to those who do not wait, that charities that fundamentally change their way of doing things will prosper. Demographers have found that baby boomers, the fiftysomething generation, and to an even greater extent Gen-Xers, the generation after them, are not bound by the charitable conventions of their parents; the older generation gives loyally to established charities; the younger one is quite willing to take risks on new ideas, and it has the facility with technology to get information on even the most obscure or inventive voluntary groups.
Foundations and corporations, too, are eschewing grant applicants in favour of seeking out groups to fund; and the detailed data that are now emerging about the profitability of companies in healthy communities, and the weight consumers are starting to place on community investment is shifting charitable spending patterns. When governments catch up, the stand-pat group will be in trouble.
Still, these times of flux are frightening, confusing and sometimes even stimulating for charitable services providers, their funders, and donors.
Tim Brodhead, president and CEO of the Montreal-based J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, a private funder that has developed a reputation for taking on innovative projects, describes the situation by quoting Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset: "We don't understand what is happening to us, and that is what is happening to us."
Our actions, he says, contradict what we say we believe in as a society. For example, we recognize work as important to our sense of identity, but government policies do not allow everyone to be fully productive; we clamour for sustainable development while reaping the short-term benefits of destructive environmental policies; we profess to cherish equality and social justice while implementing policies that further marginalize the poor and that institutionalize stop-gap measures like food banks; we talk boldly about the global village while spending on international development sinks to new lows.
In short, Brodhead says, we have a situation that is untenable for society at large: The manner in which we are spending on so-called human services -- more than $200 billion a year on health, education and social services -- offends our values.
But what are Canadian values? Suzanne Peters, director of the Family Network at the Canadian Policy Research Networks, a non-profit think tank, answered that question in a fascinating 1995 study called "Exploring Canadian Values."
She found that Canadians cherish seven core values: self-reliance, compassion leading to collective responsibility, investment in children as the future generation, democracy, freedom, equality and fiscal responsibility. Not surprisingly, these are the very notions of success and prosperity being touted by the voluntary sector.
Peters' research, which combined analysis of opinion polls with discussion groups, found widespread anger with the failure of the current system, but an overwhelming desire to fix rather than discard social programs.
"Building a new social contract will require a more holistic approach; for many Canadians it will mean putting more on the table for trade-off than just social programs," she concludes.
The welfare state that was created in the years following World War II is no longer appropriate. The nature of work has changed radically, as have patterns of economic growth; women's place in society has been altered dramatically, as has the shape of families. Societal responses, therefore, must change.
Ed Broadbent, the former leader of the federal New Democratic Party who is now a lecturer at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University, says advocating change is seen by some as a betrayal or rejection of principles that Canadians hold dear, but that is not the case.
"The major contribution of the founders of the welfare state is not to be found in the details of their prescriptions. Rather it is an understanding of the related points, that economic and social rights at a level beyond scarcity require a market economy -- and that a market economy-based democracy requires an active, intervening government if it is to avoid growing inequality and instability," he said in a speech earlier this year at Oxford University.
In other words, off-loading service delivery to the voluntary sector cannot be equated with the state washing its hands of the matter. Government must establish and enforce standards, and it must use the redistributive and legislative powers of taxation to ensure there is a system, not just a hodgepodge of services, and to ensure that rights are respected. What the voluntary sector can do, in addition to delivering services, is mobilize and engage people in the social contract, he says.
What is sorely lacking, Broadbent says, is visionary leadership, like that which emerged in the postwar period. "The evolving welfare state, with its mix of political, civil, economic and social rights, has been the supreme achievement of North Atlantic countries. It will be tragic if the welfare state turns out to be a momentary blip in history."
Charles Pascal, executive director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, says that to avoid the death by neglect of some of our fundamentally defining characteristics as a nation, there must be some form of national debate. "We never ask: 'What do we owe each other as Canadians?'' he says.
Like many in the sector, Pascal expresses frustration at the inability or unwillingness of governments to pose that question, to articulate a direction and goals for the nation beyond those on a balance sheet.
"We're making progress on the bottom line, but we have no idea where we're going," he says.
The goal we must have is the creation of a societal infrastructure that has as its principal feature not a safety net but a springboard to equality, says Laurie Beachell, executive director of the Council of Canadians With Disabilities. The voluntary sector must take the lead in shaping such a model, and have as its guiding principle respect for rights, he says. "The old model of exploiting crippled kids for pity and the blind guy standing on the street with a tin cup only serves to entrench us as second-class citizens," Beachell says. "Rather than trying to 'fix' individuals, we should be changing attitudes in society. We don't want to talk about charity any more, we want to talk about citizenship -- full citizenship."
Take the example of a woman who suffers a spinal cord injury in a car crash, or a workplace accident, the kind of person increasingly found in food banks and other social agencies that were designed primarily as transitional aids to fully able workers down on their luck. What she needs are not handouts of food, clothing and medicine, but an income to maintain basic lifestyle needs, including adapting her home to a wheelchair.
Her injuries might mean she requires the help of a home-care nurse, or for the neighbours to shovel the walk. The woman needs a couple of years of rehabilitation, not money to be spent on making the soup kitchen accessible. Rather, she needs access to the local arena to see her daughter play hockey, and to the park where her son plays cricket.
Her husband might need a little counselling, or to attend a support group at the community centre. She needs a job, and perhaps job training to adjust to circumstances. And to get to work she needs public transit, and day care for the youngest.
In short, she needs the benefits of community, and to get them she and her family must remain full members of society, not marginalized dependents of a system.
The role of the voluntary sector today is to facilitate and foster the community, or those communities, that ensure this holistic response.
But what is this much-ballyhooed community? John McKnight, director of the community studies program at Northwestern University in Chicago and author of the seminal work The Careless Society: Community And Its Counterfeits, explains it this way:
"To some people, community is a feeling, to some people it's relationships, to some people it's a place, to some people it's an institution," he says. But the definition McKnight prefers is: "Community is a place where people prevail."
One of the places in our society where people always come first is the YMCA, a bedrock of many communities. "Our approach stresses getting people to participate in society at every level," says Sol Kasimer, CEO of the YMCA of Canada. "Our concept of charity and caring has as its underpinnings self-reliance and responsibility, both personal and societal. It's a holistic approach: You care for yourself, your neighbourhood, your community and the world. It's not altruism, it's mutual benefit."
Kasimer emphasizes that building community and social capital is expensive -- at least in the traditional economic sense -- though the long-term payoffs are undeniable. "As a society, we underestimate the value of community infrastructure," he says, shaking his head at the frustrating reality that government will pave roads and build fire stations without a second thought, but it will balk at spending relatively piddling amounts to build community centres or playgrounds, or to maintain youth job training.
Once community-based structures and programs are in place, they are relatively cheap to maintain, and they can do wonders, Kasimer argues. "What bothers me about the cuts is how short- sighted they are. If it costs $20,000 to bring a high school dropout back into the education system, or to help someone deal with a drug problem, or train them for a job, so what? That investment will save hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's not a cost, it's an investment in people and in society."
For Nancy Neamtan, director of Montreal-based RESO, a community development group in Montreal's depressed southwest, the good news is that the social investment argument has a receptive audience in the general public and with business leaders, and that is making it easier for voluntary organizations to position themselves as an essential part of the economic and social fabric.
"Investing in the social economy is a good business decision, not a way of carving out a place in heaven," she says. The problem, as Neamtan sees it, is that "there is a crisis in our society over the role of government;" having put so much emphasis on deficit reduction, it seems to have lost sight of its more fundamental role of supporting programs and services that the collectivity wants.
Yet, she is heartened by the Quebec government's decision to invest billions of dollars in a plan to guarantee $5-a-day child care, in the belief that it will promote women's equality, assist families and make children healthier and better educated.
Anne Golden, president of the United Way of Metropolitan Toronto, says her worry is that the voguish shibboleths that governments cannot afford to invest in people and that they do not have fundamental responsibilities to foster social justice and caring are beginning to undermine the high expectations that we have developed of the state and of ourselves in the decades of building a social welfare state.
"By all definitions, we have a civil society in Canada. But I worry that we are losing our sense of collective responsibility, that we are losing our interest in the public interest. Do I believe that's a cause for concern? Very much so," she says.
Golden, who did her doctoral thesis on how public opinion is shaped, says the point of view can be turned around, but leaders, both elected ones and those who emerge out of the community, have a duty to create more positive climate and foster caring, both in government and in the voluntary sector.
Jacqueline Thayer Scott, president and vice-chancellor of the University College of Cape Breton, says we must find a way of expressing our values and our sense of community as Canadians.
"We are horribly inarticulate about civic society. We don't have a language in this country for talking about public good."
A starting point, Thayer Scott says, is teaching civics in high school, and giving these ideas an airing at the meetings and sundry gatherings of all the charities that are the very foundation of civil society.
Joey Edwardh, executive director of the Halton Social Planning Council and Volunteer Centre, agrees.
"Canada is being transformed by a systematic limiting of debate. The neo-liberal, business agenda is being imposed on us and there is no forum for alternative views," she says. "I passionately believe in justice, fairness and equity, and I think most Canadians do, too. Unfortunately, there aren't many of us around any more who utter those words out loud -- and proudly. That's really a tragedy."
Edwardh, who worked for development agencies in Latin America for many years, says Canadians fail to appreciate their wealth, and how the marshalling of that wealth has created rich communities, economically, socially and culturally.
We also pay too little heed to the lessons of history. Despite the nostalgia, the so-called good old days weren't that great; that's why charities sprung up, and why social programs were created when they proved inadequate. Besides, creating effective youth job-training programs is far more complex than gathering neighbours for a barn-raising.
Every major social movement of this century has had its genesis in the voluntary sector and the faith communities that spawned charities: the emancipation of women, civil rights, universal health care, the environmental movement, native rights, equality. Community is perhaps than these other social revolutions, but a worthy addition to the annals of social justice.
And, as we search for the magic ingredients of community, as we struggle to recapture the spirit of true charity, pursue the principle of mutual reliance and curse the obstacles that will no doubt arise, it is worth retaining the words of wisdom that children learn when studying the Torah (Book of Deutoronomy): "Lo tuchal le-hitalem."
"Thou shalt not remain indifferent."
Cynthia Page owns Page Ad Net, which designs ads for Web pages. Mark Roberts runs Island and Brew Shoppe, a beer and wine-making supplies store. Elizabeth Ashley-Knickle heads Beks, a gardening and landscaping company. Dennis Wardell is the butcher-proprietor at Ye Olde Meat Market. Kathy Noble operates Turning Point, a human resources management consulting firm.
Together, they call themselves Five Alive. Listening to the dynamic entrepreneurs talk about their burgeoning businesses, their love of community and their dreams of economic security in this pretty seaside town, the last thing that comes to mind is charity.
Yet, the five have all arranged business loans through Calmeadow Nova Scotia, an off-shoot of Calmeadow, a Toronto-based group that is world renowned for its microcredit programs in developing countries like Bolivia and Bangladesh.
"This isn't charitable in the traditional sense. It's dignified. It's a contract as opposed to a gift. It's transformative in a powerful way," says
Martin Connell, president of Calmeadow.
The co-owner of Ace Bakery Ltd. in Toronto, he donates 10 per cent of his profits to the foundation, which was established in 1983. Calmeadow now has a base of about 500 donors, and disbursements of about $2.5-million a year.
Mr. Connell is what you could call an entrepreneurial philanthropist, a believer in the notion that the voluntary sector should not provide services, but be a catalyst for communities to resolve their own problems and create their own opportunities.
Take Five Alive. Each of the members has a contract not only with Calmeadow, but with the others. If one of them fails, they all fail, a very real reminder of the interdependence of citizens.
They actually borrow the money from the Royal Bank of Canada, an enthusiastic supporter which has donated $500,000 to the foundation, and accepted 50 per cent of the risk. For banks, which are often criticized for snubbing small entrepreneurs, this is an opportunity to partner with a group in the voluntary sector and do business with clients where it would normally be prohibitively costly.
What Calmeadow does is all the backgrounds checks, analysis of the business plan (not through paid employees, but largely with group members themselves), and then guarantees the loans.
Initially, each group member can borrow $1,000; if all the loans are repaid (with interest above market rates) within six months, they can move to the next level, $2,000; then, later, to the maximum of $5,000 each. In essence, the program helps people build a credit rating. "It's a great idea," says Ms. Page. "I couldn't get a loan from the bank, so I would have just borrowed on my Visa, and that's expensive. And the real benefit is you're not alone, you have all this support from others in the group."
From the process of lending money emerges an outlet for creativity, job creation, and a way of keeping communities intact.
"We can't really survive in little communities like this anymore unless we build linkages," says Ms. Noble. "But this makes me think that special places like this will still be around when my children grow up."
The level of reneged loans is less than two per cent, far better than "regular" bank clients. The bank sees the added benefit that when the businesses flourish, the microcredit borrowers will probably stick with the Royal.
In total, Calmeadow has about 300 loans in Canada. Outside Nova Scotia, Calmeadow has also created the First People's Fund for aboriginal people, and the Metrofund in Toronto, which has focussed on loans to immigrants and refugees.
As word spreads of their potential, microcredit schemes are springing up all over. The Montreal Community Association, which operates differently from Calmeadow, began in 1990 and has provided money to about 50 community ventures. The Mennonite Central Committee has a start-up program.
Van City Co-op, a Vancouver credit union that has long backed community-building initiatives, also has a small loans program, called Communi-K. In Edmonton, there is the Community Loan Fund, and in Victoria the Women Work! Society makes loans to women.
Another innovative microcredit program is The December 6 Fund, which was established after the massacre of 14 women at Montreal's École Polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989.
It offers loans of up to $500, not for commercial ventures, but to help battered women flee abusive spouses. The interest-free loans, now available at many shelters, are generally used help to pay for necessities like children's clothes and rent, and have proved to be a life-saver for women with no credit.
It was a typical, blazingly hot Georgia summer night, the neighbors sitting on their front porches, sipping iced tea and complaining about the kids hanging around in the empty lot across the street, selling drugs.
Typical until a blue Cadillac pulled up, its occupants emerged, ordered the youths to hand over their crack cocaine (about $500 worth) then lie face down on the scorched red earth. Within seconds, three boys -- Toria Pope, 16; John Davis, 16 and Tony Daniel, 19 -- were dead, shot execution-style.
Maggie Files' initial reaction was to run for cover. Instead, she ran across the street to comfort the teens.
Ms. Files vowed that night -- June 03, 1990 -- she would never again cower in her home. Like her neighbors, she was tired of being a prisoner of her surroundings. "I was so afraid to go outdoors after dark, I lost my job," she says. "That's no way to live."
Ms. Files started the group Red Oak Against Drugs and soon realized that most her neighbors in the 174-house complex shared her consternation, and her values. Police rarely entered the project, so residents started chasing out drug dealers themselves, often with broomsticks.
Ms. Files, a high school dropout and single mother of four children, had never heard academic terminology like social capital and civil society, but she new innately that if Red Oak was ever going to be a place the residents wanted to raise their children, it would need an injection of pride and a feeling of community.
The parents decided the first step was to clean-up the lot, but they lacked the money and tools to do so. Luckily, their story made its way to the Metropolitan Atlanta Community Foundation, which provided a $5,000 grant, money that went to buy rakes, shovels, gloves and garbage bags.
The group was renamed ROPES, Red Oak Parents for Excitement and Safety. Convinced that boredom was the root of many kids' fascination with drugs and criminality, they set out to build a playground.
Word of this initiative springing from a "hopeless" housing project soon became the talk of the voluntary sector. Architecture students from Georgia Tech volunteered to design a playground but, before they drafted blueprints, they took Red Oak kids to the suburbs to see what real playgrounds look like.
Working class residents got their employers involved. Delta Airlines, which has a massive employee volunteer program, sent workers and equipment to help in the clean-up. Home Depot donated materials, and many others kicked in money to buy slides and monkey bars.
"You wouldn't believe the kinds of people who had the nerve to come here and dirty their hands digging our red dirt," Ms. Files says with a broad smile. "My objective was to not have kids dying outside my door, to not have my own kids shot up....It's hard to believe we ended up with this."
"This" is a splendid $100,000 playground crawling with happy children, one that features a plaque to the memory of three dead boys.
Residents have dubbed the playground Red Oak Castle. It is the centrepiece of a rejuvenated community. While the area is far from problem-free, in the four years since the play area was inaugurated, the crime rate has plummeted, the high school graduation rate has soared, even the unemployment rate has fallen.
One of Ms. Files' sons so impressed Delta managers with his work ethic as a volunteer that they hired him. The no-nonsense Ms. Files was recruited by Nation's Bank to work in their customer service department.
But more important than the financial and physical improvements has been the change in attitude. Most people in Red Oak now know each other by name, and they know where they can turn for help.
After the playground, ROPES built Granny House, a foster care centre for children whose parents are in drug or alcohol rehabilitation. The grannies, most in their early 30s, ensure minimal disruption to the kids' lives, and help the parents stay clean when they return home.
And, in the coming year, the community group will launch a job training program for youth.
Suzanne Morse, executive director of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change in Charlottesville, Virginia, cites Red Oak as a prime example of how charitable groups can build social capital through wise, civic-minded investment.
"Social capital is the stockpile of trust, relationships and norms that people can draw upon to solve common problems," Ms. Morse says. "Like physical and financial capital, social capital allows things to happen that otherwise would not."
That a $5,000 investment from a community foundation could be parlayed into a sense of community, particularly in an area where massive amounts of social assistance dollars had been spent over the years, is proof that money alone is not the answer, Ms. Morse argues.
"We need to use our civic common sense to build communities....We need to listen to people. You can design the best social programs in the world, but if people don't buy into it, forget it," she says.
He started by giving the price of a cup of coffee. Now, his donations amount to five hours' pay a week
When David Ollett took his first job at Kelsey-Hayes, fellow workers told him there was a tradition at the wheel plant: Everybody donated the equivalent of a cup of coffee a day to the Red Feather campaign. So, the newly minted high school graduate, class of '65, tossed his "buck a week" into the pot.
Thirty-two years later, Red Feather has become the United Way and Ollett has gone from giving up a cup of coffee to donating big bags of groceries.
An electrician at Ford Motor Co., he donates $130 a week to United Way Windsor-Essex County, and fistfuls of dollars to other worthy causes. In total, Ollett gives about 15 per cent of his income and each time he gets a cost-of-living increase, half goes automatically to charity."
Sure it causes me a little bit of hardship sometimes, but I do what I can," he says with a shrug. "The way I look at it is that each week I give five hours' pay before taxes to help others out. I don't think that's such a big deal for somebody with a job, his health and his faculties."
Individual Canadians give about $8.3 billion to charity each year (seven times more than all corporations combined). Yet, only about one-third of taxpayers actually make donations that they claim as a tax deduction, and the median level of gift-giving in this country is a paltry $150 a year.
It is a far cry from the days of tithing or what in Quebec was called la dime, one-twenty-sixth of the harvest or two weeks' pay. Still, half the money donated continues to go to churches; one-third goes to social welfare agencies, and only 5 percent to schools and hospitals combined.
These numbers do not inspire confidence in those who must makeup the shortfalls in the wake of massive government cutbacks. Their task is daunting: For every 1 per cent cut from the state, individual donations need to increase by 6 per cent.
But giving has not increased, in real terms, over the past decade. When you factor in inflation, Canadians give less to charity today than they did in 1984, and the number of people making donations has fallen steadily since 1990.
Fundraisers spend about $1.2 billion a year trying to extract dollars from your pockets, and trying to find out what makes donors tick.
Windsor is a good place to start. It is, arguably, Canada's most generous city. For 27 years running, the border city has had the highest average donation to the United Way - $29.52 per capita. And many other national groups, like the Muscular Dystrophy Association, report their Windsor chapters are among the most successful.
"I've lived a lot of places and I'll tell you what makes Windsor the charity capital: It has a very strong sense of identity, it has a sense of community," says Durhane Wong-Rieger, a University of Windsor psychology professor and volunteer president of the Canadian Hemophilia Society.
Situated in the shadow of Detroit - Windsor nurtures and promotes the sense of national identity that most Canadians take for granted.
Since it is a blue-collar town, workers here know all too well the perils of economic downturns. The proximity to the United States also gives residents a well-honed appreciation for Canada's social safety net.
Some actually believe that U.S.-style giving has had an influence here, but the fact is that individual Canadians are just as generous with their cash as their American counterparts are.
Stingy is never a word you would use to describe Windsor.
"People here have some common values, whether they're labour or management," says Pat Leonard, a canvasser for Canadian Auto Workers Local 200. "We realize that no government could truly meet every need, so we do our part for improving quality of life in the community. And that doesn't mean letting them off the hook.
"Catherine Arpin, a quality administrator at Ford who canvasses her fellow white-collar workers to give, adds that one of the secrets in Windsor is that people actually get asked. "We don't do a hard sell at all, but most people are glad to contribute if you ask them personally," she says.
More than 90 per cent of Ford's 6,000 workers have signed up for payroll deduction, contributing an impressive $2.6 million to the United Way.
Pat Strome, a dental hygienist, gives money the way many parents and sports volunteers do, as a way of setting an example. "We're the first ones buying the T-shirts, the pins, the chocolate bars, you name it. It's hundreds of dollars a year," she says.
Strome heads the bingo committee at Southwood Elementary School and her husband is a minor hockey volunteer. Public schools are getting into the fundraising game big time; at Southwood, located in a middle-class neighbourhood, parents have raised more than $200,000 to buy playground equipment, computers, library books, sports uniforms, musical instruments and academic awards.
"When we started this we had no money, but we kept seeing needs," Strome says. So far, the fundraising events have been so lucrative that the parents aren't interested in donations. "Right now, we want people to give time, to get involved. Money is impersonal," she says.
Lois Comartin has been a volunteer for 19 years at the Hospice of Windsor. But in 1996, she felt the benefits of the service first-hand, when her husband, Don, fell ill with lung cancer and died.
"Over the years, the hospice was our family and we were blessed to have family there when Don died," Comartin says.
Aside from her tireless volunteer work, she is a dedicated financial supporter. Each time a friend dies, Comartin makes a donation in that person's name. And when her husband died, more than 1,000 people visited the funeral home, and most left a donation in his memory.
The hospice, the largest in Canada, is the charity of choice in Windsor, raising more than $500,000 from the public. Last year it held 38 fundraising events, everything from a skate-a-thon to a gala dinner.
"People see their friends and family getting help and they remember us. That means a lot more than some slick pamphlet in the mailbox," says executive director Carol Derby-shire. "The attitude around here is: 'We'll be damned if we're going to go without because of cutbacks.' "
VANCOUVER
On a LOVELY afternoon in June, Gary C.K. Ho hosted one of his monthly tea parties. Guests, many of them the elite of Vancouver's Chinese community, mingled, sipping aromatic tea, chatting and listening to short, inspirational speeches about the wisdom that comes from giving selflessly. All the guests left a little wiser, dropping cheques discreetly in the box by the door on the way out.
The tally that afternoon: a cool $3 million. Ho, owner of Taipei-based Chi Hon Development Co., is also chairman of the Buddhist Compass-ion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation Canada. The money raised will go to the Tzu Chi Institute for Complementary fund Alternative Medicine at Vancouver Hospital, as part of an $8 million pledge by the five-year-old foundation.
As the face of Canada changes, so does that of its donors, creating new opportunities and new challenges for fundraisers. No where is that more obvious than in multicultural Vancouver, where an influx of Chinese philanthropists is changing the landscape, particularly that of hospitals and universities. "There is a misconception that Chinese people are all rich," says Lilian To, executive director of the United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society, better known by its acronym SUCCESS. She also stresses that the community, while often portrayed as monolithic, is extremely diverse. Some families have been around for several generations, while others are newcomers; they come from a variety of countries; and there are numerous religious backgrounds represented.
What is true, To says, is that there is a tradition of giving in many Eastern countries, particularly to support social services, health and education.
Cultural differences are also obvious in other ways. To generalize, direct mail, the most successful fundraising tool in mainstream Canada, is a bust in the Chinese community. Door-to- door canvassing is equally frowned upon.
But public events, like fundraising banquets and walkathons, are very popular. SUCCESS, which raises half its $6 million from the public, makes more than $1 million from its annual gala dinner that is the highlight of the Vancouver social calendar. The annual Walk With The Dragon in Stanley Park makes half as much again.
Charan Gill, executive director of the Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society, also stresses that "fundraisers have to realize that being culturally appropriate and culturally sensitive is crucial." Surrey-based PICS, which helps immigrants and refugees settle in Canada, raises 40 per cent of its $300,000 budget annually, most of it in the Indo-Canadian community. As in the Chinese community, Gill says, public recognition is important to donors.
"To speak someone's name publicly, such as at a dinner, is a great honour," he says. That tradition comes from Sikh temples, where "naming" is commonplace.
In the Indo-Canadian community, mail and phone solicitation is considered rude, but door-to-door canvassing is an accepted practice. "I never leave a house empty-handed," Gill says. In fact, he is often seen as collecting dhaul, the community tax that elders collect in many Indian villages.
Canada's aboriginal people, often viewed primarily as recipients of charity, are, in reality, among the country's most generous donors.
"The philosophy of the hunter is that you take only what you need, and you share the rest," says Chief Leonard George of the Tsleilwaututh people.
The potlatch ceremony, popular among West Coast Indians, is fundamentally a gifting ceremony, one whose generosity has no parallel in non-native society, he says.
The religious underpinnings of giving are often overlooked. Many religious groups, notably fundamentalist Christians, still practise tithing. In Islam it is called zakat, in Judaism, tz'dakah, not charity but "doing the right thing."
"The federations making up the Jewish community, for example, are one of the country's biggest fundraisers, bringing in more than $85 million nationwide. Their philosophical underpinning, of course, is that the community comes ahead of the individual, a notion that finds resonance in many religious and political movements.
Eyob Gostom Naizghi, director of settlement services at Vancouver-based MOSAIC, which like PICS assists refugees and immigrants, says newcomers are often poor and unable to give to charity. But as recipients of services, the future views of refugees and immigrants, are being influenced, he says.
In other words, providing decent social services now will reap benefits when people are in a position to give years down the road.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to get a handle on individual generosity in Canada. This country's philanthropists are notoriously discreet, and our tax system does not require detailed disclosure. The following is an attempt to shed light on some of the country's biggest philanthropic families, based on searches of databases and anecdotal information from people in the voluntary sector. This list is in no way definitive, nor is it in order of generosity.
| THE BRONFMAN FAMILY, Charles R. Bronfman, Montreal: |
Heads the Chastell Family Foundation, with assets of $132-million and grants of $15-million annually, and the CRB Foundation, with another $12-million in charitable activity. (Mr. Bronfman is the sole source of funds in both cases.) Seagram Co. Ltd., which he heads, also sponsors 20 symphony orchestras. Some of his biggest grants include $2.2-million to McGill University and $1.6-million to the United Israel Appeal of Canada.* Phyllis Lambert, Montreal Founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. She is president of Samuel and Saiyde Bronfman Family Foundation, with grants of $4.1-million a year. Some of its biggest gifts include a total $2.8-million to the Combined Jewish Appeal and grants totalling $350,000 to One Voice Seniors Network |
| MARTHA COHEN, Calgary: | Has reputedly spent upwards of $100-million on the CCA. Her husband, the late Harry Cohen headed Sony of Canada, as well as Saan and Metropolitan department stores |
| JOEY TANNENBAUM, Toronto: | Canadian donations total to date are estimated to exceed $60-million, and he has made significant donations overseas as well. His biggest gifts include $3-million for gallery spaces and another $3-million in paintings to the Art Gallery of Ontario and $1-million to the Canadian Opera Company. The Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Charitable Foundation makes grants of $185,000 annually. |
| GEORGE R. GARDINER, Toronto: | Has donated nearly $50-million to The George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, which he founded 13 years ago. Donates more than $500,000 annually to healthcare charities, including the Alzheimer's Society and Princess Margaret Hospital. Is also a key director of the Max Bell Foundation, which makes grants of more than $2-million a year, and president of the George R. Gardiner Foundation. |
| DR. BARRY SHERMAN, Toronto: | Donated $25 million to the United Jewish Appeal, and significant amounts to the United Way's Tomorrow Fund and the University of Toronto. Founder of the pharmaceutical company Apotex, he dissolved the corporate foundation after a dispute with Revenue Canada |
| TOM CHAN, Vancouver: | Donated $10-million toward the $25-million Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. He is chairman of the Chan Foundation of Canada, which makes grants of almost $1-million annually. He is chairman of Burrard International Holdings Inc., a real estate development company. |
| THE IVEY FAMILY, London, Ont.: | Richard Ivey contributed $11-million to the business school that bears his name at the University of Western Ontario. The Richard Ivey Foundation makes grants of $4.1-million a year, half to the business school. The Richard and Jean Ivey Fund made grants totalling $766,500 last year. Mr. Ivey's corporation, Canada Trust, gives more than one per cent of its profits to charity. |
| SEYMOUR SCHULICH, Toronto: | Donated $15-million to the business school that now bears his name at York University. The S. Schulich Foundation also gives grants of more than $300,000 annually. He is CEO of Franco-Nevada Mining Corp. |
| PAUL DESMARAIS, Montreal: | Gave $10-million to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal for the Pavilion Jean-Noël (UMLAUT E) Desmarais. Is also the principal patron of the Montreal Opera Company and Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The company he controls, Power Corp. gives well over one per cent of its pre-tax profits to charity. |
| WALTER CARSEN, Toronto: | Known as the "Care Bear" due to his generosity in the arts community. He donated in excess of $4-million to the National Ballet of Canada, and spent $500,00 to restore the Shaw Festival's Royal George Theatre. |
| GALEN AND HILARY WESTON, Toronto: | Have given approximately $1-million each to the Royal Ontario Museum, Ford Centre for the Performing Arts and Art Gallery of Ontario. The W. Garfield Weston Foundation makes grants of $2.9-million annually. The George Weston Co. Ltd. is also committed to giving at least one per cent of profits to charity |
Who suffers when governments tighten the purse-strings?
EDMONTON
Marvin Jahn is a handsome man of 45: muscular, mustachioed, rugged, steely blue-eyed. Eyes that are eerily empty, a face that is profoundly forlorn. His is the face of poverty in Canada, a poverty so dismal that few can imagine it, a poverty that, for many, looms menacingly, only a couple of pay- cheques away, a divorce away, an accident away.
He is sitting on the steps of Mustard Seed Church, in Edmonton's inner city. His bottom lip quivers as he tells of being denied workers' compensation, of exhausting his employment insurance, of being deemed ineligible for welfare, cut off from disability, of struggling to live through a bitterly cold Edmonton winter without a penny of income.
Government cutbacks have been so swift and sweeping that children, women and men like Marvin Jahn can crash through Canada's frayed social safety net and essentially cease to exist. He is one of those statistics that cost-cutting governments like to brag about, one of the 60,000 in Alberta who has "disappeared" off the welfare rolls during the past three years.
Jahn laboured as a coal miner for 27 years. He worked through the pain of four serious mining accidents, until he was laid off in December, 1994. Joblessness, combined with chronic back, leg and lung problems, and heartbreak (his brother Trevor was one of the miners killed in the Westray mine disaster) plunged him into a deep depression that led to institutionalization. In the downward spiral, savings evaporated and friends disappeared as quickly as self-esteem.
"I paid my taxes for a long time and now that I need a little help, I'm not getting any. From where I'm sitting, that doesn't seem fair," he says in a monotone whisper, the voice of a broken man, of a man betrayed.
"It's not how the system is supposed to work."
How "the system" is supposed to work is a question that has gripped those working in Canada's $86 billion-a-year voluntary sector. What makes headlines are government cuts and transfers -- 10 per cent here, 20 per cent there, 50 per cent elsewhere -- with little attention paid to the end result, a fundamental redistribution and re-ordering of tasks among the three pillars of our social and economic structure, the public, the private and the voluntary sector.
"The cuts were carried out like this," says Anil Naidoo, an addictions counsellor and member of the Edmonton Inner City Advocacy
Network, sweeping his arms in broad sword-strokes. "It started with decapitation. Then there was more hacking. There was no planning, no foresight -- the government admits that. Now it's up to people like us to deal with the results."
Because almost two-thirds of charities' revenues come directly from government, cuts have had dramatic, often unexpected results that are currently echoing, to varying degrees, in every church basement, soup kitchen, community centre, hospital, job training centre, school, opera house, library, playground, United Way, Girl Guide troop in the country.
The pinch is also being felt in corporate boardrooms, union halls and foundation offices, as private givers are called on to fill the gap.
"It's not like a business, we can't 'cut our losses.' We're dealing with people, so we can't just say 'No,' " says Holly Whittleton, executive director of MOSAIC, a Vancouver refugee and immigrant settlement service. "The buck really does stop here."
But, increasingly, it's getting hard for charities to say "Yes" to their clientele. A throw-away line in a federal budget two years ago meant that $4 million in employment training money for four B.C. immigrant organizations disappeared overnight.
There was no consultation and no prior warning, but four established groups (including MOSAIC) were suddenly pushed to the brink of failure.
Even more disturbing and damaging than the loss of money, say those on the front lines, has been officialdom's abdication of responsibility, the lack of vision by the politicians and bureaucrats wielding the deficit-slashing axes.
"Is it realistic to expect charitable agencies, particularly social service agencies, to absorb these kinds of cuts in three years when it took 50 years of really hard work to get to this level? Are we really willing, as a society, to let things go that easily?" asks Rev. Laurie LaFleur, the former pastor of Mustard Seed. "All our futures are linked to the decisions and non-decisions governments are making today. We will have to digest this stuff for years to come."
Already, donors are being besieged as government-funded groups -- cultural, educational, sporting and social -- try to transform themselves into fundraisers overnight, all competing for scarce dollars. Social agencies designed to fill gaps are suddenly expected to deliver core services, and their transitional programs are being swamped by people with multiple, chronic needs crashing inexorably at their doors.
In the four years since the cuts began in earnest, some of Canada's 75,000 charities have died; many more have been overwhelmed. Yet, out of necessity and conviction, they have scrimped, screamed, contorted themselves and adapted, showing remarkable resourcefulness and creativity. As a whole, the voluntary sector is leaner and meaner (as governments wished), though at a tremendous cost, including burnout of volunteers and a growing sense of anger among funders and users of charitable services.
If that were not enough, the sector faces its biggest challenge yet, attempting to rewrite the social contract, trying to patch and re-weave the safety net while continuing to labour in the eye of a hurricane of political, economic and social change.
Mustard Seed, where Jahn comes for a daily menu of soup, solace and social justice, is in many ways a microcosm of the transformation that is under way in the country's voluntary sector.
A Baptist church turned country-and-western bar, turned social service agency for the inner city poor, it has seen its mandate broaden as quickly as its clientele expanded; yet, at the same time, it has seen government support drop, and been forced to turn to the cut throat world of private fundraising and into competition with private sector service providers whose principal aim is to churn clients through the system -- off provincial welfare rolls into federal programs like Employment Insurance -- not to help them escape poverty.
Still, its basement offices are always buzzing with activists who are trying to do things differently, building coalitions and challenging a welfare model they believe has largely failed.
Before Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and federal Finance Minister Paul Martin prescribed their bitter fiscal medicine, Mustard Seed Church had a few hundred regulars at its modest soup kitchen and drop-in centre, most of them in transition from jail to jobs, from addiction to treatment, from one service agency to another.
That was before a 20 per cent across-the-board cut in the provincial social services budget, before federal grants were cut 10 to 50 per cent, before employment insurance rules were changed, before welfare rates were reduced and criteria altered, before workers' compensation plans were told to eliminate their deficits, before psychiatric institutions and jails were all but emptied, before thousands of public employees were laid off, before mentally ill and illiterate people were told to comply with byzantine rules or risk being cut off welfare.
Now, Mustard Seed serves 3,000 lunches a month and feeds 700 hungry people dinner each Sunday before welfare cheques arrive, and its food bank is so overwhelmed -- 5,000 families a month -- that it has to limit handouts. (In 1981, Edmonton became the first city in Canada to have a food bank; today, it distributes 1.6 million kilograms of food annually. Mustard Seed is one of 30 branches of the ever-expanding food bank; and there are 488 food banks across the country.)
While polls show much support for deficit-reduction, middle-class communities have not escaped the impact of cuts, and there is growing concern there about government priorities, and lack of planning.
Take NeighborLink, a church-sponsored agency that was designed to find volunteers to deal with the little things like getting seniors to doctors' appointments and shovelling their walks. Suddenly, those volunteers are being asked to provide home care and transport for people with disabilities.
"Our calls have probably increased tenfold with government cutbacks. But worse than that is the things we're being asked to help with," says Irene Apon, the executive director. "Nurses should be doing home care, not well-meaning people. I understand the government's rationale, but from our perspective you see that the cuts were too deep, too fast."
Jonathan Murphy, a long-time social activist who now heads the University of Alberta Population Research Laboratory, says he is disturbed by the hardening of attitudes, as reflected in the high level of support for sweeping government cuts and "get tough" policies.
"Government is the representative of society as a whole, and society has basic responsibilities. What we are seeing today is a depressing level of anti-government and anti-social rhetoric," he says. "There is a gradual dissolution of the bonds that hold us together as a society, a dissolution of the sense of collective responsibility."
Hanging on to that precious, elusive commodity called community has become virtually the exclusive domain of Canada's voluntary sector. And not to be forgotten is that its work benefits working-class, middle-class and wealthy communities as much, if not more than the poor.
"Social programs were designed to ensure the personal security of the middle class and the rich," Murphy says. The safety net was designed to keep working people from falling too far, to prevent the hungry from turning to crime, and it was funded through taxation because that is a more efficient and fairer method of raising money than charity, he says.
Bill Maxim, former president of the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues and a member of the Killarney Community League, is a dyed-in-the-wood conservative, but he, too, is troubled by the effects of off-loading.
Cuts in grants and increased service fees have forced community leagues to cut subsidies to recreational programs like kids' hockey, with the predictable result that many are dropping out.
"So, instead of playing hockey with his buddies, a kid may be hanging around at the corner, planning a break-in," Maxim says. "In the long run, you've got to figure it's going to cost us more as a society. It's cheaper to pay a kid's hockey fees today than to throw him in jail tomorrow."
There are 140 community leagues in the city that operate community centres, pools, hockey rinks, sports and recreation programs, and they find themselves beset by new demands. For example, the city will now pay only 50 per cent of the cost of a playground, and there are constant threats to shut down facilities that were built in headier times.
But even the beleaguered are quick to point out that some good has come out of cutbacks. One can see the beginnings of a rationalization: mergers, alliances and the elimination of redundant groups, and new cost- cutting strategies. The Muttart Foundation, for example, is funding the cost of mergers in the hope they will ensure the long-term survival of services rather than of particular groups.
The private sector is also getting involved. One innovative approach is the creation of the "virtual office" for groups that are information-oriented and volunteer-run. Businesses like Quandary Solutions, an association management company, offer a smorgasbord of labour-intensive office services -- mailing, conference planning, billing -- to these small groups for a monthly fee.
"For the cost of renting an office and hiring an employee one week a month (about $1,000), you can hire us. We're there every day and we do this stuff volunteers don't want to," says president Ian McCormick.
Another imaginative approach is that of Altruvest Charitable Services, which provides consulting, assessment and training services to charities to help them become more efficient. Chairman Rob Fallows, the CEO of Maritz Canada, has been doing this for big corporations for years, and has decided to offer his expertise free of charge to select charities to help them become better managed and more efficient.
For governments with a conservative bent, one of the principal benefits of off-loading to charities is that labour costs are dramatically lower. Good, unionized civil service jobs can be replaced by non-unionized posts occupied by workers willing to take a lower wage because they believe in a cause. For this reason, charities often feel that politicians view them not as a true alternative, but as a form of discount government.
Furthermore, the increasingly popular policy of granting short-term contracts has resulted in already poor-paying jobs becoming more so. Job security is virtually unfathomable in the voluntary sector. At MOSAIC, they have taken the drastic step of putting everyone on contracts, most of them tied to funding grants (which are three or six months), a move that is being watched nervously by other groups.
"We saw the cutbacks as a threat so we went at them front-end, aggressively, and we managed to survive," Whittleton says. "Five-year strategic plans? Forget it. We spend 30 to 40 per cent of our day planning to survive until tomorrow. That's the reality today."
Even at the street level, the cuts have prompted new approaches, like that at Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society. A social service agency for urban natives, it operates two group homes, a job training program for youth and an outreach program for primary school kids, with a heavy reliance on spirituality-based ceremony like sweat lodges, "smudge and prayer" and medicine cards.
"Lots of these kids have been social worked to death, and it wasn't working," says co-director Shauna Seneca, a long-time social worker who was frustrated by the failure of social services. The idea here is to intervene early -- BATHS just started a primary school literacy program -- and help aboriginal children build a sense of self-respect that will help them avoid the pitfalls that lead to poverty, like illiteracy and alcoholism.
"The silver lining is that, yes, there are some areas where the government has decided to spend more wisely, to focus on the real issues, and on the long term," Seneca says. "But there's still a big dark cloud hanging over all of us - a lot less money to deal with greater needs."
There are also, it should be noted, those who largely agree with the approach of governments like that of Ralph Klein, up to and including the planned privatization of child welfare and rehabilitation services.
"We have had no cutbacks, though I suspect we might be the only agency in the province that can make the claim," says Monsignor William Irwin, executive president of Catholic Charities. "Our programs are effective, our methods are proven, and our standards are high. These are the types of programs that should be funded."
Catholic Social Services, part of the larger umbrella group, is one the largest social welfare agencies in the country, with 94 programs and a budget of $24 million ($21.5 million of it from government), and Irwin is confident it will expand under privatization.
His view, a controversial one, is that the grassroots groups cannot develop and maintain high-quality services. "The naysayers are the ones who are not successful," he says. His concern, however, is that government, in a bid to save money, will let standards slip.
"The government has an obligation to set quality standards, it can't just settle for the cheapest," he warns. Rayna Haythorne, head of the Inner City Advocacy Network, agrees that the greatest threat is that the government's obsession with cost-cutting totally is blinding it to the needs of citizens.
But the network is, in itself, a sign of hope. When charities were relatively comfortable, militant advocacy fell by the wayside, now it's experiencing a rebirth. In recent months, trained advocates specializing in addiction counselling, welfare rights and workers rights have begun working in the basement of Mustard Seed Church.
"We're not coming in here to save people, we're here to provide information and education so they can be empowered and advocate for themselves," she says. It is telling, however, that in 1997 this kind of service is not paid for by government, but a private initiative; specifically, the network gets its money from the Alberta Alter-natives Foundation, which raises most of its money from chocolate bar sales.
What advocates and front-line workers alike would like to see more than anything else is an injection of common sense into the system. Kathy Johnston, general manager of the YMCA Enterprise Centre in Edmonton, says she is perpetually running up against brick walls of contradictions.
As the province slashes welfare rates, presumably to make work more attractive, it is cutting job training programs. The Y's government funding for job training has been cut by 50 per cent over the past three years, and the 500 places it once had are now down to 100 -just as demand is soaring.
Meanwhile, Johnston sees dozens of private companies with no proven track record setting up shop and getting contracts. As standards slowly slip or cease to be enforced, this may prove to be a greater threat to charities than cutbacks.
"Personally, I think there's a lot of money in the system, it's just being spent in the wrong places, and that's frustrating," she says. "All the government cares about is getting people off the welfare rolls, it doesn't care whether they get skills or not."
The future of United Way and its popular payroll deduction plan has never been more uncertain
In 1996, Canadians donated $252 million to the United Way/Centraide, making it the country's most formidable fundraiser. Meanwhile, it distributed 87 cents on the dollar to service agencies, making it the biggest non-governmental grantmaker in Canada.
Operating in 122 cities, sporting a virtually unblemished record for efficiency, a profile that is the envy of all those trying to raise money, and wielding tremendous economic power and political clout, it seems comfortably set.
Yet, the future of the United Way and its popular payroll deduction plan has never been more uncertain. "Are these challenging times? You bet they are," says Anne Golden, president of the United Way of Metropolitan Toronto. Yet she's confident the United Way will not only survive, but prosper. Others are not so certain. There are many pressures, both internal and external: A changing workplace, altered patterns of giving, debate over the United Way's role, turf wars with other fundraisers and funders. Fuelling it all is the fact that there is never enough money to go around. The Toronto United Way raised $51 million last year but Golden admits candidly that, "based on what we do now, we really need $100 million." She estimates 40 of the 205 groups it funds are so cash-strapped they are in danger of closing.
The movement has roots in Canada going back to the end of World War I, with the formation of the Federation of Jewish Philan-thropies in Montreal and the Toronto Federation for Community Service. The federated campaigns paralleled the organization of the first social planning councils.
By the end of World War II there were 36 federations across the country, with names like Red Feather, Community Chest and United Appeals. By 1950, the campaigns were raising more than $16 million a year. In 1972, Community Funds and Councils of Canada became a national body, separate from the Canadian Council on Social Development, and two years later took the name United Way.
Twenty years ago, the United Way had 89 member agencies and raised $71 million, and its grants went to more than 3,000 community organizations. A decade ago, it had 119 members, raised $185 million and distributed the money to 3,400 groups.
In each city, an all locations committee distributes the money raised. As funds become more scarce, that process becomes increasingly agonizing.
Last year, 4,208 member agencies across Canada shared in United Way spoils, only a fraction of the social welfare agencies operating in the country.
It also "flowed-through" money to 10,000 more charities, a reflection of the growing trend of workplace donors to designate their gifts to specific charities, many of which are not member agencies.
Practically speaking, that means the vast majority of charities in Canada do not get significant amounts of money from the United Way.
When you factor in inflation, amounts collected have been rather flat since about 1970. It is noteworthy, however, that the movement drifted listlessly in the 1970s and 1980s, when government funding peaked, and in recent years it has met increasingly bold fundraising targets.
The practical result is that many United Ways have not takenon new recipients for years and long-time participants have seen their grants whittled way, or cut entirely.
Each city has its own allocations committee, but the trend across them is to stop or reduce funding to big, established groups such as Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, St. John Ambulance, the Red Cross and the YMCA. And like all other funders, the United Way has become enamoured with "focus," targeting specific-needs groups like children.
This angers many long-time recipients. "United Way now views us strictly as products to be marketed," says Peter Clutterbuck, executive director of the Metropolitan Toronto Social Planning Council.
He says the United Way model is good, but the current leadership is losing sight of the original goal, to facilitate fundraising and allocate money for core operating. Increasingly, it has turned to project funding and doling out grants to non-member agencies.
Laurentin Levesque, former president of the Ottawa-based Com-munity Information Centre, complains that the United Way started out as a co-operative venture but has become a top-heavy organization that treats agencies like departments that should follow orders from headquarters. Her group was told to merge with another or have its funding cut.
"The United Way has gone from being an agent for organizations to being an agent for donors," Levesque says.
The United Way's expansionist tendencies also have cause danger. In some cities, it is muscling in on volunteer centres and ordering charitable groups to merge or shut down.
In Toronto, the United Way has created an endowment fund (with a goal of $300 million) that is in direct competition with the local community foundation.
"A community foundation is the antithesis of the United Way: It is funded through income from endowment rather than annual campaigns - it is focused on the donor rather than the operating charity," John Hodgson, a lawyer at Blake, Cassels & Graydon, wrote in an pointed critique published in The Philanthropist.
He, too, argues that the United Way has lost sight of its mission and, emboldened by its size, is trying to become all things to all people.
The impetus for this branching out has a lot to do with a desire to increase an already high profile. That is necessary, it is felt, because of the way workplaces are changing.
The United Way gets the vast majority of its money from work place giving and the disappearance of giant factories and the trend toward working at home bode poorly for its continued success.
But Golden is not pessimistic, arguing that as work places change so do fundraising methods.
The whole new class of cyber-workers, for example, is a perfect target for Internet giving.
Yet another workplace trend is competition for designated dollars. In cities such as Toronto, Edmonton and Victoria, disputes over the funding of pro-choice groups prompted United Way boycotts and the creation of workplace giving plans by Catholic organizations.
Over the years, they have become a considerable force. ShareLife of Toronto, for example, raised $11.5 million last year from corporations and from individuals, who give at the workplace, in the parish and at school.
This year in Ottawa, federal civil servants who signed up for a payroll deduction plan were offered an alternative to the United Way. Health-partners, a co-operative fund-raising venture of 15 national health groups, was brought in by popular demand.
Corporations are also taking a greater interest in their own charitable and volunteer activities.
Rather than glibly signing on to the United Way, an increasing number are doing their own workplace campaigns, complete with payroll deductions, and often with the added bonus of corporations matching gifts dollar for dollar and employees themselves deciding allocations.
Judith Nichols, consultant and author of Global Demographics,says baby boomers and Generation Xers dislike workplace giving.
They have a certain disdain for well-established agencies and want hands-on control to designate where their money will go. The result, she warns, will be that charities we assumed were permanent fixtures could disappear -- including the United Way.
DARTMOUTH, N.S.
On Jan. 12, 1792, more than 1,500 Black Loyalists set sail from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. In 1800, hundreds more Nova Scotia Maroons joined the exodus to Freetown, journeys paid for largely by philanthropists trying to make amends for slavery.
It is a fascinating bit of Canadian history that every child at Nelson Whinder Elementary School in Dart-mouth knows well. Wayn Hamilton's dream is that the story will weave its way into the collective memory, bringing Canadians a little bit closer to Africa.
"I'm inspired by this story because it speaks to us all as humans, it really makes the world seem small," he says.
Hamilton is the driving force behind the Cotton Tree Partnership, named after the monumental cotton tree -- still a living shrine -- where his ancestors gave thanks after surviving the perilous journey to Freetown. Cotton Tree does education work, collects books and supplies for schools in Sierra Leone and is planning an exchange program to the war-torn country. It is just one of thousands of Canadian charities carrying out international development work.
Like Cotton Tree, the vast majority are small, innovative and respectful of the countries where they work, earning them much respect. Yet, despite Canada's wealth and Good Samaritan reputation, international groups have not escaped cost-cutting. Over an eight-year period ending in 1998, charitable non-governmental organizations will have had their funding slashed 42 per cent.
"Needless to say, this has been done without any planning, without any consultation," says Betty Plewes, president and CEO of the Canadian Council on International Co-operation. Canadians, in fact, are paltry supporters of the planet's poor. Canada's foreign aid budget is now $1.8 billion (60 per cent of it "tied aid" that must be spent on Canadian goods and services), a lowly 0.31 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. Exact figures for charitable giving are not available because there is no separate category for international groups in the data collected by Revenue Canada, but donations have come nowhere near to making up funding losses.
The dilemma for charities is that Canadians tend to open their hearts and wallets when there are crises, such as the famine in Somalia, but programs that are preventive and inventive are always struggling.
Betty Peterson is, in many ways, the ideal donor. She is a well-known activist in Halifax and keeps abreast of a bevy of issues. While she lives on a modest pension, she still gives regularly to at least 50 international groups. "I give money because I'm committed to a world view and I'm committed to the future," she says. "As an older person, this is my way of passing on the torch to the younger people."
Karen Marchand, the station manager at CKDU Radio at Dalhousie University, is part of that next generation. She went overseas as a volunteer with Canadian Crossroads and served as a board member of the Atlantic Council for International Co-operation.
"I was interested in learning how the world worked, politically and economically," Marchand says. "What I've learned is that we're so linked to each other, we can't allow ourselves to be isolated, we can't pretend that the developing world doesn't exist."
What troubles her about cutbacks is the government turning its back on its global obligations. Marchand says cuts also have consolidated power and money in large groups based in Toronto and Ottawa, where they miss out on local expertise.
There are, of course, exceptions.
Nova Scotia Women's FishNet is a small group turning its attentions overseas, after it realized the crisis in the fisheries is affecting women in Sri Lanka and India in the same way it has affected women in the Atlantic provinces. FishNet gets no government money. It depends on Oxfam.
UNICEF, the international charity set up to feed and vaccinate hungry children after World War II, has 40,000 volunteers in Canada.
It is best known for its Halloween penny collection, the Canadian version of which started in Halifax in 1955 (the tradition started in a Philadelphia Sunday school in 1950) and which now raises $3.3 million nationally, about 20 per cent of its total revenues.
"Now, if we could just get rid of the penny, we would be all set," says Janet Hawkins, UNICEF's provincial chair, only half-jokingly.
A bigger concern is that a number of other charities have now made their way into classrooms, once the exclusive domain of UNICEF. "The competition for the dollar -- even the penny -- is very fierce," she says.
Sanford Archibald, a retired Halifax businessman of 88, sees the battle for funds every time his mail arrives, bursting with pleas. The first time he got a paycheque, he set aside $5 for charity and he has never stopped giving in the decades since.
He has a clear preference for children's charities. As a child, during the worldwide influenza epidemic that followed World War I, he contracted the disease and almost died. The illness made him a lifelong giver.
Today, Archibald's list of regular recipients includes 43 charities.
He also sponsors two children with World Vision for $54 a month. Service clubs have become major players. The Kiwanis Club has pledged to raise $100 million for salt-iodization programs in developing countries. (Lack of iodine is the principal cause of mental retardation.)
The Rotary Club has pledged $400 million to eradicate polio, a preventable disease that cripples 150,000 children a year. And the Lions Club has spent more than $200 million to eradicate blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency, which leaves 250,000 children a year sightless.
As the children at Sign Talk excitedly gobble their lunch, day-care workers deliver the age-old admonition: "Don't talk with your mouth full." But they alternate it with a lesson that's equally important: "Don't talk with your hands full."
Sign Talk was the first day-care centre in North America to offer a bilingual program (American Sign Language and English) for both deaf children and hearing children of deaf parents.
During its first decade of operation -- one so successful that families are moving here so they can enroll their children -- one of Sign Talk's principal funders has been the Winnipeg Foundation.
"We got the first cheque from them when this was just an idea, a dream, and I can't remember how many times they've helped us out since," says Teresa Fleming, director of the day-care centre. "They fund the necessary stuff, not the sexy stuff ... the dishwasher, the blinds."
The key to the relationship, she says, is mutual respect and shared ideals. The foundation recognizes Sign Talk is more than a day-care centre - it's a cornerstone of the deaf community, a way of maintaining a language and culture, of building healthier families and a stronger community.
"What we believe in strongly here is social investment," says Catherine Auld, grants officer at the Winnipeg Foundation. "It looks like we're paying for bricks and mortar, but really we're investing in people."
Governments and corporations are "prepared to fund the flavour of the month, but they have no long-term vision. Nobody wants to provide core funding any more but for many groups that means they can't keep the lights on," Auld says.
Foundations -- private, public and corporate -- make up 9 per cent of charities. These 6,800 or so groups collect and distribute funds as opposed to delivering programs. There are 80 community foundations in Canada, with total assets of more than $800 million and grants last year of $44 million.
Still, they remain one of the best-kept secrets of the charitable world. In the United States, there are more than 400 community foundations with assets of $7.3 billion, says the Independent Sector research group. The Community Foundation For Greater Toronto has assets of $20 million and is one of the fastest- growing in Canada.
Community foundations are generous, creative and community- minded. "We are quick to say we cannot and should not replace government funding of services," says Monica Patten, executive director of Community Foundations of Canada.
"But there's something essential about a community itself saying: 'This is what matters. This is how we want to enhance our quality of life.' In many ways, we provide the venture capital for those desires and dreams."
A community foundation is essentially an endowment fund where the revenues are invested in local projects. The best analogy is to think of the United Way as the chequing account, paying for today's social services requirements, while the community foundation is the savings account, providing a nest egg, Patten says.
Rather than create their own family foundations -- which requires administration and is not particularly efficient unless there are several million dollars in assets -- or leave their money to one specific charity, many donors opt to contribute to a fund that will give in perpetuity. Most of the money comes from bequests, wills and pre-planned gifts.
In some cities, like Vancouver, the concept is quite popular. The Van-couver Foundation has accumulated assets of $475 million and makes grants of $25 million a year.
"The community foundations movement is the fastest growing form of philanthropy in North America," says Richard Mulcaster, president and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation.
Winnipeg has the country's second-largest community foundation with assets of $107 million and grants of $4.5 million annually. Established in 1921, it is also the oldest.
The first donor in Winnipeg was a wealthy man.
Merchant banker William Alloway wrote a cheque for $100,000 and enclosed this note: "Since I first set foot in Winnipeg 51 years ago, Winnipeg has been my home and has done more for me than it may ever be in my power to repay. I owe everything to this community and feel it should receive some benefit from what I have been able to accumulate."
The notion that people are profoundly influenced by their surroundings (and vice versa) is central to the movement. So is the idea that no legacy is too small to make a difference.
"Many of our gifts come from bus drivers, bank tellers...but we have some wealthy donors as well," says Keren Hawkins, the foundation's communications co-ordinator.
As the thrifty members of the post-World War II generation begin bequeathing their fortunes, community foundations are set to be big beneficiaries. Already, a tax change in the last federal budget that cut in half the capital gains tax on gifts of publicly traded securities has been a bonanza.
Manitoba has 18 community foundations. The movement has blossomed in the province thanks largely to the generosity of the Thomas Sill Foundation Inc. (Sill, a Winnipeg accountant who was an astute stock market investor, died in 1986. His foundation now has assets of about $30 million.)
The private foundation has set aside $1 million to establish 10 new community foundations in rural Manitoba, on the condition the gift is matched 2:1 with donations from the public.
"There aren't too many Thomas Sills out there, so we were looking for a way to foster the establishment and growth of foundations in rural communities," says Hugh Arklie, the executive director.
"We like the idea of a gift that keeps on giving to the community."
| Name |
Assets [in millions] |
| Vancouver Foundation |
$475 |
| The Winnipeg Foundation |
$107 |
| The Calgary Foundation |
$53 |
| Edmonton Community Foundation |
$52 |
| Community Foundation of Greater Toronto |
$20 |
| Hamilton Community Foundation |
$16.8 |
| London Community Foundation |
$9.9 |
| Community Foundation of Ottawa-Carleton |
$8.6 |
| The Victoria Foundation |
$8 |
| The Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation |
$5.7 |
Many family foundations are striving to build ideas, to use their influence and money to do things differently
Maxwell Aitken was fond of calling himself the "barefoot boy from the Miramichi." But it was after he became wealthy and titled that he left indelible footprints on his home province. As you stroll New Brunswick's capital, one name keeps popping up.
There, beside the Lord Beaver-brook Hotel, is Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Across the street, Beaver-brook Auditorium. A few blocks away, Lady Beaverbrook Arena. Up the hill at the university, Beaverbrook Hall. Elsewhere in the province are libraries, hospitals and museums bearing the name.
Aitken rose from humble beginnings to become an international press baron and statesman before turning his attentions to philanthropy.
In New Brunswick, his legacy endures decades after his death. According to a biographer, Beaver-brook was fond of quoting American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to the effect that a man who dies rich dies disgraced.
To avoid this ignominy, he started giving away money in the 1920s and when he died in 1964 left the bulk of his estate to the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation (as well as the Beaverbrook Foundation in London).
The foundation's ups and downs characterize the life cycle of many family foundations, a philanthropic vehicle that has a reputation -- not entirely undeserved -- as a tax dodge for the rich. Beaverbrook pursued his philanthropic projects with as much zeal as his money-making ventures. As important as the millions he gave away was his ability to persuade others to match his beneficence.
Beaverbrook's largesse continued after his death, as heirs respected his desire to bring culture to the masses. More than $20 million was pumped into the Beaverbrook Art Gallery over the years and it receives more than $200,000 annually in operating grants.
This dedication has helped it remain one of the finest museums on the eastern seaboard and made it one of the few cultural institutions in Canada that gets the bulk of its funding (about 90 per cent) from private sponsors.
Beaverbrook Theatre, home to Theatre New Brunswick, has had some $9 million over the years, two-thirds of it in operating grants. But its financial troubles are an example of the tension that exists when government and private foundations try to co- habit.
"The Beaverbrook money is quiet money, always there to keep us afloat," says Walter Learning, executive producer of Beaverbrook Auditorium Inc. "I can't imagine that New Brunswick would have a lively arts community if we were dependent solely on government."
Similarly, the University of New Brunswick would not be a first-class institution without Beaverbrook.
He built, in whole or in part, many of its most prominent buildings, purchased the library's book collection almost single-handedly and provided hundreds of scholarships to students who would have been unable to afford post-secondary education.
The difficulty many family foundations have is that the spouses and children who inherit the mantle are rarely as interested as the benefactor.
In the case of the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation there was the added difficulty that the assets consisted largely of shares in newspaper and pulp-and-paper companies, stocks that took a beating and left the endowment greatly diminished. Later, interest rates fell sharply, leading to reduced funding. Not to mention the family battles worthy of a soap opera.
Many family foundations stagnate or die by the third generation. Beaverbrook's has come to life.
Timothy Aitken, Lord Beaver-brook's grandson, has taken over as president and reinvigorated it.
In the past couple of years, he has pumped an additional $9 million in assets into it, largely by investing in movies and the health-care sector, where he has made his fortune.
Aitken, a California venture capitalist, reveres his grandfather and promises to honour his legacy of "enhancing the lives of the next generation and remaining committed to the community." He promises the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation is going to be more lively, less predictable.
Predictability is precisely why family foundations have a poor reputation.
Many are used as a tax shelter for personal riches, financing personal artistic pursuits and investing in educational institutions in a self-aggrandizing fashion.
Nevertheless, many of Canada's most spectacular gallery collections owe their existence to family foundations and many universities and hospitals would be poorer without them.
Canada's monied families invested heavily in "bricks and mortar" in the post-World War II years. With government cuts, calls are again being made on that generosity.
That traditional, conservative approach, however, is falling out of favour. Instead, family foundations are becoming a haven for some of the most dynamic, visionary people in the voluntary sector. Tim Brodhead is president and CEO of the Montreal-based J.W. McConnell Family Found-ation, one of Canada's oldest and by far its richest foundation with assets of $344 million.
For decades, he says, John McConnell and his heirs "supported institutions axiomatically" and discreetly.
Today, the foundation's trustees have decided to focus on broader societal issues and target funding to innovative groups.
"This is an opportunity to refocus on new problems, to do things differently ," Brodhead says. The Calgary-based Kahanoff Found-ation has adopted a similar philosophy, investing heavily in research about the voluntary sector itself, as well as leadership training for people who will guide the sector through the rocky times of government cutbacks.
"Family foundations don't really have that much money, but we do have autonomy, so we have to try and position ourselves on the cutting edge of change," says Kahanoff president James Hume.
In effect, the goals of family foundations have not changed that much over the years. Beaverbrook wanted to change the world for younger people and the way to do that in his time was building institutions.
In today's information society, the new Beaver-brooks are trying instead to build ideas, to use their influence and money to do things differently -- philanthropy by any other name.
Top 10 family foundations, by assets, 1996
| Name |
Assets |
| J.W. McConnell Family Foundation |
$376,222,750 |
| Chastell Foundation |
$132,687,675 |
| Donner Canadian Foundation |
$107,862,373 |
| ELJB Foundation |
$90,977,718 |
| R. Howard Webster Foundation |
$87,296,360 |
| Kahanoff Foundation |
$87,123,597 |
| Foundation Marcelle et Jean Coutu |
$65,270,148 |
| Macdonald Stewart Foundation |
$63,643,000 |
| Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Foundation |
$61,927,774 |
| J.A. de Sauve Foundation |
$56,235,917 |
Stockholm
Every Sunday morning, just before 9 a.m., a group of about 150 casually-dressed men and women wend their way through the medieval alleys of Gamla Stan to a small plaza just outside the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Forming a neat queue, they don't look much different from the tourists just around the corner waiting to get into the Royal Palace, except for their lack of cameras.
These are not traders getting an early jump on the week, but Stockholm's homeless. They are waiting for the doors to open across the street at Bullkyrkan, The Bread Church, where a hot meal is served after mass.
At first blush, it seems anomalous to see people dependent on charity in a socialist country renown for its all-encompassing social safety net -- and doubly so because they are gazing out at the stock market as they eat breakfast.
But Stadsmissionen (City Mission) has been operating at this location since 1853, from the country's industrial revolution through the banner years of the social welfare state and its on-going struggle with free market philosophy. The charitable arm of the Lutheran Church now operates two dozen social services agencies, and is Sweden's biggest fundraiser for domestic causes, with revenues of 35 million Kronor (about $7-million)
"Yes, the commune [the state] should take care of everyone, there is no question," says Lennart Alden, director of Stadsmissionsgarden, a day centre for homeless men. "But there will always be some people who are outside the system -- alcohol abusers, drug addicts, the mentally ill -- and we cannot simply abandon them. That is why donors are very generous in their support."
In fact, Stadsmissionen is successful largely because it is atypical. There are as many voluntary sector agencies as in Canada but, in the health and welfare fields, they are funded almost exclusively by the state.
Rianne Mahon, a Carleton University professor who has done extensive research on social welfare issues in Sweden, says the stereotype of Swedes as uncharitable is erroneous.
"It is not that people refuse to give to charity. It is a conscious decision to support services through taxation because that is more efficient. They pay high taxes and expect services in return," she says.
Professor Mahon says support for this approach is especially strong among the middle class, who benefit greatly from universal services. She points to publicly financed daycare and elder care systems that are the envy of the world: "We should be so lucky to pay taxes for these."
Auli Metsänsalo, director of Herden, a nursing home for people with dementia, says the idea of basic services being dependent on charity is offensive.
"We have a collective responsibility to each other and we cannot let the authorities neglect their duties," she says. "That would undermine the system."
How all-encompassing the state-financed social welfare system should be is precisely the debate that is taking place today -- in both Canada and Sweden.
Here in Sweden, conservatives, who formed the government briefly earlier in the decade, wanted to dismantle many services, and make families more responsible for care, particularly of children and the elderly.
Now the challenge is coming from the long-ruling social democrats, in particular the youth wing, who see the system as too centralized and bureaucratic, and want more citizen involvement in groups.
Tommy Lundström, director of studies at the School of Social Work of Stockholm University, says this debate is healthy, but it in no way undermines the reality that the "Swedish welfare state is alive and well, and so is the Swedish non-profit sector."
As one of the local researchers for an international study of the non-profit sector conducted by Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Lundström tackled head-on the accepted wisdom that a generous state and a thriving voluntary sector are incompatible, an idea he labels "nonsense."
The research found that more than 50 per cent of Swedes volunteer regularly, and there are more than 145,000 non-profit groups in the country of nine million. (Compared to about 175,000 in Canada, with three times the population.)
If anything, Professor Lundström says, the strength of Sweden's voluntary sector is due in part to state support. In other words, a social welfare state does not make people passive, it allows them to use their energies differently.
So, instead of fundraising and delivering basic services -- and only seven per cent of non-profits identify themselves as charities in that sense -- Swedish non-profits are primarily involved in advocacy and self-help.
And those that do deliver services, like Stadsmissionen, are church-affiliated; in Sweden, the church is, constitutionally, part of the state, and one per cent of taxes go directly to the church
A distinct and important feature of the country is the tradition of association membership. "Before you do anything in Sweden, you start an association," Professor Lundström says. These groups are grassroots in nature, but get varying degrees of state funding. Most Swedes belong to three or more such associations. Personally, he belongs to a jazz appreciation club, a health group related to a son's illness, a soccer club and several teaching-related groups.
Another defining characteristic of Swedes is their support for international causes. They are among the world's most generous donors, both on a state and individual level.
The international arm of the Swedish Red Cross, for example, has more than 400,000 members, each of whom pay about $25 for the privilege of belonging.
But the country's biggest fundraiser, by far, is Lutherhjälpen (Church of Sweden Aid), which raises 180 million Kronor (about $35-million) from the public, one-third of it during its Lenten campaign. It also employs a "giro" number (a 1-900 line) that allows people to phone in their donations; only 200 groups have the authority of the state regulator, the Foundation For Fundraising Control, to raise money in this fashion.
Christer Akesson, at Lutherhjälpen, says there are a variety of factors that make Swedes generous including comparative wealth, the predominantly socialist political philosophy, a world view, an educated populace and media that give extensive coverage to international issues.
"Our priority is education. People who are informed and aware of the real issues are better donors," he says. But, in the past three years, donations have fallen by 10 per cent, due to soaring unemployment, stagnant wages and the demands of domestic fundraisers.
Sven Hamrell, senior advisor to the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, says Swedes, under relentless pressure from the outside world, are becoming more individualistic and more inward-looking, to their detriment.
"Being involved in international development is a natural extension of the social welfare state," he says, noting that the architects of the domestic system are those who made Sweden a presence on the world stage.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hamrell says, political leaders have forgotten the wise advice of the former United Nations Secretary-General. Mr. Hammarskjöld wrote: "Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, there is no intellectual activity that more ruthlessly tests the solidity of a man than politics. Apparently easy successes with the public are possible for a juggler, but really lasting results are achieved only by the patient builder."
Fact: Fewer than 1% of Canadian charities have their books examined annually
Fact: When there are fights over policy, there is no forum for public discussion
Fact: When a charity is punished for wrongdoing, the facts remain secret
LONDON
You can stroll into the head office of the Charity Commission for England and Wales, on fashionable Piccadilly Circus, pull up a seat at one of the computer terminals and get detailed information on any one of 182,000 registered charities.
You can also read the latest information about charities that have been caught defrauding donors, new applicants for status and offer input on changes being considered to regulations.
And by year's end the public registry will be entirely on- line, accessible from anyone's home via the Internet.
Employees or volunteers from any charitable group also can visit the office for free advice, on anything from accounting practices to finding a legitimate fundraiser, and purchase a number of specialized publications offering practical tips.
Over the past few years, the commission's legal opinions, prepared after broad consultation, also have come to take the force of law, as they are systematically upheld by the courts.
"The basic ethos is that we want to ensure the integrity and efficiency of the charitable sector because that is in the public interest," says Richard Corden, head of charity standards at the commission.
As sensible and practical as the approach seems, it stands in stark contrast to the regulatory regime in Canada, whose hallmarks are secrecy and antiqueness.
Canada's 75,000 charities submit information to Revenue Canada. Some of it is public but much remains private under provisions of the Income Tax Act.
When a charity is refused status, or stripped of its charitable number for wrongdoing, the names are published in the Canada Gazette, but the facts remain secret.
No distinction is made between those that failed to file paperwork and those that defrauded the public.
Despite rapid downloading of services from government to charities and increased demands on the voluntary sector, including their need to raise money privately, the only way for charities to get expert advice is to spend precious dollars on private sector consultants.
And when there are disagreements over policy issues, there is no forum for public discussion. the only recourse is prohibitively costly litigation.
In short, the regulatory system as it exists now is an abject failure, accountant Arthur Drache observed in a report he prepared last year for the Canadian Centre for Philan-thropy. "A blunt assessment of the current situation can be summed up by saying the (charities division of Revenue Canada) is overworked, has fallen behind in coping with its obligations (it often takes weeks to simply acknowledge receipt of a letter, much less act upon it) and it has almost been paralyzed in making policy decisions," he writes.
Drache is careful, however, to place the blame on politicians for failing to address the situation rather than on the bureaucrats who are forced to live with an outmoded laws.
Carl Juneau, director of the charities division, takes a similar tack, though without overtly criticizing his political bosses. "The department, as a corporate entity, was designed to collect taxes. It was not designed to be a friend to charity," he says.
The charities division has 75 employees, 15 of them auditors. Practically speaking, that means fewer than 1 per cent of Canadian charities have their books examined annually.
The U.K. Charity Commission, by contrast, has 700 employees, 125 of them auditors.
It also has political independence (it is a government ministry, but does not have a minister so its decisions cannot be overruled, except by the courts) and a budget of about $55 million.
Spending that kind of money on a sector that has revenues of $42 billion a year is easily justified, Corden says.
After all, the state invests heavily in the sector, not only by contracting services but by offering tax breaks, and rooting out fraud and mismanagement pays off the cost many times over, he says.
"The notion that cheating is rampant is a false one," Corden says, speculating that the same is no doubt true of Canada. "The vast majority of problems are not due to malice but to incompetence."
The favoured approach of the Charity Commission is to investigate new charities (about 9,000 last year) thoroughly and to work with existing charities to fix problems but, when need be, it has broad powers. Despite extensive auditing, it conducts only about 650 investigations a year and two-thirds are resolved by offering advice.
In about half the remaining cases, inspectors used their subpoena powers to obtain information and, in a minority of cases, seized bank accounts and replaced charities' trustees, recovering more than $50 million in the process. Highlights of the most interesting cases are published. In the most spectacular and widely publicized case, the commission found that the Salvation Army had been defrauded of almost $10 million. Remarkably, the charity sued and recovered every penny, including its legal costs.
In Canada, Juneau says, there are about 5,000 applications for charitable status annually, two-thirds of which are approved. Reasons for rejections are not public, though a handful appeal to the Federal Court.
The main reason there are not more appeals is that, at this level, the costs are prohibitive.
The Vancouver Society for Immigrant and Visible Minority Women is the first group whose challenge will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada and its funding comes from the now-discontinued court challenges program of the federal government.
"Between 10 and 30 (charitable numbers) are revoked each year for reprehensible behaviour," the Revenue Canada official says. "It's not as if there's rampant fraud, as some would suggest."
Again, unless the case ends up in court, there is no way of knowing the details, though most serious cases involve failure to spend 80 per cent of receipted donations on charitable activities, as mandated by law. (There are no restrictions, however, on non-receipted revenues.)
The tax department does not have a mandate to step in and help charities that are having trouble. About 1,500 charities a year have their privileges revoked for failing to comply with basic filing requirements.
Nor does Revenue Canada have any jurisdiction over matters that pique the public's interest, such as fundraising, remuneration of employees and the manner in which money is invested by charities. The leading critic of existing Canadian regulations (or lack thereof) is Liberal member of Parliament John Bryden. "It is amazing to realize that this huge sector of the economy - with all the impact it must have on the balance sheet of the nation - is governed by a handful of court interpretations, a few paragraphs of the Income Tax Act and a potpourri of vague regulations," he wrote in a report last year.
"The result is an almost complete absence of oversight by the federal government which creates, in turn, a climate of poor management and pliant ethics."
While leaders in the voluntary sector agree with much of what Bryden has to say about the inadequacy of the current framework and his call for more openness, they have reacted vehemently to his premise that the sector is rife with mismanagement and fraud and to his proposed solution that charities' performance should be judged by the yardsticks of big business, "ethical standards, management efficiency and productivity."
Shareholders of corporations can judge these matters, at least partially, from profits. But charities worry that legislating performance mechanisms would be unworkable and be used as a convenient excuse for politicizing the sector and conducting witch-hunts.
Sol Kasimer, CEO of the YMCA of Canada, argues that there simply have not been problems that justify the imposition of massive regulation. "You don't need a machinegun to swat a mosquito," he says.
Still, Bryden's call for a charities commissioner and for a publicly accessible database of charities would be welcomed by many. And, at least in part due to his criticisms, the Voluntary Sector Roundtable, a coalition of organizations in the charitable field, has established a commission to look at accountability in the sector.
The major stumbling block, unfortunately, is that particularly Canadian albatross, constitutional division of powers.
Drache, in his research paper, noted that provinces have jurisdiction over charities. While few exercise that power - Ontario has a Public Trustee's Office, Alberta has regulated fundraising and British Columbia is looking at legislation related to conflict-of-interest issues among charity directors - they would undoubtedly object if Ottawa stepped into the breach.
Nevertheless, he suggests that the English Charity Commission offers a general model for what could be created: an independent, regulatory, policy-making body like the Can-adian Radio-television and Telecom-munications Commission.
And with plans to replace Revenue Canada with the quasi-independent Canada Customs and Revenue Agency proceeding apace, the time is ripe for a federal government to create a sister agency to serve the country's burgeoning voluntary sector.
Charities', volunteers' role in a time of cutbacks needs to be spelled out
There is a palpable longing in Canadian society today, a eagerness to find new and creative ways of dealing with the problems in our collective life, from child poverty through to humane elder care.
At the same time, governments in this post-deficit era are searching for "national projects" to restore the public's faith in our social democratic system of governance and pride in a country that is the envy of the world.
The intersection of these desires and dreams is a place called community. And the way to create community -- and its building blocks, social capital, volunteerism and trust -- is to invest in the voluntary sector, financially and philosophically.
As the backbone of social, cultural and sporting life, Canada's 75,000 charities and its millions of volunteers have already indelibly shaped the country's psyche, and they are increasingly playing a role in its economic health.
Now, almost by default, they are being asked to patch and re- weave the social safety net, to essentially redefine citizenship. It is a challenge the voluntary sector is undoubtedly up to but, before that occurs, the role of charitable groups and volunteers needs to be explored and explicitly articulated.
This fundamental analysis has become not only necessary but essential as governments cut funding and patterns of private giving change, while charities are expected to do ever more under relentless scrutiny.
While commissions of inquiry have lost their lustre of late, the National Commission of Inquiry on the Voluntary Sector would focus attention on a fundamental aspect of Canadian society, establish a framework for its renewal and long-term survival, and establish a sense of the issue's importance in the public psyche (like the legendary Royal Commission on Health Care, headed by Mr. Justice Emmett Hall, which led to a government-supported, country-wide medicare system).
There are many issues to be explored in Canada's voluntary sector, but it is work that could have tremendous consequences in sparking social, civic and economic renewal.
Having explored these issues for more than one year under of the auspices of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy -- and barely having scratched the surface in the process I realize as much as anyone that there are many thorny issues and much more work to be done.
What is important is a process for renewal, a way of sparking debate. Nonetheless, here are some suggestions on key issues that should be explored by the commission and some recommendations that emerge from my own work.
GOVERNMENT
Governments have an important role to play in establishing a vision of what Canadian civil society -- and the social safety net that helps bring it about -- should be. Many programs that exist today were created in quite different societal conditions and, as such, they are not working. Politicians have to be willing to break down these barriers and accept new ways of approaching problems, particularly blights like child poverty and unemployment.
Government's other primary role is establishing the parameters of the work to be done by charities. Right now, there exists a regulatory and legislative vacuum. While there are many technical, even constitutional hurdles that must be crossed to create sound legislation, governments can no longer avoid tackling the fundamental issue of definition. We owe it to ourselves as a society to define what is a charity of the 21st century rather than affording significant tax breaks and status to some charities based on criteria that were appropriate in the 17th century.
Some charities have done a tremendous job innovating, and governments should learn from them. They should also learn from forward-looking foundations which have realized that core funding is an essential prerequisite to sound operation. The policy of many governments to abandon core funding in favour of short-term program funding is short-sighted and extremely damaging.
While governments can make an argument for contracting-out service delivery, where they must be more vigilant than ever is in the establishment of standards. Failure to set and enforce standards quickly results in gross disparities and undermines the social contract, and it is beyond the purview and power of the voluntary sector to set these society standards on their own.
Almost as important as funding and standards is making available basic information about the voluntary sector. If citizens are to trust charitable groups to deliver basic entitlements and if they are expected to contribute significantly to charitable groups, through donations and taxes, then they are owed a level of transparency similar to that existing in public institutions.
One of the best models that has emerged to provide that information is what exists in England and Wales.
We would benefit in many ways from the creation of a Canadian Charity Commission, a publicly funded institution working at arm's length from government. It should have the power to certify charities, improve public access to information and promote education for staff and volunteers of charities.
A key role of the commission would be data collection and dissemination. It should also have a research arm to ensure that, for example, volunteerism is tracked as thoroughly as employment. Without adequate factual information it is difficult to make sound public policy decisions. The charities division of Revenue Canada should maintain its current staffing level, but its efforts should be concentrated on auditing and other tax-related issues.
The federal government would do well to appoint a federal secretary of state for the voluntary sector. A $90 billion industry, particularly one that so directly affects Canadians on a daily basis, deserves a strong voice at the cabinet table.
FUNDING
If governments choose to deliver basic entitlements such as health care and social services to citizens via the voluntary sector, then they have an obligation to provide adequate and appropriate funding.
Specifically, they have a duty to provide core funding that will allow the charitable institutions they contract to function efficiently.
The current trend, to award six-month contracts that do not contain provisions for paying for lights and heat, ultimately proves costly and counter-productive.
If governments are going to preach re-engineering and efficiency, they must provide charities with the means to make changes. Further, if they are going to tout the benefits of mergers, alliances, governments and politicians must lead by example. They cannot, for example, complain that there is too much overlap, waste and inefficiency in the voluntary sector and, at the same time, claim that national standards and national policies are impractical.
Innovation can provide dramatic savings and improvements over the long term but must be a joint effort of funders and recipients. There must be a recognition in funding as well that doing things differently is often costly at the outset.
Similarly, if government is going to preach the mantra of consultation, it must provide the means for groups to provide input. Charities, especially small ones with tiny staff, are increasingly being burdened by governments wanting them to sit on all manner of committees. Government is more than willing to pay for advice from the private sector, and should be equally keen to pay for quality advice from the voluntary sector.
TAXATION
Currently, governments do not even know the total amount of revenues forgone due to tax breaks to charities at the federal, provincial and municipal level. That basic information is required before sound policy decisions can be made.
Taxation policy is the principal means of encouraging donations. If governments are going to place more burden on charities to raise funds, they should also provide incentives.
Changes in the most recent federal budget, notably a reduction in the capital gains tax (to 37.5 per cent from 75 per cent) on gifts of publicly traded stock, resulted in millions of dollars in new donations. But other creative measures could be introduced.
For example, corporations could receive tax credits (instead of tax deductions) for donations up to 10 per cent of pre-tax profits.
To promote individual giving, the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy has been lobbying for the introduction of a stretch incentive, an additional tax break for those who increase donations from years previous. This could provide a boost without being an additional burden to the treasury. It is also a means of democratizing philanthropy, of giving a break to the mass of cash donors instead of catering exclusively to those with significant assets.
Individuals and corporations can receive significant tax relief by giving to charity. By donating large amounts, they can also influence public policy and government priorities (because there are many matching funds programs). For those reasons, large gifts -- say of more than $10,000 -- should be subject to rules of disclosure similar to those for giving to political parties.
CORPORATE
Corporate Canada is, with few exceptions, rather miserly. This is particularly noticeable in these times of record profits.
Adherence to programs such as the Imagine campaign -- pledging 1 per cent of pre-tax profits -- is paltry. That will only change through a combination of peer pressure and consumer insistence.
Those who are leaders in the philanthropy field have too readily adopted a laissez-faire attitude; they should put more pressure on the recalcitrant and indifferent. Con-sumers also have a role to play by persistently and vocally encouraging businesses they deal with to be active members of the community.
Giving money is not enough. The trend to gifts-in-kind, the donation of products and services, is growing and welcome. But corporations can do more; they can use their marketing skills to raise awareness through social marketing campaigns, and their business skills to help charities operate more efficiently.
Businesses also have a role to play in actively encouraging volunteerism and giving. They can do so by setting a standard of participation at the executive level. They can also provide days off for volunteerism - say one week with pay annually - and match employee donations to charity.
VOLUNTARY SECTOR
The voluntary sector itself has to take much of the blame for its low profile. Much fine work has been done in splendid isolation, limiting its possible impact.
Had charities, particularly with the financial means and political access, spoken up earlier, some of the devastation of cutbacks might have been avoided.
The formation of broadly based groups like the Voluntary Sector Roundtable is a welcome initiative. But, again, more alliances are required. There are, for example, few forums where funders and recipient groups sit down and discuss issues.
The creation of a Chamber of Charities -- which like the Chamber of Commerce could have national, provincial and local branches -- could serve as this kind of forum, and help networking within the sector and its visibility with the public.
Canada has 75,000 charities. That is not necessarily too many. What there is too often, however, is a lack of specialization and some unnecessary duplication. Some foundations, for example, have forced groups with similar mandates to submit joint grant requests rather than compete on an all-or-nothing basis.
More of this kind of discipline is required. Funders also have to talk more openly so they are not all investing in the same projects at the same time.
Right now, too many funders clamour to pour money into the sexy project of the hour (say child poverty) and many groups fudge their mandate to cater to that narrow-mindedness. The result is that really good programs struggle because they are not in vogue.
VOLUNTEERISM
One of the most cost-effective investments for government would be the funding of volunteer co-ordinators. A strategic grants program could provide the basic infrastructure to mobilize an army of volunteers.
Laws that make police checks mandatory for volunteers working with "at risk" groups like children and disabled are justifiable, but they are too often seen as a panacea.
What is required are education programs that protect potential victims from abuse in all manner of situations, be it by a Big Brother, a teacher, a clergy member, a sports coach, a family member or a next-door neighbour.
One of the more preposterous examples of robbing Peter to pay Paul is found in the policy of allowing police to charge voluntary groups for police checks that are legislated. A group like Girl Guides or Big Brothers can do a lot of good -- and a lot of education -- with the $100 that a check costs. Governments must provide adequate money to police to carry out this work, rather than trying to squeeze it out of cash-strapped charities.
EDUCATION
We cannot take it for granted that Canadians will continue to be generous with their money and time. They have to be aware of the impact of their gifts, and the importance of the voluntary sector in community-building.
High school education should include discussion of charities and their role in society, a modern version of what used to be called "civics." An integral part of this teaching should be practical, introducing a volunteer component to high school studies. This practice is increasingly popular, but it should not be mandatory.
Similarly, universities should encourage co-op students and interns to do their training in charitable agencies. Business schools, which emphasize private enterprise and public service, should pay heed to the voluntary sector.
FUNDRAISING
Weeding out cheating, deception and unethical behaviour is crucial if charities are going to remain respected by the public from whom they solicit money. Fundraisers must take initiative on this count. The National Society of Fund Raising Executives is promoting a code of ethics that should become a minimum standard. Among other things, it classifies commission fundraising as unethical. While it is not an easy task, a standard must be established for the acceptable cost for fundraising campaigns, say 15 per cent (with some exceptions, notably for new campaigns). This is necessary to help donors judge whether they are getting their money's worth. For this benchmark to have any meaning, however, there must be a standardized means of calculating costs. The practice of many charities of masquerading fundraising costs as education expenses assists no one. Setting such parameters should be one of the tasks of the Charity Commission.
DONORS
Donors cannot merely sit back and complain about fundraisers. They have to be proactive to ensure they get value for money given to charity. Here are some tips:
Do not give to groups that use commission fundraisers.
Do not give to groups whose fundraising costs exceed a benchmark of about 15 per cent, unless there is a compelling reason for a higher cost.
Target giving. For example, give a $100 donation instead of four $25 donations.
Don't give to a charity simply because you have always done so. Do research, and give to causes you believe in and groups you believe are making a difference.
Give on a three-year cycle. Give to your charities of choice, but rotate them on a three-year basis, rather than remaining stagnant or changing annually.
If you object to a fundraising method or to spending by a charity, speak out. To complain call Revenue Canada at 1-800-267-2384.
