$110,000 in funding — What the Quadra Island Foundation Accomplished

The Quadra Island Foundation (QIF) recently distributed $110,000 to four non-profit organizations. In today’s interview the foundation’s Vice Chair, Marc Doll, explains the rationale behind those choices and a little of what he expects the money to accomplish. 

Marc Doll: “There was this recognition of how much this province uses and depends on nonprofits. So the government of British Columbia put together a pool of $25 million, which went to Vancouver Foundation. From the Vancouver Foundation, it trickled down to foundations like the Quadra Foundation, Cortes Island Community Foundation and Campbell River Foundation.  It was administered at the local level by local foundations, but from a pool of money that came from the British Columbia government.” 

“We advertised – online through local media, press releases etc – to indicate that we had this fund of $110,000 to distribute locally. We were almost triple subscribed, we had about $300,000 in total applications.” 

One of many scenic views on Quadra Island – courtesy Quadra Island Foundation

“So to whittle that down we hired a coordinator, Jennifer Banks Doll, who headed up the grant committee. She was tasked with finding a committee populated by regular Quadra Island citizens and a board member or two. They then went through the grants. We had a way of weighting the grants in terms of what was going to be the most returned to the community and from there allocated the grants to the four successful applicants.”  

Cortes Currents: Tell us a little about each of the successful applicants.

Marc Doll: “There were 4 successful applicants. There was Quadra Circle that received about $54,000. Quadra Circle is an organization on Quadra that serves the seniors population. They have weekly meetings. They offer help to seniors that are housebound, need medical, exercise, or social gatherings. They have quite a portfolio of things that they do, and they were looking to build their capacity through the hiring of a part time Executive Director. The largest allocation went to them.” 

“The Quadra Island Seniors Housing Society received about $30,000. Again, I believe it was for a part time Executive Director. The Quadra Island  Seniors Housing Society was incredibly successful. To be able to build affordable housing on Vancouver Island is an incredible task. They were able to successfully get that done a couple of years ago and I think they’re looking at  increasing the number of dwellings on the island.  They have a waiting list  in the dozens and dozens of people for the units that they were able to create. They’re looking to future growth and getting paid staff to facilitate that.” 

“The third successful Grantee was the Quadra Island Climate Action Network, which on the island is known as ICAN.  That organization is relatively new. It’s been around for maybe five, six years, and their focus is building community capacity with a climate focus, and they’ve been doing a lot of great work on water,  food security, and a bunch of different high profile projects that they’ve been undertaking.  They are looking to, again, hire an Operations Coordinator to provide some support  in all those many and varied projects that they’re working on.”

“The final successful grantee was the Quadra Island Recreational Society. It was a subgroup within the rec society, which operates the Wednesday lunches and the idea was to increase the capacity of that kitchen to serve  the 100, 150 people that they do every Wednesday during  the shoulder or the slower seasons. There were some kitchen upgrades that were going to enable them to better serve the people of Quadra. So those were the four successful grantees.” 

Cortes Currents: Which sectors of Quadra’s population are in the greatest need? I’m thinking of age groups, but there might also be other factors which I haven’t thought of.  

Marc Doll: “There’s a significant amount of need in a lot of different age groups. Seniors, by the very nature of growing old, come with a lot of specialized needs. We have the housing crisis that is affecting all the rural islands and is definitely acute here on Quadra. People age out of their large acreages and can’t take care of those properties anymore, but don’t want to leave their community. Then we don’t have the workforce to allow people to stay in their homes because again, because of the housing crisis. The homes aren’t there for  enough young people to be able to attain decent housing so that they can serve the elderly population.”

“There’s need across the spectrum, all age groups, all demographics on the housing file, I would suggest.  I don’t have data on the homeless population on Quadra or Cortes, but there is definitely a good measure of that. Personally, as a first responder, I see a lot of really substandard housing conditions where people are unable  to maintain proper housing. I think that file is definitely prevalent in the community.” 

Cortes Currents: What made the four recipients that were finally chosen worthy of  this funding.  

Marc Doll: “I think that the rubric that was used focused on  how direct the return to the community was going to be.  Did it fit within the overall idea of enhancing community and poverty reduction and all the things the grant was targeted towards so they had a rubric. They went through the rubric and I think there was really good consensus on the committee towards  the grantees that they chose.”

Cortes Currents: How much of an impact do you think funding will have on the  situation on Quadra?  

Marc Doll: “Quadra is so highly dependent on volunteers and volunteer groups. I think the story is the same in Cortes.”

“The weight and the political strength of the SRD (Strathcona Regional District) is focused on the Campbell River region. Then we have these different regional directors and regional districts that maybe  are seen as suburbs and they should attain the services that are in Campbell River, but we’re truly communities that really need these services. Where the regional district hasn’t provided them the volunteer sector has really stepped up.”

“We have such a wide variety of volunteer groups serving the population,  but the troubles that they’ve had, especially coming out of COVID, is volunteer burnout. These are volunteer organizations and they’re working with the same pool of volunteers who are growing older and growing tired.”

“So this type of money is really rare, money available to hire people to build that capacity. The effect of having this capacity building by actually hiring people who are good,  instead of solely relying on volunteers, I think is going to be fairly epic in these successful grantees.

Links of Interest

Top image credit: Marc Doll and Jody Rodgers of the Quadra Island Foundation presenting a $54,164 cheque to Maureen McDowell and Carol Woolsey of Quadra Circle – courtesy press release

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