Community

Expanding Funding Opportunities for the Quadra Island Foundation

Over the past few years, the Quadra Island Foundation has channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local economy. Now, thanks to a change in their charitable status, they may be able to do a great deal more.

Marc Doll, Vice President in Charge of Communications, explained:

“We have had charitable status since our inception. The change is in the scope of that status. Previously, we were only able to work with charities within a very, very defined set of parameters. Our charitable purposes really limited us to only working with established charities on the island. We couldn’t work with individuals or societies. It handcuffed us, so even when we gave out our small neighborhood grants, we had to work with the Rec Society because we didn’t actually have the ability to funnel that money directly to people who were not registered charities.”

“Now, we wrote these charitable purposes really broadly so that we have the right to make donations, create funds, create bursaries, and work directly with societies and small groups on basically everything our imagination could allow us to write up at the time.”

Cortes Currents: What kind of difference would this make going forward this year?

Marc Doll: “Well, for example, at a recent meeting of the Health Society on the island—who are not a charitable society—they can’t accept charitable donations directly because of their relationships with VIHA. We are examining possibilities of being able to work with the Health Society in the recruitment of a new doctor and in the purchase of various medical equipment. That opportunity exists where, prior to this expansion, we didn’t have the ability to work with the Health Society. So that’s a concrete example happening right now.”

Cortes Currents: Do you have any other specific projects in mind?

Marc Doll: “This is just out within the last month. We are meeting in two weeks to design our strategic plan for the year. After that meeting, we will have more ideas, but I think it’s less of a top-down thing and more of a bottom-up thing.

So, donors can, within parameters, say: ‘Hey, you know, I’d like to request this amount of capital aimed at environmental purposes,’ or ‘this amount of capital aimed at community building purposes,’ or whatever. A larger donor can actually direct their funds.

We’re going to create certain baskets based on priorities that we have identified through the Vital Signs process. So, no exact project at the moment. The Health Society has approached us, and we’ll be working with them to see if we can develop something.”

Cortes Currents: Have you had private donors come forward and express a desire for that kind of system where they can just say they want so much to go to the environment or whatever?

Marc Doll: “We’ve had our hands tied up until now, so we could only work with registered charities. We have a new board member from the financial industry who has been in talks with various donors, and we’ve already received one rather significant donation to the foundation that we’re now able to use in a capacity-building way. We continue to have limited funds.”

“We’ve been working on building community capacity within Quadra. We are going to continue to do that because that was one thing we were free to do with our time and expertise. We’re now hopefully going to be transitioning to building up funds that can go into investment into Quadra Island and the Outer Islands.”

Cortes Currents: Give us an appeal for people to help their community grow, to say what they would like to see done and earmark some of the funds that they’re donating.

Marc Doll: “Foundations are amongst the most suited organizations to funnel money directly into the community. Monies donated to foundations go back to the community, and that’s really what makes them special. When donations are given to the Red Cross, they don’t necessarily give that money back to the community in which the money was donated. Whereas foundations absolutely do that. It’s probably the best way to really focus your capital into benefiting the community that you live in and care about.”

Links of Interest:

All photos courtesy the Quadra Island Foundation; chart by Roy L Hales using data from the CRA summary doc Oct 26

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