new i gave 54 · 2014. 11. 26. · i gave at the office : views on voluntarism / george a....

I Gave at the Office

VIEWS ON VOLUNTARISM

GEORGE A. FIERHELLER

© 2007 George Fierheller.

All rights reserved. Permission to reproducein any form must first be secured from

George Fierheller through the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Fierheller, George A., 1933-

I gave at the office : views on voluntarism / George A. Fierheller.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-894183-96-3

1. Voluntarism. 2. Fierheller, George A., 1933-. I. Title.

HN49.V64F44 2007 302'.14 C2007-903993-6

Produced and printed by Stewart Publishing & Printing

Markham, Ontario, Canada L3P 2X3Tel: 905-294-4389 Fax: 905-294-8718

[email protected] www.stewartbooks.com

Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ............................................................................................................7

Dedication ............................................................................................................................9

I. Starting at the StartWho needs another book on fundraising! ...................................................................11

Motivating the Motivators ............................................................................................13In addition to looking at why people give, it is important to look at why people ask people to give.

II. Different Strokes for Different FolksThe Most Noble Cause...................................................................................................19Giving to people you will never meet through large organizations such as the United Way or through small ones like YOUTHLINK.

The Old School ..............................................................................................................31There is a natural tie to organizations that one has attended or been close to, e.g. University of Toronto Schools, Trinity College, Carleton University, Simon Fraser University, UBC, Waterloo.

Live Long and Prosper..................................................................................................41There are significant reasons in why people give to hospitals or medical causes. This section examines organizations such as the Royal Ottawa Hospital, the Vancouver Hospital Foundation and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Best Seats in the House ................................................................................................49The Arts have their own constituency. This section includes an examination of a range of Arts organizations from the smallest to the largest, e.g. Opera Atelier, The National Arts Centre, Canadian Mediterranean Institute,Vancouver Chamber Choir, Vancouver Opera, McMichael Canadian ArtCollection, The Canadian Opera Company and the umbrella organization, The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada.

A Piece of a Bigger Pie .................................................................................................61There is a category of not-for-profits that have a particular challenge as their mandate is to expand an industry, a city or even a province. This looks at theInformation Technology Association of Canada, Team B.C., The Toronto Board of Trade and the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance.

Go Where No Man Has Gone Before ..........................................................................67The most challenging type of fundraising is for organizations in very leading edgeresearch such as the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research (CIFAR).

Getting Clubby ...............................................................................................................69A form of fundraising is membership expansion and this is the challenge of organizations such as The National Club. However some ‘clubs’ actually raise funds for charitable purposes such as Sigma Chi Fraternity. Liking to be Liked .........................................................................................................73In section one, I briefly looked at pure altruism as a motivator to volunteer anddonate. In this section I have examined a number of examples of particularfundraising projects as it appears that some of the motivation maybe quite unique to particular situations. This is a candid look at what may drive some individuals to volunteer time and money. What have you done for me lately?..............................................................................75

III. Fundraising in a New CenturyThe New Corporate Climate.........................................................................................79Milton Friedman made the famous quote that “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits”. What are the implications of this?The New Customers.......................................................................................................83Potential donors should be treated as customers. But these clients are changing dramatically both as donors and recipients of the services of not-for-profits. This section examines the new multiculturalism, youth, the aging population and other demographic trends. The New Outlook ..........................................................................................................89Mega Gifts and Mega GetsLarge gifts are getting larger. But this introduces its own challenges. Elitism is a fact of life. We Start at the Curb .......................................................................................................89There is a growing tendency, although hardly a new one, to find every availablenaming opportunity. The SOHO Workplace .....................................................................................................90There is a fundamental change in the workplace to the Single Office Home Office.This is well documented in Bowling Alone (Robert Putman) but its implications for fundraising are just starting to be understood.Give When You’re Gone is Going .....................................................................................91It is important that any campaign differentiate clearly between Capital and Annualgiving as Capital gifts obviously come from capital. However the whole area ofbequests is a rapidly changing field. Uneventful Events ............................................................................................................92You cannot raise $300 million with golf tournaments. Events have their place but the motivation should be well understood. Bring on the Competition .................................................................................................93Donors have never had so many choices but burnout is a real danger for the volunteers as well as donors.

I GAVE AT THE OFFICE4

The Myth of the Volunteer Led Campaign ........................................................................94Professionals lead campaigns. Volunteers are resources. It is politically correct to say the reverse but it is nonsense.

Risk Management in Fundraising.....................................................................................95We are concerned about managing risk in our businesses. We should do the same in fundraising.

IV. The FUN in FUNdraisingThe Ultimate Motivation ..............................................................................................99People are usually good at what they enjoy. While it may not seem believable,fundraising is actually fun.

AppendicesAppendix A – An Essential Grace........................................................................105Observations by Dr. Samuel A. Martin – from the opening chapter of his 1985book by the above name.

Appendix B – Oasis................................................................................................108Although I point out that this is not a ‘how to’ book, I was asked to put together a few pages that might be helpful to a smaller organization with expandingfundraising needs. Oasis is the Ontario Agencies Supporting Individuals withSpecial Needs which now has some 126 member agencies across the Province now needing to raise funds for the physically and mentally challenged.

Appendix C – A Journey of the Mind ...................................................................115A presentation to my grandson’s Grade 6 class – a different kind of volunteering.

Appendix D .............................................................................................................130A comment to the Executive Committee of the National Arts Centre on whether or not they should launch a fundraising campaign.

Appendix E – Bibliography ...................................................................................136References to some books and articles that might be helpful.

Appendix F – Chronology ......................................................................................138As I have given examples by types of fundraising areas, it might be helpful if I also identified the timeframe in which some of these activities took place.

Appendix G – Biography .......................................................................................139A brief biography that touches on some of the 'for-profit' activities as well.

Appendix X .............................................................................................................142A blog of no relevance whatsoever to fundraising. I just like it as it appealed to my somewhat offbeat sense of humour that has been likened to that of Tom Lehrer. Imagine having a teacher who would raise a question like that and a student with such wonderful imagination.

Enjoy!

I GAVE AT THE OFFICE 5


The First 125 Years:

The National Club

OTHER PUBLICATIONS by GEORGE FIERHELLERAll Books are available to read or download on www.gfierheller.ca

Acknowledgements

This is a book of personal experiences and personal opinions. As a result I did not try tocheck these opinions with anyone else. That would have taken the FUN out of the project.

I am sure that many of the opinions can and should be questioned. However at least thismay start some additional dialogue on some very important topics.

The acknowledgements that I should make are to the many people I have quoted byname, most of whom are still active. I hope I have expressed their points of view accu-rately and if not I apologize in advance.

I would however acknowledge a great help provided by Jennifer Lopez who typed andre-typed my rambling observations. As always, my publisher Robert Stewart took more than a casual interest in the book and went well beyond what might be expected inproviding ideas for its organization and publication.


Dedication

To the wonderful staff and volunteers

with whom I have worked and who spend countless hours

raising money to help others.



Some How-To Books

I.STARTING AT THE START

Who needs another book on fundraising!My wife Glenna and I were doing the Saturday morning shopping at the Dominion storeat Bayview and York Mills. On our way out, a large rather tough looking woman thrusta donation box at us and said “I’m raising money for child abuse”.

“Are you for it or against it?” I asked, trying to show some respectful interest. Glennadragged me away just in time to avoid my getting a bloody nose.

With all the best intentions, the woman had failed to make a convincing case and indeedhad violated nearly every rule of good fundraising. However possibly some good didcome from this encounter as it started me reflecting on my own fifty or so years of volunteering for, and raising money for, just about every conceivable cause.

I began to flatter myself into thinking that I must have some wisdom to pass on in thisarea. However a quick literature search turned up hundreds of books on what to do and what not to do to convince someone to donate to whatever the cause may be. They ranged from books such as ASKING by Jerold Panas which describes itself as “a 59-minute guide to everything board members, volunteers and staff must know tosecure the gift” to books such as Fundraising for Dummies. Many of these are very goodand I have listed a number in the Appendix.

No one needs another ‘how to’ book and that is not what this purports to be. It is insteada ‘why’ book.

Based on observations from my own experience, I tried to add some thoughts on the subject of why donors donate and perhaps just as importantly, why people volunteer theirtime to ask potential donors to donate.

If we can understand this, then the rest becomes technique and these tactics are well covered elsewhere. You will find a bias however towards the fundraising part of the voluntarism as this is where much of my experience comes from.


In looking back at the wonderful people I have met both as solicitors and donors, itseemed that there were some general principles as to why people were motivated to dowhat they do. However there are also some very specific motivations depending on theparticular area of the ASK. I will explore both.

At this point the reader might well ask why my observations are any better than anyoneelse’s on this topic. The answer is they are probably not but they do come from a back-ground of both raising and donating money over a long period. I have never kept accurate track of this but even a cursory look at my involvement would indicate thatwhere I have either been a canvasser, chaired a division of a campaign or chaired thewhole campaign, I have likely been responsible for raising well over $300 million. Andthis is work in progress!

Again a rather imprecise guess would be that I have contributed around $3.5 million (in the days before mega salaries were in fashion) or a bit over 1% of what I have askedothers to do. I mention this only to ‘establish credentials’. It is not very impressive relativeto the mega gifts and mega fundraising campaigns that one hears more and more aboutevery day.

Spence Lanthier, former Chair of KPMG with whom I shared an office for a while commented jokingly that he thought I had a halo over my head. Of course I did not disagree but did point out that the problem with halos is that they require constant polishing. Speaking of motivation, perhaps that is one of my motivations for mentioningthe above and writing a book like this. Whatever – the facts are what the facts are and I view this publication as being simply a mid-career observation as I am continuing tovolunteer and according to my wife, will likely never stop.

I should point out that Glenna reminds me periodically that I have no talent whatsoeverfor saying ‘no’. She observed that my two grandchildren when they were younger wereexperts at saying “no, I don’t want to do that” or something equivalent. I am sure I couldlearn from them.

My other reason for bringing up my own involvement on both sides of fundraising is thatthe two are clearly inter-related. I could not, and I doubt if many could, ask anyone to dosomething that I would not do myself. It is only natural then that if I am asking others tosupport a cause, I will support it as generously as I can. No surprise here but it is areminder up front that a good volunteer will volunteer both time and money and this isalmost inevitably the case.

In any case I have never regretted a minute spent or a dollar donated.


Motivating the Motivators!An article in the National Post (December 2000) quoted a survey on why people give,presumably either their time or money or both. The results were:• 94% said ‘compassion towards people in need’• 65% noted that they had been ‘personally affected by the organization’• 60% simply stated that they ‘owed something to their community’.

The first and third reasons are certainly altruistic. The second might mean the individualwas paying back an organization that had helped someone in their family or it may meanthat they are personally moved by what the organization is doing.

It would certainly seem from this survey that ‘doing something good’ is a very majormotivation.

I have no doubt that this is a strong motivator but altruism may not be the only reasonthat people volunteer. Altruism is also controversial.

Auguste Comte coined the term and promoted the value of ‘selfless concern for the welfare of others’. Nietzsche asserted that altruism is predicated on the assumption thatothers are more important than one’s self and that such a position is degrading anddemeaning. Ayn Rand predictably argued that altruism is really the reversal of moralitybecause only rationally selfish ethics allow one to pursue the values required for human life.

Altruism has been fuelled by religion. In Buddhism it is considered a fundamental propertyof human nature. In Islam, the giving of alms is one of the five basic tenets of their religion.It is certainly basic to Christianity.

However, when altruism is undertaken for religious reasons, one might be suspicious ofthe motives. Is this really a selfish act designed to ensure one’s place in whatever heavenone may believe in?

Pure altruism is giving without regard to reward or the benefits of recognition (definitioncourtesy of Wikipedia). As a practicing atheist (if that is not an oxymoron) it may be possibleto explore some of the reasons people volunteer to give time or money by trying to honestly examine why I do this. Of course, I may not be typical. I can however be candid.

In an earlier book, Finnie’s Family, I tried to articulate a general point of view that couldlead atheists, agnostics or other rebels to ‘do the right thing’. Without repeating the lineof reasoning outlined there, it was essentially that the Golden Rule is in fact a very rationaland logical thing to do. Not many would deny (except Ayn Rand) that if everyone actedin this way, the world would be a substantially better place.


So are altruistic atheists the ultimate?

Clearly not! If we were more honest, we would likely admit to being driven by any numberof less pure motives.

Let me give you an example of motivation that helped to launch me on my volunteercareer. When I was in Toronto having just joined IBM, I also joined the Junior Board ofTrade. At one time, that organization ran the Miss Grey Cup contest. The then Presidentof the Board asked if I would chair the Events Committee for the contest. I said yesbecause it sounded like a real lark. The thought of spending a week with a group of beautycontestants seemed like an opportunity not to be missed. In Finnie’s Family, I outlinedsome of my actual experiences – it turned out to be a week of very hard work. But interms of motivation, one could hardly call this altruistic.

While with IBM inOttawa, I undertook myfirst major volunteerfundraising role. I was justa salesman in the Ottawaoffice when IBM wasapproached by the UnitedAppeal (as it was knownthen) to provide a LoanedExecutive. This was oneof a group of twenty or sopeople from various com-panies in the area whowere loaned to the UnitedAppeal for some weeks tospearhead the campaign.As it was my immediatesuperior who asked me to consider this, I thoughtit might be somewhatcareer-limiting to say no.However the clincher waswhen I was called byLawrence Freiman, theowner and president ofthe major departmentstore in Ottawa. He wasthe campaign chair thatyear and personally askedme to take on the job. For


an IBM salesman, this was very flattering and I of course accepted. I will discuss theUnited Way in more detail later.

So some of the motivations from my early involvement in the volunteer sector were sex,career advancement and flattery – not exactly the bases for altruism. Auguste Comtewould likely have been horrified.

Of course there are other motivations that are perhaps more personal. I could believethat anyone might be motivated by the three factors stated above. However I have apeculiar trait that would not motivate many.

(See Appendix C on page 115.)

I seem to have the belief that anything can be done better. Let me give you a couple ofexamples.

I am a clean freak. My wife says that I probably have a ‘clean gene’ somewhere in myDNA. Even when I am walking thedog around the block, I will pick updiscarded Tim Hortons coffee cupsor those loathsome plastic waterbottles that the joggers seem tothrow on people’s front lawns. ( Icould never understand why a jogger who is supposed to be doinghis or her jog thing to get healthier,does not have the energy to carryan empty plastic bottle back to theirplace or the nearest garbage can.)

The other day I was walking the dog through a park across from where we live and waspreceded by a young Chinese lady also walking a dog. I noted that she must have thesame gene because she had picked up a couple of pieces of litter and deposited them ina container. I did the same and as I walked toward the container noted a City of Torontoemployee who was beside his truck smoking a cigarette. He was standing right beside thetrash container. I picked up a couple more pieces and proceeded to throw them in thecontainer right in front of him. The young man was obviously embarrassed at not havingmade any effort to do this himself and said “I don’t work for the Parks Department”. I smiled at him and politely said “neither do I”. So here I am ‘doing the right thing’ butdriven by lord knows what.

Perhaps I have a holier than thou attitude but the approach that anything can beimproved upon is certainly part of my psyche. Let me give you another example.


Riyad - my Saluki and assistant trash collector

Glenna and I had gone to Ridpath’s, an up-market furniture store on Yonge Street inToronto. As I recall, we were looking for a pair of lamps. We had hardly walked in thestore before a young saleslady came up and said “let me show you some of the items wehave on sale”. She started to point out chairs, tables and other items that were substan-tially marked down. Glenna knew that I could not tolerate this too long. After a coupleof wasted minutes, I politely said to the young lady, “Do you mind if I give you a suggestion?” She stared at me with a blank expression and I took this as encouragementto proceed. Glenna was making gestures that I should mind my own business. I went onto say that the first rule of good salesmanship is to find out what the customer wants andthen find a way of filling that need. The young salesperson had never determined whywe were there, what style of house we had, what colour scheme we were interested in oranything else. Instead of starting with questions to qualify the prospect, she launched rightinto Price Point.

I am not sure that she is a better salesperson as a result of my unsolicited lecture, butgiven my desire to improve everything I am near, I could not resist the temptation. Shedid not make the sale obviously and Glenna was delighted to get me out of there.

This perceived pursuit of perfection is not an entirelyattractive trait. When I was President of Cantel, myassistant was Julie Robson. I had spent a few minutesexplaining to this very capable lady how I thoughtsomething could be better organized. I apologized afterwards indicating that I did have the tendency to be ‘precise’. As I walked out of the room I heard her mutter ‘fussy’.

My quest to reform the world was off to a slow start.

But pushing on from that rather peculiar motivation totry to improve the world, I did give a talk to students atWilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario calledThe Competitive Edge. In this I extolled the virtues of volunteering for a long list of non-altruistic reasons.

For example I pointed out that volunteering for industry association work was a verygood thing for career promotion. I even noted that in times of downsizing, usually the lastperson to be fired would be someone who chaired a committee for the company’s nationalindustry association. Such work also gives people great exposure to their industry andopens up all kinds of job opportunities. Not perhaps the best of motives, but motivationalnone the less.

I further pointed out that a very practical motivation for volunteering is that it gives youa reason to be closely associated with the ‘rich and famous’ when you are not actually


Julie Robson, my Executive Assistant at Cantel

trying to sell them anything for personal gain. You will see examples of this when I discuss motivation in particular areas of voluntarism. This could be construed as beingsimple name dropping but it is truly amazing the number of people that you meet whenyou are involved in volunteer activities.

I even pointed out in the Wilfred Laurier talk that a survey (study by Phyllis Moen,Cornell University, June 1992) noted that volunteers actually live longer. One can hardlyget a better motivation than this!

The point is that there are many, many motivations for volunteering time or money.However it has been my experience that the most important motivator is being asked.With the thousands of volunteer opportunities available to anyone, it is still rare for people to seek out a non-paying job and go after it. Occasionally this happens. The otherday, I called David Crombie, Chair of the Canadian Urban Institute and the formermayor of Toronto to offer my services if indeed the City decided to move ahead with aToronto Historical Museum. But this happens to be a personal interest of mine.

More often, if someone you respect asks you to do something, the chances are high that you will say yes. A long time Calgary volunteer, Dick Wilson, said simply “In life,I’ve learned that if you see a need, answer it.” He may be one of those self-motivated individuals but by and large being asked is the most important factor.

In Toronto, for example, being Chair of the United Way Campaign is clearly a very prestigious appointment and it is common to recruit the Chair some years in advance.Once the individual ‘target’ had been suitably cultivated, it used to be the practice to thenhave the Premier of the Province make the official ASK. I have to admit this practicestopped when Bob Rae, at that time an NDP Premier, was in power as there was somedoubt that he would be motivational to the business community!

In any case, whatever motivates volunteers, the result is usually a significant benefit tosociety. However we should be realistic that altruism is not to be solely relied upon. Nor does it really matter. The ‘why’ is less important than the ‘what’.


II.DIFFERENT STROKES

FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS

The Most Noble CauseDr. Anne Golden who was President of theUnited Way of Greater Toronto for manyvery productive years remarked that theultimate in altruistic philanthropy is to givefor the benefit of someone you have nevermet and likely never will.

The United Way movement is one of the best examples of this type of philanthropy. While donations can be designated and we will discuss this in a moment, by andlarge donations are to assist those in need as defined by the United Way and distributed through, in the case ofToronto, some 200 agencies. The donor may have knowl-edge of some of the agencies and may even have visitedseveral but this type of philanthropy usually remains ‘armslength’.

The motivation for giving through the United Way is toimprove the community in which we all live and to do something that is clearly beyondthat which is being done by our tax dollars. Of course the fact that many people donatethrough Payroll Deduction may put it in the category of a voluntary tax in the minds of some.

However the United Way is generally perceived as being:• very cost efficient (many of their campaign costs are actually covered by corporations

that run campaigns on behalf of the United Way), • professionally run,


Dr. Anne Golden

• efficient in terms of volunteer time as it reduces the number of annual campaigns thatwould otherwise be run,

• very adept at providing leading edge social services that in many cases anticipateneeds that are not yet met by tax dollars.

Because of its size – in most communities it is the largest annual campaign run (over $100 million raised in Toronto in 2006 for example) and because it is so high profile, it isworth spending some time examining the United Way movement and the motivations forpeople donating to it and volunteering for it.

It is a concept that has been somewhat misunderstood. Some have expressed dis-appointment that despite the existence of the United Way Campaign in the community,many other campaigns continue to be run. It is true that the forerunner of the UnitedWay, the Community Chest that was organized in Denver, Colorado in 1887, had the purpose of running a single campaign for most local charities. However it was neverenvisaged as being a single charity to cover everything.

For example there are no locations to my knowledge where the United Way covers theArts. There has been some talk about a United Way of the Arts but for reasons we willcome to, this idea has never caught on.

It has essentially never raised money for religious purposes although it certainly has supported organizations run by religious organizations. This means that perhaps 50% offundraising dollars were never expected to be covered by the United Way.

The United Way has not discouraged even its own organizations doing profile raisingfundraising e.g. Girl Guides cookie sales. Nor does it normally cover capital needs of agencies. The latter would be very disruptive to the campaign as it would mean theobjectives for the United Way could be dramatically different each year depending onparticular capital campaigns that may be undertaken.

Most recently the United Way has concentrated on providing a stable base of core fundingto essential agencies where this is often not covered by tax dollars. Over recent decades,more and more flexibility has been provided to agencies to do some fundraising on their own.

I seem to be concentrating on what the United Way does not do but it is important to putthis vital organization in perspective so that donors will not be disappointed that it is not a ‘one campaign fits all’.

To be somewhat more local, we could examine the United Way in Toronto. It was startedin 1957 and did serve a wide range of organizations. It partnered with the Red Cross andserved many well known agencies such as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind,the March of Dimes, the YWCA and the Elizabeth Fry Society right from the start.


Some major organizations such as the Salvation Army probably correctly reasoned thatthey had such a high profile, they would do better fundraising on their own. In most locations in Canada, they did not join the United Way movement and where they did I believe they are largely back on their own.

The largest split away from the United Way occurred when a number of Catholic charities left over the concern that one or more of the agencies supported by the UnitedWay counselled family planning and possibly even abortion. These charities bandedtogether to form ShareLife which is a specialized cooperative fundraising endeavourdevoted to Catholic charities. Without commenting on the merits of this decision, the schism did provide some perplexing problems for many Catholics who were strongsupporters of the United Way agencies that had nothing to do with family planning.

The result of this decision is that many Catholics remain supporters of the United Wayand for all I know may also support the ShareLife agencies. They appear to reason quitelogically that the United Way family of agencies supports a huge range of vital projectsin the community and these merit their support.

An interesting approach which I proposed when I was facing the same situation inVancouver in the early 1980’s would be to allow Catholics or anyone else to designateagencies to which they did not want their money to go thereby allowing the remainderof the money to go to the agencies they could in conscience support. This turned out tobe a controversial suggestion and was ultimately rejected by the Church in Vancouver.Some of those in the United Way movement also expressed concern that such a negativedesignation might be used for anti-racial or other undesirable purposes.

I argued in vain that because the United Way had always allowed donations to be desig-nated to certain charities, anyone who took the trouble could designate to all the agenciesexcept the ones he or she found offensive.


However my suggestion did not fly and the split occurred in Vancouver, Toronto and Iassume in most communities in Canada.

However another challenge loomed for the United Way movement. With a number ofmajor organizations either staying or opting out of the United Way and with ShareLifegoing off on its own, the United Way’s position in the workplace was being called intoquestion. During my campaign in Ottawa, the United Way was the only campaign thatwas allowed to use Payroll Deduction in the federal government. The same applied tonearly all major corporations. As the United Way was not really a ‘one campaign that fitsall’, it was vulnerable to other campaigns wanting to get into the workplace.

An obvious solution occurred to me although I was hardly alone in suggesting a newapproach.

The approach I proposed in Vancouver in 1981 is now called Donor Option. In its simplest form, the United Way would go beyond even what its founders in Denver hadenvisaged. It would become an umbrella fundraising organization.

The concept was that any donor in Canada could make a donation through the UnitedWay to any registered charity in Canada.

Now the United Way could truly offer a ‘one stop shop’ to the donor.

The United Way would levy a charge on donations passed through its system that wouldbe essentially the same as it costs the United Way to raise money for its own agencies.This was deemed to be fair to all.

When I first raised the idea in Vancouver, I was met with considerable scepticism.Howard Napthali, the Executive Director of the United Way of the Lower Mainlandasked “What if someone donates through the United Way to the Salvation Army and the Salvation Army refuses to accept it?”. I replied that I could not see any third partycharity doing this as it would imply that they did not really need the money and secondlythat organization would be ignoring the wishes of the donor. In fact this rarely if ever happened.

I was asked to do a video for the national meeting of United Ways across Canada andstated simply that the Non-United Way agencies could not stop us from offering thisumbrella service and in fact would have very little incentive to do so. “Let’s just do it”. I said in the video.

The idea caught on and I believe did have the effect of protecting the United Way’s veryvaluable position as the sole campaign within government and private enterprise. It wasaccepted only with reluctance however by most United Ways who saw this as divertingfunds away from their own social agencies.


The move was however very popular with corporations and took various levels of government ‘off the hook’ from having to make a very difficult decision about allowingmultiple charities to have access to PRD.

The United Way had now become a Charities’ Charity. This was the ultimate in DonorChoice and donors could and do utilize the service to donate to any of some 75,000 registered charities in Canada.

In Toronto about 30% of the donations received by the highly successful United WayCampaign are designated to Non-United Way agencies.

Needless to say the United Way has no mandate to promote Non-United Way agencies.This would be quite inappropriate. The other agencies still have to sell the public on thevalue of their service.

What this caused the United Way to do was to ramp up its promotion of its own socialservice functions. In Toronto this is called The Community Fund – a fund within a fund.I believe that this had led to an even better understanding of the need for the United WayAgencies. It seems to me that this is a win/win situation.

However the United Way movement has tended to use this approach in a defensiverather than in a positive way. There is normally nothing in the United Way literature thatdescribes this facility. While clearly it is not in the United Way’s mandate to promotedonations to the Opera or a private girl’s school, they may be missing a bet in not positively promoting what is clearly a wonderful service to the donor.

One concern of course is that of how to publicly report what happens. The TorontoUnited Way as noted raised over $100 million in 2006 – a truly extraordinary accom-plishment. However as also noted earlier, only about $70 million of this is available for the United Way services. It seems to me that this can be easily handled by reportingthe total amount donated through the United Way while stating clearly where all themoney has gone. The report would be an astounding document showing both the moneyraised for The Community Fund and the perhaps thousands of other organizationsreceiving funds through this process. I believe it would elevate the United Way in every-one’s eyes.

There is now an alarming trend however. The United Way is moving toward requiringall contributors using this service to designate ‘something’ to The Community Fund. Thisstrikes me as being heavy-handed.

Perhaps I am being a purist but it seems to me that United Way has a sufficiently strongcase for the support of The Community Fund that it can easily stand up to any other charity. In my opinion, they should let each charity make its own case. May the best case win.


All of the above just proves that the United Way is a dynamic movement that evolves tomeet changing needs.

It has had dynamic leadership at both the volunteer and staff level. I have been involvedwith the United Way movement since 1962 i.e. over 45 years and I am still involved. Itis a great concept providing invaluable services through its Community Fund.

Having said that the movement attracts great volunteers (a somewhat self-serving state-ment), what motivates people to enthusiastically support this huge undertaking? Idescribed earlier how I was ‘volunteered’ for the United Way while I was an IBM sales-man in Ottawa. However as I pointed out, I was also flattered to be selected to be aLoaned Executive for the 1962 Campaign. It also seemed to me to be an opportunity tohone my selling skills as the United Way provided some very good training on being asolicitor for their organization.

Being a member of the Loaned Executives group gave me access to many people inmany government departments and commercial organizations with whom I would nototherwise have had any contact. Further, in making calls on behalf of the United Way, Igot to know many of the leading figures in the City in a way that I could not have doneas just a peddler of IBM equipment. I did not approach the task with that in mind but itdid turn out to be an enormous side benefit beyond whatever good I might be doing forthe community.

The experience I had I believe parallels that of most people who become involved withthe United Way. Whatever got them started, it usually led to a long term involvementwith the organization. Part of the reason for this is the exposure one gets to the needs of the community. For example as part of the Loaned Executive training in Ottawa, I visited a number of agencies such as the Union Mission. This gave me a first hand view of aside of society I hardly knew existed. I saw where street people could go for shelter and a mealwith no questions asked. I also saw where they had to be deloused before being allowedto sleep there. My upbringing had not prepared me for this but when I realized I coulddo something positive about it, it proved to be a strong motivation to stay involved.

Although I had not really thought about it, I probably went into the United Way processwith an attitude that those at the bottom end of the economic scale just needed to get outand get a job. I came away with a much better understanding of the difficulty of trying tobreak out of the welfare cycle. It was a real eye opener.

There was another revelation before me however. At IBM I was used to dealing with highly educated, well trained and motivated colleagues (a discussion of this is in Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate ). However I have rarely dealt with more dedicated and competent people than are found on the United Way staff. By IBM standards, theywere underpaid and certainly unlike IBM’ers, were not motivated by a sales commission.Let me give you an example.


The Campaign Director at the Ottawa United Way during the ten years when I was mostdirectly involved in fundraising for them was Rear-Admiral H. Nelson Lay. He becameone of the many mentors I have had the good fortune to have although he probably didnot see himself in that role.

Nelson was a retired naval officer and a natural leader. His naval career was fascinatingand I will give only one example. Nelson was the commander of the Nabob, a merchantship that had been converted to a primitive form of aircraft carrier. His ship was on the dangerous supply route toMurmansk in northern Russia. Thevessel was torpedoed and beganlisting badly. He was ordered toabandon ship.

One look at the icy waters of theNorth Sea in winter made him realize that the chance of survivalfor his men was minimal. Like hisnamesake (and H stood for Horatio) he ignored the order andmanaged to limp his sinking ship back to Scapa Flow inScotland.

While I am sure he was reprimanded, he also received a pro-motion.

Nelson was one who took advantage of any situation. He told me the story of playing golf in Scotland while waiting for re-assignment. He always loved golf and had gone out to a localcourse where he was paired with a dour Scot. His partner said little during the round but apparently had listened carefully toNelson’s story about how his crew had found their way back to Scotland and their only disappointment was the short supplyof Scotch Whisky.

The next day a case of Scotch arrived at his ship. His partner had been Sir AlexanderHaig of Haig and Haig!

Without my being involved with the United Way, I would never have met such a wonderfuland dynamic character. Nelson had joined the United Way after his retirement from thenavy and was well into his 70’s at the time he was the Campaign Director and I was theCampaign Chair in 1972.

Nelson chronicled his incredible career in a self-published book called Memoirs of a Mariner.One quote from his book was:


HMS Nabob, torpedoed August 22, 1944

Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson Lay,

OCE, CD, RCN

“In November, 1972, I finished my last United Appeal campaign under theChairmanship of George Fierheller. The last four campaigns had been difficult and inspite of extending the campaigns for several weeks, we had failed to make our goal ontwo occasions. I was particularly delighted that under George, who had been a staunchsupporter of United Appeal for a great many years, the campaign went almost $50,000over his quite high goal.”

In summary then what got me into the United Way was a combination of a carrot i.e.being asked by a senior individual in the community and a stick – being asked by myboss. What kept me in the United Way however was a combination of exposure to theneeds of the community that had been totally absent from my upbringing (University ofToronto Schools, Trinity College, etc.) and the exposure to a huge range of the most senior people in the City who like me were thoroughly motivated by what they could dothrough an organization such as the United Way.

I could give many examples of the latter. When I was Campaign Chair, the Chair of thefederal government division was Jules Leger, then Secretary of State and later GovernorGeneral. His Deputy was Allan Gotlieb a friend with whom I still have contact at the C.D. Howe Institute and elsewhere.

Such contacts are unsought rewards but are invaluable motivation.

I suspect that everyone associated with the United Way has had the same experience.

The Campaign Chairs in Toronto are often the Chairs and CEO’s of the major banks orother financial institutions although the United Way has been well served by representa-tives of a variety of other industries. I cannot speak for what motivates a bank Chair totake on what is a large and very time consuming job. Perhaps it is just “because it is myturn”. There is certainly an element of friendly competition amongst the banks eachwanting to top the accomplishment of their peers.

However I believe there is much more to it than this. These are uniformly extraordinarypeople with very broad interests and a true understanding of the community which theyserve. My observation would be that all have been infected by the United Way bug – atrue pandemic. I say this because nearly all have continued their involvement long aftertheir Chairmanship. If one has to get a bug, this is a nice infection to have.

But what motivates the donors?

I am sure that some of the motivation comes from friendly competition in the workplace.Donors are likely asked by their peers and may be embarrassed into giving. Some givethrough fun events that are held in the workplace. But these reasons could not accountfor the several hundred thousand donors who contribute to the United Way campaigneach year in Toronto alone. The United Way tries to get as many prospects as possible to


visit agencies. Where this is not possible, the United Way has to rely on videos, printedmaterials and speakers from agencies.

Because many people receive benefits from one or more of the United Way agencies, thisis also a strong motivational factor. They may view the United Way as a form of privatecommunity insurance. I have often pointed out that the United Way services are not justfor the less fortunate. Anyone may need the services of the CNIB or the CanadianHearing Society. Regardless of social position, all of us will grow old or have parents orrelatives who will need the companionship and care that various seniors’ centres provide.We all have a stake in ensuring that young people can grow up in a productive way andstay out of the ‘gangs and guns’ trap. Preventing violence against women is a no-brainer.We all benefit from everything that can be done to ensure newly arrived Canadians havethe services they need to rapidly become productive members of society.

Perhaps I am just being naive but I do believe that the real motivation can probably be expressed as “I am lucky to have a job. Therefore I have an obligation to help thoseless fortunate.”

Each year the United Way raises more money for its Community Fund. I have notedsomewhat facetiously that if the United Way was being truly successful its goals would godown, not up. The ultimate goal of the United Way should be to put itself out of businessby being so successful that its services are no longer required. This will never happen ina rapidly growing community.

YOUTHLINKYOUTHLINK is an agency of the United Way ofGreater Toronto but there the resemblance ends.It is one of the oldest charities in the city havingstarted as the Big Sisters Organization. Some yearsago the decision was made to actively providesocial assistance services to youth and there was an amicable division of duties betweenwhat is now called YOUTHLINK and Big Sisters which continues its work of findingmentors for young women.

YOUTHLINK offers walk-in centres, individual and group counselling and even residences for troubled youth. Over the years it has done an exemplary job. In about1998, United Way had identified huge problems with the ‘gangs and guns’ culture in select suburban areas in Toronto. Some of these were woefully underserved by agencies such as YOUTHLINK. The United Way encouraged YOUTHLINK to closeone of its downtown locations where services were considered adequate and move its Head Office to a new centre in Scarborough. The United Way agreed to increase funding for their operating costs but the capital cost of the move had to be found elsewhere.


I raise this as an interesting example of the huge range of charitable challenges in a community. The cost of the move was only about $1 million. However, this was a challenge for a small charity. The United Way had in excess of 100 people on staff to raise a hundred million dollars. YOUTHLINK had no one in this position. The organi-zation had a very competent Executive Director and some willing but otherwise fullyoccupied staff.

Now here is another example of how one gets involved in a charitable project. Back inmy high school days at the University of Toronto Schools, the students at the all-boysschool as it was in those days actively sought the companionship of young ladies from private schools e.g. Bishop Strachan School, Havergal, Branksome Hall or St. Clements.One of the group was Pat Eckardt, a Havergal attendee and a delightful young lady. Shesubsequently married Hugh Sedgwick, a prominent Toronto lawyer.

Somewhat to my surprise after about 50 years I got a call from Pat saying that in a momentof weakness she had agreed to chair a fundraising campaign for the $1 million needed byYOUTHLINK. She had had a long association with the organization. She confessed shehad no idea how to go about doing this and could I help by giving some advice.

This is a dangerous slope. I agreed but should have realized that when YOUTHLINKhad essentially no staff to work on the project, they were really looking for more than‘advice’. I had had the experience of working with very small charitable organizationsbefore and should have known what I was getting into. However Pat was Pat and she wasvery persuasive.

I ended up being co-chair of the campaign with her. She took on the organization of thevolunteers already associated with YOUTHLINK and did a very effective job. Howeverit fell to me to design a campaign for the local community. This meant I had to:• write a CASE statement,• design promotional literature,• create a pledge card,• even design mailing envelopes and other requirements.

The next step was to come up with a prospect list. For this I approached a couple of sources who could help me with the names of the prominent businesses in theScarborough area. I then had to alert the community that the campaign was underwayand chose to do this by arranging a lunch at Scarborough Golf and Country Club towhich I invited the local politicians and community leaders.

I also organized a small Campaign Cabinet of past supporters of the organization.

Without going into all the details, this process identifies another pitfall of small charitablecampaigns. Although not asked to do so, I personally picked up the costs of the promo-tional material, and the lunch and in addition made a $25,000 donation.


Giving time always means also giving money.

The happy outcome was that we did eventually raise the $1 million, assisted by the saleof their original property on Huntley Street. A new property was obtained at 747 WardenAvenue and this is now successfully serving this underserved area.

If this is a differentexample of how peoplebecome involved infundraising projects, it isalso a slightly differentexample of why peoplesupport such a project.It required mobilizingmany small gifts asthere were no obviouslarge donors.

YOUTHLINK had asubstantial number oflong time supportersbut many were gettingup in years and by andlarge were not wealthypeople – just dedicated.It was an example of“small change can makea big change”.

However all the Cabinetmembers donated, illus-trating that the larger theCabinet, the more suc-cessful the campaign!

With the help of LuciaStephenson at the UnitedWay, we identified apotential large donor inthe Wilder family whocame through magnifi-cently and providedgreat impetus to thecampaign.


The newly renovated youth centre

The old warehouse building before renovation

The staff supported as well as their time would allow but they of course were concen-trating on organizing the actual move. By way of interest, the approach was to find an abandoned single storey warehouse in the area that was structurally sound and hadpublic transportation access and then rebuild the interior to provide counselling rooms,eating facilities and other needs.

So it had a happy ending but not surprisingly took almost as much work on my part asparticipating in a much larger campaign that had a dedicated fundraising staff. In suchprojects you have to do everything yourself – it just works that way.


The Old SchoolFundraising for educational institutions is an interesting and somewhat unique task. The downside is that many people feel that education at all levels is the responsibility of government.Secondly the corporations that do support broad university campaigns, are very unlikelyto give to private schools or colleges, particularly those with some religious affiliation.

All this means that campaigns for higher education are largely alumni campaigns.

This is not all bad as there is a captive prospect list. Unlike hospitals that we will discussnext, most people have a warm feeling toward the institution they attended. The stress ofexam time gets forgotten and the memories of football weekends and parties live on. It isa rare occurrence for patients in a hospital to have any close association with their fellowpatients. However lifelong friendships often form at educational institutions and friendsasking friends for money is usually very effective.

My own motivation for becoming involved with a number of institutions over a numberof years has been partly based on a fundamental belief that improved higher educationis the key to the development of our country and this is to everyone’s benefit.

A secondary interest however is in staying in touch with younger people. Nothing can bemore stimulating. To give a non-fundraising example, for several years I was on the ArborScholarship Selection Committee at the University of Toronto. This committee grantedvery large scholarships to the very best students across the country who were entering theU of T or considering this. I am sure many have had the same experience but sitting in judgement on young people with Grade Point Averages in the high 90’s who were captain of the football team, head of the drama society and just about everything else isa stimulating if somewhat unnerving experience. One cannot help but think of one’s ownqualifications and realize that you were now judging people with qualifications you couldnever hope to have matched at any time!

But that is just a ‘beside the point’ motivation for me. As usual, it is better to start at thebeginning and my first fundraising experience for a University was at Carleton in Ottawa.

Carleton UniversityCarleton was a relatively new institution – one of the red brick universities that werespringing up across the country, partially to meet the huge demands of returning veteransfrom the Second World War. It had been started by a group called The Friends ofCarleton. The Friends had been set upunder the leadership of Henry MarshallTory, the Founding President of Carleton1942-47. The Friends was an organizationof community leaders with an interest


in and a facility for supporting the College.From a fundraisingstandpoint, it was a natural base.

In my new-found posi-tion as one of the fewpresidents of a commer-cial organization inOttawa, Systems Dimen-sions Ltd., I was askedto join The Friends. Acouple of years later I became their Chair.When the administra-tion decided to run its first major capital campaign, I was asked to chair that campaign.Part of the impetus came from the staff Executive Director Mike Roberts who I hadknown at the United Way. He was an enthusiastic and tireless leader and made my jobas Campaign Chair relatively easy. As I recall, the objective was only $5 million althoughthis seemed like a large sum in the 1970’s.

For someone who never attended Carleton, I became quite involved with the University.Amongst other things, I was on the Founding Board of the Norman Patterson School ofInternational Relations and was subsequently Chair of the Board of Governors from1977-79.

The campaign itself turned out to be largely an alumni campaign as might be expected.But the red brick universities suffered from having a very limited number of alumni, onlyabout 25 years’ worth at the time I chaired the campaign. This meant we had to approachsuppliers to the University and any other source we could think of. The campaign wassuccessful however and Carleton has gone on to many other campaigns since.

My motivation to take on all these positions was partly because I felt that as President ofa start-up company in Ottawa, the profile would be helpful. We also hired a number ofgraduates and summer students from Carleton.

When one looked at the members of the Board, it was also a substantial opportunity toexpand contacts with leading members of the Ottawa community. While this was hardlymy primary motivation, it was certainly a helpful side benefit.

Apropos of nothing in particular, it also involved me in a variety of University activitiesbeyond fundraising. Some were extremely pleasant and others a bit puzzling. MichaelOliver was the President of the University for part of the time I was there. He had a longbackground with the NDP and was a very bright and strong leader. However at one time


Carleton University, Canada’s Capital University

he was endeavouring toestablish a School ofBusiness at Carleton andcommented to me asthe Board Chair that hethought this should beintegrated with thealready well establishedand highly regardedSchool of Public Admin-istration. I pointed outthat there was a vastdifference between therequirements for a busi-ness school and theneeds of a public admin-istration school. Theformer I claimed shouldbe teaching entrepre-neurial activities whilethe latter tended toward regulatory affairs. As I recall I won the argument and Carletondoes now have both streams.

Needless to say one also got involved in many social activities. I remember, not fondly, anevening with an interesting but older gentleman called Arnold Smith. Arnold was Secretaryof the Commonwealth and after we had a wine-sodden dinner, proceeded to give a talk.He had interesting stories but went on and on. I was in the front row and was having aterrible time staying awake. All I could do was look at the lectern which had Carleton’screst on it and the motto “Ours the Task Eternal”. I thought we might have to shoot him!

Just to give another example of the benefits one gets from volunteering, I well recall theconvocation address given by G. Hamilton Southam while I was the Chair of the Board. Wewill revisit Hamilton when we discuss the National Arts Centre and other organizationsbut I always remember his talk which was on Elitism. Evidently someone had referred toHamilton who was getting up in years as being an ‘aging elitist’. Hamilton rather than takingoffence took this as a great compliment. First he felt that getting older and still havingsome control of one’s faculties was in fact quite an accomplishment and one of which anyone should be proud. Secondly he did not consider elitism to be a pejorative term. Ashe pointed out, elitism can be interpreted as being part of the best in whatever way youdefine this. And it is the best in our country or any country who really accomplish things.

I have to admit that I buy into his argument. And am undoubtedly an elitist at heart. Ihave been known to point out that “half the people you deal with are below average”.

In any case it is time to move on from Carleton.


Carleton University Dignitaries. On the left is Dr. Gerhard Herzberg, the Chancellor of Carleton and aNobel Prize winner, one of the degree recipients is Dr. Beryl Plumbtre,

next to her is Dr. Michael Oliver, President of Carleton and on the far right is George Fierheller, Chair, Board of Governors

University of Toronto Schools (UTS)UTS is a good example of an elitist organization. It was foundedin 1910 as a division of the University of Toronto with the aimof providing a training ground for new teachers but also as atesting ground for newly developed educational methods. TheSchool rapidly developed very lofty academic standards with ahigh proportion of graduates going on to University (well over90%). Exams were required for entry. At the time I attended itonly taught grades 9 through 13. Anyone at least in the Torontosystem who passed the UTS entrance exams, automatically received their Public SchoolGraduation certificate without taking further exams. I was the envy of my class atWhitney Public when I could start my summer vacation early.

It was and to an extent remains an intellectually elite organization. It was certainly notone influenced by wealth and social status. In fact while our football team did play exhibition games against the Little Big Four (Upper Canada College, Trinity, Ridley andSt. Andrews) it was never accepted as having true private school status.

The fees in my first year were $75 a year which even for those days was nothing com-pared to the cost of attending the other private colleges in the Toronto area.

UTS tended therefore to have alumni who did very well in many professions but strangelyenough the School did not generally produce graduates of great wealth.

It was not a boarding school and therefore had some of the overtones of a public highschool.

Many of the graduates went on toacademic, diplomatic or othercareers and this had a clearimpact on fundraising capability.

I never chaired the UTS cam-paign but a good friend of minethe Honourable Bill Sandersondid and he asked me to help. Itook on a number of calls but following one of the first rules ofgood fundraising, Bill approachedme for my own donation at thestart. I was prepared for this calland had mentally decided that Icould contribute $10,000 which I thought was reasonably generous.


The Bloor Street entrance to the University of Toronto Schools

Bill looked at me and said “we have you down for $50,000”. I was somewhat taken abackbut then realized that it was within my capability and given what I had received fromUTS in terms of a fine education, a disciplined approach to life and examples of manyfine teachers, I agreed.

As an aside, it was suggested that those donating $50,000 could have a classroom namedafter them. This however I declined not wanting to load on the backs of future studentshaving to remember the name of a long forgotten alumnus and a name which they couldprobably not pronounce in any case!

In the 1970’s UTS went co-ed. While this was long overdue, it may in the short run havean impact on their fundraising. This touches on a very sensitive area and I am sure I willbe labelled as being sexist. However as one purpose of this book is to openly explorefundraising challenges, my guess is that the fundraising potential of alumna is less thanfrom alumni.

I have no statistical evidence for this and my intuition is based on the deplorable fact that women in business are still in many cases earning less than men. My observation has nothing to do with generosity but only with the control of funds that can be used forcharitable purposes.

Of course as women statistically live longer than men, they will have the last laugh as theywill likely end up in full control of large resources at some point and this situation will bereversed. So ultimately UTS will be the beneficiary of its enlightened move in the 1970’s.

If it is not too politically sensitive, some fundraising consultant should explore the relativegift amounts from men and women graduates.


The Old Timers return - the Class of 1951 at their 55th Reunion in November 2006

Out WestI never really fundraised inthe normal sense for eitherthe University of BritishColumbia or Simon FraserUniversity. I was involved atUBC on the AdvisoryCommittee for their Schoolof Business but was reallyonly a donor, not a solicitor.

At Simon Fraser University I was very activelyinvolved as a member of their Board and moreinterestingly as Chair of the Board’s FinanceCommittee. Here I was involved in fundraisingbut primarily in trying to increase Governmentgrants - different but fundraising nonetheless.

Being something of an entrepreneur, I felt thatSFU as another red brick university shouldexamine the resources it had and see whatcould be done to capitalize on them. SFU hasone of the most beautiful campuses in Canadabeing atop a fairly high hill in Burnaby. Thearchitecture is striking. However it was in dangerof becoming a true ‘ivory tower’, all alone on the top of the mountain. As Chair of theFinance Committee, I worked very closely withHerb Auerbach, an innovative property devel-oper to see if we could make better use of thesurrounding land by forming Simon FraserVillage. The idea was that this would be a com-bination of student, staff and public residencesin medium rise facilities (so as not to obstructthe view). There would also be enough com-mercial enterprises to properly service this as acommunity. The idea proved to be somewhatcontroversial and at least during my tenurenever ‘got off the ground’ literally.

The experience did however encourage me to look at fundraising in a different light.Begging is not always the best way to go and many not-for-profit organizations could benefit from looking at what they could do to help themselves with the often very substantial resources they have.


University of WaterlooHere I am just a donor. Although not a graduate, I did have aloose association with the University going back to my SDL daysin Ottawa. Waterloo runs a very imaginative co-op program andSDL used many of their students for short term work assign-ments. They had a wonderful School of Computer Science underthe leadership of Professor Wes Graham, a long time friendand associate from my IBM days. In fact Wes ended upbeing on the Board of SDL and was of immense help.

Don Cowan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus atWaterloo kept in touch and as I wrote books about myexperience in the computer field, I visited Waterloo onseveral occasions. It was probably through this relationshipthat David Johnston, the energetic President of Waterloo,called on me to ask if I would support a project they hadunderway to do a book on the first 50 years of Waterloo.I agreed to make a donation of $25,000 to allow theauthor, Ken McLaughlin, to retain some graduate studentsfor research and subsequently added another $25,000 towhat I anticipate will be a very successful project.

My motivation here was spurred on by David for whom I have great respect and who isa most persuasive fundraiser. He is the perfect example of someone who does not thinkof themselves as a fundraiser but his enthusiasm and energy carry the day easily.

But it is now time to move on to a larger campaign that I did chair for Trinity College.

Trinity College – University of TorontoOther than UTS, Trinity is the only educa-tional institution from which I actually graduated. Any other degrees I have werethe kind for which you did not have to write exams. I suppose it was not surprising that eventually I would end up being involved in fundraising for my old College.

I had always been a low level donor but had really not had much connection with theCollege since graduation. However on my return to Toronto from Vancouver in 1985,Bob Painter the Provost asked me to lunch. As I had suspected, despite the fact that hebought, it was a rather expensive lunch.

However I should have been equally forewarned when Kara Spence, the newly appointedVice President, Development, wanted to see me ‘just to get my opinions on fundraisingfor the College’. Kara is as an engaging individual as you would ever meet and she saidafterwards she had filled up pages of her notebook with my ramblings about fundraising


Professor J. Wesley Graham,University of Waterloo

for a Church of England College. Her visit was followed by a request that I serve on theselection committee for a Campaign Chair. As I recall, I missed a couple of meetings andwhen the new Provost, Tom Delworth and Kara asked to see me, I thought they werethere to admonish me for my poor performance. Instead, they asked me to be theCampaign Chair of a new Capital Campaign for $15 million. I concluded that it was notmuch more work being Campaign Chair than it was chairing a division and agreed.

Either their confidence knew no bounds or my reputation for saying yes had precededme because at that point Tom pulled a bottle of champagne out of his briefcase and thedeal was done.

I assumed Tom took full credit for recruiting me and I assume he thought that my motivation was to ‘do something for my old College’. My motivation was actually slightlyless pure. I saw the opportunity to work with Kara Spence who I had come to greatlyadmire. She is bright, vivacious and very attractive. Shewill be horrified to read this in print but what the heck. Itwas the start of a very productive fundraising relationshipthat extended beyond Trinity as we shall see.

The campaign was part of the overall U of T Great Mindscampaign for their 175th anniversary and I was a memberof their Group of 175 (a group of 175 who were expectedto donate at least $100,000). As might be expected, theUniversity had reserved virtually all corporations for itsmajor campaign. This was not really a drawback becauseas noted earlier a sectarian college would have littleappeal to a corporation in any case.

A bigger challenge was the fact thatmany Trinity graduates went on to lawor to take other degrees. Their loyaltiesin the campaign would be somewhatsplit. We solved this by making jointASKs with the University wherever thatwas appropriate. In any case, workingwith Jon Dellandrea was a learningexperience in itself. Jon was the VicePresident of Development for the U ofT and had a very sophisticated staffworking with him. Of course havingRob Prichard as President and TonyComper, Chair and CEO of the Bank ofMontreal as Chair helped to ensure thatthe overall campaign would be a success.


The Trinity College Quadrangle

Kara Spence - Vice President,Development, Trinity College

Trinity is something like UTS. For a small College, it has had an extraordinary numberof Rhodes scholars (38 I believe) and has one of the highest academic standards at the University. However many of its graduates went on into professions such as law,teaching, or divinity. It was not a particularly wealthy alumni group. Fortunately supportfor the College was very strong.

The students rallied behind the campaign making a commitment of $400,000 to be paidout of their fees over a five year period. The staff at all levels supported the campaignwith 97% participation.

To single out some of the many generous individual donors, Ted Rogers put up $2.5 millionfor the John W. Graham Library (his stepfather), Peter Munk added another $1 millionhaving already generously supported the Munk Centre for International Studies and Jim Balsillie added another $500,000.

Without going into all the details, the campaign was a great success raising over $18 million– well over the target.


A dignified group from Trinity College including Susan Scace on the left with Provost Margaret MacMillan, Virginia McLaughlin, Chair of the Board, and

Dr. Michael Wilson who was a degree recipient that day and George Fierheller

I might have thought that my involvement with fundraising at the College was at an endbut fundraising for higher education never ends. Having completed what was essentiallya bricks and mortar campaign, the next stage was to run an endowment campaign for senior positions in the College, scholarships, the Don’s program and similar needs. Myfriend Bill Sanderson from UTS days is currently the Chair of that campaign. He askedme to sit on his cabinet just for continuity reasons. As might be expected, I seem now tobe as actively involved as I ever was in raising funds for Trinity.

Far more than the United Way or an organization like YOUTHLINK, a University campaign has the advantage of a very dedicated prospect base. There seems to be a realmotivation in giving back to an organization that likely played a significant role in anindividual’s career. More than that, many of the donors either already had offspringattending the College or felt that someday they would have and they wanted the Collegeto remain at the leading edge of higher education in Canada.

The leadership of an educational institution is very important for successful fundraising.Trinity has been well served by Provosts such as Bob Painter and Tom Delworth. BillSanderson is receiving wonderful support from Provost Margaret MacMillan, the inter-nationally renowned author of Paris 1919 and Nixon in China.

As an aside, you might well wonder how an atheist ended up going to a Church ofEngland College. One of the requirements of the College was to take four years ofReligious Knowledge. The RK courses I found fascinating although I have to admit theyjust gave me more reasons to be sceptical. My real motivation for attending the Collegewas that it appeared to be the closest I could come to the Oxford or Cambridge type of education and it was a challenge just because it was difficult to get in. Strange thingsmotivate strange people.

In any case, the College is proving to be an attractive fundraising package.


Live Long and ProsperHospitals are wonderful institutions as long as you are just fundraising for them and notmaking use of their facilities. My first exposure to hospital management was at the RoyalOttawa Hospital. I was invited to be on their Board of Trustees by Jackie Holzman whosubsequently became Mayor of Ottawa.

The Royal Ottawa was a psychiatric hospital and my wife observed that beyond whateverI could do for them in a management capacity, I was likely a candidate for their servicesat some point. Despite her facetious observation (at least I hope it was!), this does raise a very interesting motivational issue for volunteers working with and donating to a hospital. Everyone knows that queue jumping ranges from the unethical to illegal but Isuspect that every hospital volunteer feels that their involvement would not hurt theirchances of getting prompt treatment if the need ever arises.

Again I am not trying to be cynical but the mere fact that every hospital looks to its catch-ment area for prospects is an indication that those who support a hospital likely treat thisas an insurance policy that they will live long and prosper. (Spock’s Vulcan greeting onStar Trek.)

Without doing anything that is under the table, a Foundation can do some things to support the needs of major supporters. For example, the Foundation which is arms lengthfrom the hospital could provide an information hot-line so that a donor who requiresservice can quickly be directed to the right physician. With a little imagination, theFoundation could have a Customer Service Representative meet the donor and directthem to the right place. They could even arrange for their car to be parked. Flowers orother amenities are a nice touch while a significant donor is in the Hospital. Arrangingvisits by Foundation or other staff can only help.

This concept goes beyond just what a Foundation can do to assist donors. It has alwaysbeen my contention that hospitals should start treating their patients as customers. Thiscertainly happens in the United States where competition for patients can be quite fierce.In Canada, my experience is that the physicians and staff go out of their way to make thepatients visit as pleasant as possible and this needs to be acknowledged considering directrewards are rarely possible. Patients are never just a nuisance.

However despite the best efforts of everyone to make the patient have a ‘feel good’ experience, hospitals obviously differ radically from universities and this translates intochallenges for fundraising.

I pointed out that universities have alumni and by and large they look back on their university experience as having been a great time in life.


I doubt if any patient in a hospital has thesame feeling. They may indeed be verygrateful to have walked out of the hospitalalive or with a new hip, but their memo-ries of the stay in the hospital would usu-ally include crowded facilities, indifferentfood, long wait times, being constantlypushed from one examining room to thenext and usually impossible parking. Addto these problems whatever pain and trauma they may have suffered and youdo not have a potential donor base withhappy memories.

So the fundraiser for a hospital has to count on gratitude rather than happy memories and this implies that the biggest potential donor base in any campaign must come fromgrateful patients.

Obviously as noted above, some may make donations as a form of insurance just in casethey need the services but the bulk of donors will come from those who have already hadsuccessful treatment at the hospital.

Of course to be useful for fundraising purposes, the hospital Foundation must be able tofind out who the grateful patients are. This is a delicate area – one hardly wants to hand out a donor card as someone is coming out of their anaesthetic. In recent years, this challenge has been compounded by federal and provincial privacy laws.

No one could reasonably be against the protection of privacy and there is no need for theFoundation to have any access to medical records. This would be quite inappropriate.

If fundraising for a hospital is going to be successful and grateful patients are by far thelargest source of potential donations, the best approach seems to be to develop some wayof simply knowing that an individual has used the hospital. There is no need for detail.The Foundation could then approach the individual first as a member of the catchmentarea and ask if they would welcome information about their local hospital and how theymight be able to help. If the potential donor replies positively and chooses to identify thatthey were a patient and received successful treatment, then they have taken the initiativeand a call likely involving the physician concerned would be quite legitimate.

No one worries about approaching alumni of a university. Everyone has to treat gratefulpatients with great respect for their privacy. However the Foundation is really givinggrateful patients the opportunity to recognize their experience at the hospital and thisshould not be denied to them.


An operating theatre at Sunnybrook

Foundations – The Vancouver ExperiencePeter Bentley, Chair of CANFOR, was the founding Chair of the Vancouver GeneralHospital Foundation. I was a member of the founding Board. It gave me an opportunityto think about why a Foundation is necessary for a hospital. The fundamental reason isthat hospital Boards are not necessarily fundraising Boards. It is quite common to have ahospital Board made up of representatives of various areas e.g. medical staff, nursing staff,an associated university and so on. They may well have some very good business peopleon the Board but these people are often there more for their administrative than theirfundraising capabilities.

The advantage of a Foundation of course is that the Foundation Board members can beselected for their interest in and capability for raising funds. In fact, raising funds for theassociated hospital is the only reason the Foundation exists.

The Foundation is usually arms length from the hospital which has the advantage of keepingit somewhat aloof from Government regulation. It is really just a group of volunteers whoraise money and then provide it to the hospital as required for the hospital’s priorities.This requires a negotiation between the two bodies with the Foundation agreeing on thetypes of priorities for which it believes fundraising will be possible. Frankly it is often noteasy to raise money for bricks and mortar. The public generally assumes that this is theresponsibility of the government. Raising money for HVAC, elevators and washrooms is challenging.

Donors usually regard their role to be to ensure that their hospital has the best staff possible, has the latest equipment and is doing research in areas of significance to them.

I will discuss this more under Risk Management but hospitals and governments mustunderstand that the role of a Foundation is ‘best efforts’ at meeting he hospital’s periph-eral needs. There can be no guarantees and no Foundation Board member would everserve if that was the implication.

Everyone wants a world class facility as their local hospital. Government funding simplycannot assure this everywhere. Private fundraising is essential to move beyond the basicsto the best.

We should now look at an example in some more detail.

Sunnybrook Health Sciences CentreMy involvement with Sunnybrook goes backprobably fifteen years. A friend of mine frommy IBM days, Peter Webb, was on theFoundation Board and asked if I would beinterested in joining. I said yes with very little thought beyond the above-expressed reasonthat it was ‘my hospital’. Glenna and I live only a few minutes from the hospital and


although we both have been lucky enough not tohave to use its facilities too often, we wanted to makesure they were there When It Matters Most (the campaign slogan for the current $300 million CapitalCampaign that I chair).

To put this fundraising example in perspective, oneneeds to know something about Sunnybrook. It startedas a veterans hospital shortly after the Second WorldWar. The care of veterans remains an important factorin the hospital’s priorities. However it quicklyevolved into one of Canada’s leading teaching,research and patient care facilities. In fact, it is likelythe largest single campus hospital anywhere inCanada with over 1,000,000 patient visits annually.Well over 10,000 people work on the BayviewCampus each day. As one of the teaching hospitalsaffiliated with the University of Toronto, about 2300students a year hone their skills at the hospital. It nowhas one of the largest research budgets for a health carecentre in Canada, approaching $100 million annually.

But size is not the only criteria to put before potential donors. In addition to being abroadly based health care facility, it is something of a hospitals’ hospital with referralsfrom all over the province in such areas as musculoskeletal problems (hips and knees),minimally invasive cardiac surgery, breast and prostate cancer, neurological diseasessuch as Alzheimer and dementia (with an in-house base of veterans still on campus), a world renowned perinatal and gynaecology facility specializing in difficult births andperhaps its most famous service, the regional trauma centre and the centre for theOntario Air Ambulance service.

Further, Sunnybrook has a campus that would be the envy of any hospital in NorthAmerica and perhaps the world. It is sometimes referred as the ‘hospital in the park’ asits main campus is in a park-like setting on 94 acres. It even has two wonderful old homeson the property (known as the Vaughan and McLean Estates) now used for meetings andconventions.

From a fundraising standpoint, the hospital could not be better located. It is in the middle of what is likely the wealthiest area in Canada. It is surrounded by Rosedale,Lawrence Park, the Post Road area where many of the homes virtually back onto the hospital property and the Bayview/York Mills area to mention a few.

With all this going for it, fundraising should be simple. But things are never as easy asthey seem.


The Cenotaph at the entrance toSunnybrook

In what was likely one of the worst decisions ever made in terms of hospital mergers, a decade or so ago the then Ontario Government decided to reduce the number of hospitals and legislated a forced merger between Sunnybrook, Women’s College Hospitaland the Orthopaedic and Arthritic Institute. The latter made a great deal of sense as Sunnybrook was already very strong in the musculoskeletal area and the O&A whichwas located on Wellesley Street had and has a wonderful reputation in the same area. Itsfacilities however were in need of expansion and upgrade.

The attempted merger with Women’s College Hospital however can only be described as a disaster. Both Sunnybrook and Women’s College had long and proud traditions andthe cultures could hardly have been more different. The details of the attempted mergerand subsequent de-merger should be the subject of a book on how not to approach hospital rationalization. They are not entirely relevant to the fundraising story howeverexcept that the confusion and disruption effectively put a halt to fundraising for a numberof years.

I had been recruited as Chair of a planned $75 million campaign prior to the announcedmerger. I had set up a Campaign Cabinet in 1999 but as we approached the launch datefor the campaign, I concluded that it would never work without integrating the threefoundations that then existed as a result of the mergers.


An aerial photograph of some of the buildings of Sunnybrook in their park-like setting

Leaving aside the problems the hospital had, the process cost us our President as it wasobvious that a President coming from one of the three institutions would never be accept-able to the others, the same integration problems existed with the Foundations. Withoutallowing one to take responsibility for the campaign, the best we could do was to retainan outside fundraising counsel to not just provide advice but to actually staff and managethe campaign.

The Foundations were each reluctant to give up their own prospect list and clearly wantedto retain control of the list at the end of the campaign. Prospect clearance became a nightmare.

The retention of counsel, who by the way did a very good job under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, was costly because it was effectively grafting another administra-tive layer on top of the three existing Foundations.

I called a halt to the campaign and insisted we should go no further until the threeFoundations were amalgamated and we could run a fully integrated campaign. TheBoards agreed and little did I know that I would become the longest serving CampaignChair of a non-existent campaign probably in hospital history in Canada.

However with a lot of good will at the volunteer level, as the Foundations were largelyvolunteer organizations, we did manage to integrate the three and finally ended up witha new Foundation with the unwieldy name of the Sunnybrook and Women’s CollegeHospital Foundation.

However we were still not in the clear. The outgoing Progressive Conservative govern-ment had approved a major expansion for the hospital which included moving the perinatal and gynaecology function from the Women’s College Hospital location where


The new M-Wing expansion at Sunnybrook

it was badly served by rundown facilities, expanding the Emergency Department whichhad been designed for 20,000 visits a year and was getting 45,000 and the addition of fourfloors on the central section of the hospital (M-Wing) amongst other projects. When thePC government fell, government permission and funding for the expansion was put onhold and so we were in another waiting period.

The new Ontario Health Minister, the Honourable George Smitherman, took a long andhard look at the situation and in my opinion made the best possible decision. On August18, 2005, he announced that the merger with Women’s College Hospital was being dissolved. The musculoskeletal merger would remain and the facility on Wellesley Streetwould be upgraded to become a world class hips and knees specialty facility. The moredifficult cases e.g. back and spinal would be moved to Sunnybrook where the full facili-ties of a general purpose hospital were available. Further the perinatal and gynaecologyi.e. birthing facilities would be moved to the Bayview Campus as originally planned.Women’s College Hospital would become a major ambulatory care centre specializing inthe challenges that women face. This facility however would no longer be associated withSunnybrook and would have its own Centre for Research on Women’s Health associatedwith the University of Toronto.

The other important part of the announcement was the necessary funding for the expan-sion of the Bayview Campus and the upgrade of the Wellesley Street Campus. Finally wecould move ahead with a campaign.

As noted above, the campaign had now escalated to $300 million split about 50/50between capital needs and program priorities. The campaign is now (Spring 2007) in itsquiet phase and at the time of writing has already raised over $130 million.

It is a tortuous story and easily the most difficult campaign with which I have ever beeninvolved. However it now appears certain to have a happy ending.

A Capital ViewIn the midst of the Sunnybrook ‘Supernova’ situation, ironically I was asked to make apresentation in Moncton, New Brunswick on May 28, 2001 to the Canada Conference ofthe Association for Health Care Philanthropy and the Health Care Public RelationsAssociation. The topic they asked me to address was fundraising for a hospital from a volunteer’s point of view.

I called the talk Capital Gains.

Having always believed that a sense of humour was the best defence and offence in mostsituations, I took a somewhat light-hearted view. In fact I opened the session giving whatI called ‘A Capital View’. This examined some important factors in a campaign, theobjectives as outlined by the hospital and the foundation and then the volunteer’s slightlymore realistic assessment:


Clearly this is a hospital to die for!

Actually I did go on to address each of these issues and came up with a positive program thata hospital campaign could undertake. I will cover some of these thoughts in later sections.

By the way, I have never been invited back to speak!


The Area The Hospital's View The Volunteer's View

The Cause The cause is noble, humanitarian and the world will stop if we do not raise the money

The reality is you are raising money forfungus infection of the left foot and have to try to make a national cause out ofthis.

The Case A list of unbelievably worthwhile projects.

An eclectic wish list of the physicianspet projects, many of which are targetsfor government cuts and which will always include $3 million for a Chair in their area for which the physician will ofcourse be an applicant.

The Strategy Approach our grateful patientswho number in the millions and who will rush to donate.

You are expected to get out there before the competition and before the hospital runs out of money and by the way the hospital cannot give you a list of grateful patients.

The Resources In the case of Sunnybrook, you will have the enthusiastic stafffrom three Foundations.

You will be working with staff who vieweach other as competitors to saynothing of disdain and who did not want to merge in the first place.

The Product Identification

You will have the advantage ofmarketing three organizationswith wonderful reputations.

The fact is you will be trying raise money for something with the sexyselling sound of Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Science Centre or S&WCHSC. One could hardlyimagine the donors lining up to give to something that does not even have a pronounceable acronym. What happened to names like Sick Kids?

The Database You will have the combined databases of the three Foundations.

The 80/20 rule applies. Even if you can access them, 80% of the addresses and contacts will be out of date.

The Goal The goal should be easily within reach given the wonderful reputation of the newly merged organizations.

The goal is actually fifteen times the largest amount the hospital has everraised before.

The Timing We have not run a capital campaign for a while and so the timing should be perfect.

The Government has just announced another series of cuts in the healthcare industry, the nurses are threatening to go on strike, the physicians are leaving for higher paying jobs in the United States, the hospital just got sued formalpractice and the economy justtanked.

Best Seats in the HouseThe Arts provide their own challenges but are inevitably more fun than hospitals. I haveno professional training in any of the Arts. I could even mess up ‘paint-by-numbers’.When asked if I could play the piano, I gave the standard old line of “I don’t know. I never tried.” I am sure the artistic world will be thankful that my involvement as usualis restricted to fundraising.

I do however have a love of music even if my talent is restricted to putting a CD in thestereo.

The motivation of donors and volunteers in the Performing Arts may as usual be quitepure e.g. giving opportunity to rising Canadian talent or it may be somewhat more basic.Donors to the Arts can queue jump unlike donors to hospitals. Depending on their levelof contribution, they can usually get the Best Seats in the House.

And why not? Those who just attend and enjoy are of course supporting the Arts to adegree but those who add to this a voluntary donation should get priority treatment.

I will discuss my own involvement with raising funds for the new Four Seasons Centrefor the Performing Arts, often better known as the new Opera House. The CanadianOpera House Corporation (COHC) made no bones about how seats in the new housewould be assigned. They came up with a formula based on capital donation, annual donation, length of subscription, board position and whatever else that would have done Einstein proud. But the approach was fair and as far as I know everyone acceptedthe reasoning.

Of course there are other reasons for supporting the Arts. One often gets the opportunityto meet some of the world’s leading performers. During my years at the National ArtsCentre, I got to meet Canadian opera stars such as Maureen Forrester and Riki Turofskyand international stars such as Frederika Von Stade(lovely ladies all). At a gala in his honour, I wasintroduced to Leonid Brezhnev. At a reception following a Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert,I even chatted with Cecilia Bartoli who thoughsmall in stature was just as big in personality as sheappears on stage. I have only reluctantly washedmy hands since I shook hands with her!

So how is that for name dropping? The point is active involvement with the Arts doeslead to an active exposure to very interesting people. I am sure this is a motivation formany volunteers and donors.


Frederika Von Stade Maureen Forrester

Naming opportunities are another motivation. It is usually easier to get someone to puttheir name on part of a theatre or concert hall than it is an operating room but we canexamine this in more detail later.

Beyond all the side benefits however, for those who have a love of the Arts in whateverform, there is a personal incentive to want to ensure that the world’s best is available inyour locale. This can only happen if a city has the proper facilities for the PerformingArts, the best galleries for the Visual Arts and supports such organizations as a major symphony orchestra.

I support the TSO even though I am not a subscriber. With full subscriptions to the operaand ballet, I eventually run out of evenings and if I have to sacrifice something, it will beorchestral performances. This is nothing against the TSO. But if one has to make thechoice, I feel that one must see a ballet to get much out of it and the same applies to an opera. One can however get at least a measure of enjoyment of classical music by listening to it at home with your feet up, a Hennesey XO and no coughing (although thedog may bark from time to time). I outlined this reasoning with Peter Oundjian and heonly sort of agreed. However the existence of the orchestra is essential to the city and I support it anyway.

So like universities, individuals support the Arts because they really enjoy the Arts andthey want to ensure that the company, the gallery or whatever is there when they want itand is providing the best.

From a fundraising standpoint, and quite unlike a hospital, there is a ready made prospectlist available. Obviously the subscribers to a series or the attendees at a gallery havealready made their declaration of support and only need to be asked.

Up-selling annual donors to major capital donors is a natural. But every situation is different and that is what makes fundraising for the Arts so fascinating.

Let’s take a look at a few of these.

A Capital ExperienceMy first experience with fundraising for the Arts came through my love of opera. I wasasked to go on the Board of a small semi professional company in Ottawa called OperaAtelier. This group produced a limited number of operas in the days when there was no opera in Ottawa i.e. in the early 1960’s before the National Arts Centre came on the scene. The operas were produced in high school auditoriums or wherever space was available. The sets were minimal and the accompanist just on a piano was Ewen McQuaig, the General Manager. Ewen talked me into being the Business Managerfor the group – as an unpaid volunteer of course. I quickly discovered that this involvedmanaging very shaky finances, designing and printing promotional brochures, arrangingfor distribution of tickets and all the things one gets involved in when there is essentially


no paid staff. However it was a fun experience and asusual I met some wonderful people. The founder wasa red-headed soprano by the name of RosalindNovak who had a truly beautiful voice. I particularlyremember her performance in Cavalleria Rusticana.Rosalind also wrote a book about Opera.

I mention this early experience because it also intro-duced me to a reality in the Performing Arts. TheNational Arts Centre opened with what for the timewas massive Federal government funding. The NACproceeded to produce about three operas a year fortheir Opera Festival. These were all very professionalperformances. In my opinion, Opera Atelier wasgoing to have some difficulty competing with thissudden explosion of opera alternatives. I suggestedthat the company consider putting on a performancewith an orchestra this time in the Theatre of the NAC.We could obviously not fill the Opera house itself.

Ewen retained a well known conductor, we got the financing to retain the orchestra andengaged the Theatre.

We then got our first nasty surprise. As the NAC was unionized, all of the surroundingneeds, for example the building of the set, had to be done by union staff. The cost escalated out of sight.

The whole event nearly got off the rails when the conductor we retained turned out notto have the confidence of the orchestra and finally quit. Ewen, who was not a professionalconductor, had to fill in at the last moment.

Actually the production was an artistic success but afinancial disaster that nearly put the company under. Theorganization reverted to its concert opera style. This leadsme however to the National Arts Centre.

As pointed out earlier, I was President of one of the very few high tech firms in Ottawaand as such I seemed to be invited on any number of boards and projects. The afore-mentioned G. Hamilton Southam called me at SDL and asked if I would consider beingon the board of the newly formed National Arts Centre. The Chairman was the also previously discussed Lawrence Freiman. The opportunity to participate in the earlystages of a major Performing Arts centre was clearly attractive. I ended up being moreheavily involved than I had thought as I quickly became a member of their ExecutiveCommittee.


Rosalind Novak’s book

The NAC orchestra was under the direction of MarioBernardi with whom I became quite friendly. Mario wasan absolute delight and one of the greatest interpreters ofMozart in Canada. Because of my position on theExecutive Committee, he would refer to me as ‘his boss’.Under Mario’s guidance, the NAC began to produce theoperas that we referred to earlier. These were almostalways outstanding productions and were of courseheavily subsidized by the federal government. The prob-lem was that they only ran for about five nights given therelatively small audience in Ottawa. The cost was far outof proportion to the audience.

I proposed to the board that we tape the performancesand make them available to the rest of Canada throughthe CBC. (See Appendix D on page 130.) I now got another taste of what it is like to workin a unionized environment. It turned out that the additional costs of paying the artists,the unions and just about everyone else for moving to a new medium with wider expo-sure made the whole project unfeasible. These wonderful productions therefore ran fortheir five nights and disappeared forever.

In any case it was a great experience although not one that involved much fundraising.We did endeavour to get sponsors for the operas and for other productions bearing inmind that the NAC also had a large theatre company in each of French and English.However most of the funding was picked up by the taxpayer – a wonderful benefit to living in Ottawa!

Another side benefit to being on a Board such as the National Arts Centre was that ourBoard was invited to attend performances at such venues as the Lincoln Centre and discuss with their management how best to run a major Performing Arts centre.

One of the other members of the Board was a vivacious and attractive young lady fromNewfoundland – Susan Duff, later Mayor of St. John’s. She was very interested in urbanrenewal and while we were both in Washington for our Kennedy Centre production ofLa Belle Hélène, we agreed to meet on the Sunday morning and tour the redevelopmentof Georgetown. We were planning to get together at ten in the morning in the lobby andSusan was uncharacteristically late. When she finally showed up she had a bandage onher head. I of course inquired as to what had happened and she relayed this ratherincredible story. Evidently she was having a bath that morning and had forgotten that shehad ordered breakfast in the room. When the doorbell rang for her breakfast delivery,she stood up suddenly, hit her head on a protruding soap dish and cut herself. She thenwrapped herself in a towel as best she could and head bleeding answered the door.Apparently the waiter nearly dropped the tray assuming that he had walked into somescene of domestic violence!


Mario Bernardi

In any case we had a delightful day, exploring the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and eating a Sticky, Icky ice cream cone for lunch.

The Arts provide strange benefits to volunteers.

My final story about fundraising for culture in Ottawa also involved Hamilton Southam.Hamilton was a very eclectic lover of History and the Arts. At one point he started an organization called The Canadian Mediterranean Institute. This was an organizationthat raised money to supportarchaeological projects around the Mediterranean, principally inGreece, Egypt and Italy. He askedme to be on his new board which Ijoined having an interest in archae-ology myself. Once again it was a very interesting experience and it turned out there was a surprising number of people in Ottawa and elsewhere who shared an interest in supporting such Canadian ventures. I stayed associated with his organization for a couple of years even after moving to Vancouver. I was beginning to discover you can findadvocates for almost any cause if you look for them.

In 1979 however I moved from Ottawa to Vancouver and was soon involved once againin the artistic scene.

Go West Young ManOn my arrival in Vancouver in 1979, I was almost immediatelyasked to join the Board of Vancouver Opera. Relative to the fairlystable situation at the National Arts Centre, Vancouver Opera hada tradition of being a revolving door for both conductors and general managers. It turned out to be less a fundraising positionthan a human resources challenge. The Board had some wonderfulpeople on it including Iain Scott who is arguably Canada’s leadingauthority on opera. Iain is now resident in Toronto and conductsnumerous talks, courses and tours on opera for the COC.

We managed to get the situation stabilized and by the time I leftVancouver in 1985, Vancouver Opera was reasonably secure finan-cially and back on the road artistically. I will not spend much timeon that experience as it really had little to do with fundraising.

This was not so however with the Vancouver Chamber Choir. JohnSmith, the lawyer for Premier Cablevision Ltd. of which I was thePresident at the time, asked me if I would help a relatively neworganization with limited resources but an unlimited reputation.Under the leadership of JonWashburn,the Vancouver Chamber Choirwas rapidly acquiring a nationwide and international reputation as one


Iain Scott

Jon Washburn

of the finest choral groups in the country. The group had been founded in 1971 and by 1973had become the first Canadian choir to win the distinguished International BBC ChoralCompetition “Let the People Sing!” The VCC went on to tour Ontario under the auspicesof the Canada Council and subsequently toured widely in Europe and the United States.

Despite its excellent reputation, such choirs can have a difficult time raising money. They lack the large audiences of a major symphony orchestra and one cannot easily sell‘box seats’ to their performances. However they had and still have a loyal and support-ive audience. I was able to help them fund their expanding repertoire and touring.

They are still one of the best Capella groups in the country. They are a professional choiralthough unlike the Mendelssohn and others, have only sixteen singers at a time.

The Return HomeGlenna and I moved back to Toronto in 1985 and I soon had my introduction to a different kind of Arts fundraising. I had never been particularly involved in the VisualArts but Michael Burns, with I whom I served on the Extendicare/Crownx Board, askedif I would be interested in joining the Board of Trustees ofthe McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The Board waspartially filled by appointees from the OntarioGovernment who provided considerable support for theinstitution but there was a limited number of externaltrustees who could be appointed by the Board itself.

The Board Chair was JoanGoldfarb, a person of immenseenergy and impeccable artistictaste. The Executive Director wasBarbara Tyler who tragicallypassed away in 2007, also a verycapable person.

The gallery is a gem, nestled in a beautiful rural location inKleinberg surrounded by trailsthrough the woods. The galleryitself is an expansion of a homedonated to the Province by Robertand Signe McMichael. Six of theoriginal seven Group of Seven areburied on the property. It soundedlike a wonderful opportunity tobecome acquainted with the rigorsof running a gallery.


The entrance and grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection

And rigorous it turned out to be! What I had not anticipated was the almost irrational tension that existed between the McMichaels, the management of the gallery and theBoard. The details of this confrontation were well and in fact avidly covered by the press.The contentious issue was the amount of control that the McMichaels would continue toexercise over the artistic and other direction of the gallery given that they had donatedtheir home and collection of primarily Group of Seven paintings to the Government buthad received a full tax receipt for their most welcome contribution.

However Robert’s view was that the gallery should remain small and concentrate essen-tially on the Group of Seven and their immediate contemporaries. The view of most ofthe Board members and certainly Barbara Tyler was that the gallery could not become a‘museum’ but had to become a dynamic gallery for Canadian art.

The confrontation became increasingly disruptive escalating into the media. Notablessuch as Pierre Berton, sided with Robert McMichael but many, including myself,believed that the artistic direction of any organization had to rest ultimately with theBoard of Trustees and not with any one individual who in fact had been ‘bought out’many years before.

The battle escalated to the Ontario Government level. Members of the Board of Trusteesincluding me met with the Minister and argued that the governance decision made in this case would influence how artistic organizations were governed across the country. If trustees could not be responsible for the policy of the organization, then the Boardshould be dissolved and a different form of governance should be established. The matter went to court and the court after an appeal ultimately ruled in favour of the Boardof Trustees.

Then the astounding happened. The Government of Mike Harris changed the legislationplacing the McMichaels back in the driver’s seat for artistic direction of the gallery. The Board was shocked. Joan Goldfarb resigned as did I. Barbara Tyler left in disgust and many other Trustees simply walked away from what was an impossible situation.What was one of Canada’s loveliest galleries dedicated to Canadian painting went into aperiod of paralysis that ended only with Robert’s death several years later.

From a fundraising standpoint, this was hardly an advantageous situation. People would of course hesitate to donate paintings, works of Inuit art or other artifacts if therewas a good chance that under the direction of Robert McMichael, these would be de-acquisitioned. The fundraising with which I had been involved largely dried up andthe support for the Gallery fell back entirely on the Ontario Government.

This whole episode is worth an in-depth study well beyond this book. The experience didnot exactly endear me to the Visual Arts field and my interests soon reverted to thePerforming Arts.


Something to Sing AboutThe story of the twenty year struggle to bring a properballet/opera house to Toronto is legendary. The falsestarts with Government support being promised and then pulled back, the escalatingcosts of proposed designs and the somewhat precarious financial position of the com-panies who would occupy such a facility led to numerous delays and frustrations.However it was acknowledged that Canada was the only country in the G7 without aproper opera house. There was no such facility planned anywhere else in Canada. Theobvious location for such a Performing Arts centre was and is Toronto.

The Hummingbird Centre with 3,200 seats is cavernous. It was never designed with operaor ballet in mind but rather for Broadway-like productions. The acoustics for singers without microphones, as is the case with opera, were inadequate. The orchestra pit wasnever designed for a large operatic performance. There was not space to store the sets formultiple productions running in repertory as this is not required for Broadway productions.The sight lines were totally inadequate.

The ballet fared little better as the stage was huge and lacked the intimacy required forthe productions of the National Ballet.

Under the direction of Richard Bradshaw, the then new General Manager of the COC,the whole project was revived with a vigour and energy that he had in abundance. TheNational Ballet was an active participant in the project although declined to be a co-owner. In retrospect, this probably worked well for both companies as the projectcould move ahead more quickly responding to a single Board and a single Management.

Needless to say, considerable fundswere required for the design andbuilding of a special purpose operahouse. The total was about $180 millionof which about $30 million was con-tributed by the Province in the form of land at University and Queen. Thelocation was actually an improvementon the original proposal at Wellesleyand Bay which was ‘out of theatre district’ and not directly on the sub-way. The 1.7 acre location occupyingthe entire block of Queen, University,Richmond and York was a tight site but with imagination could do the job.

Jack Diamond was selected as the architect. The budget was also tight but the project nowhad legs.


Jack Diamond’s rendition of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

The Fundraising Cabinet was jointly chaired by Arthur Scace, Gerry Heffernan and PeterGodsoe. They became known as the three musketeers of the project. Had any one of thethree asked me to participate, I am sure I would have said yes. All three were irresistible!

A very good staff had been assembled under Wendy McDowall.

For the second Cabinet meeting on June 16, 2003, the groupasked if I would make a presentation on what is involved infundraising for a project such as this. The title of my presenta-tion was The Curtain Rises – Making the Perfect Pitch. The topics I covered included:• O Solo Mio – the necessity of everyone making their ownpledge first. • Hit a High C – the CASE included a brand new facility i.e.not an alteration to an existing building, a prime location, aworld class design (from the inside out with Jack Diamond con-centrating on acoustics and sight lines) and the fact that we werefinally actually underway. • A Successful Opening – in addition to the provincial land grant we had a $25 milliongrant from the federal government and the Four Seasons had agreed to be the namingsponsor at $20 million, Fraser Elliott had named the main hall for $10 million and theCOC Board and some early adapters had put up another $20 million. We thereforealready had an opening of $105 million of the $180 million leaving us only $75 millionto raise.• Raising the Barre – I noted that you cannot raise $75 million with 75,000 $1,000 giftsor even 7,500 $10,000 gifts. It was going to be necessary to raise everyone’s sights. • Don’t Wait for the Last Act – Bequests are nice but it is more tax effective to give nowand this is when we need the money. • A New Tenor in the Market – We were just coming out of a rather bad period in themarkets but the TSX was stabilizing and many people had substantial capital appreciationwith which new tax rules would help. • The Next Act – I discussed qualifying prospects, fundraising events in people’s homesor clubs and how to develop the list from our subscribed base. • Closing Performance – I pointed out we should never be concerned about asking fortoo much.

The campaign was a great success and has essentially raised what it set out to do.

Much of this was helped by being able to give tours to prospects through the building asit was being constructed. I conducted a number of these tours along with other membersof the Cabinet. It was fun pointing out to prospects when there was just the foundation,that this was all we could afford so far and we needed their help to finish the job. I prob-ably did not help however by my asking if the construction boots that we had to wearcame in suede!


Wendy McDowall -Capital Campaign

Director for the CanadianOpera Company

As is so often the case, the momentum and leadership had tocome from the CEO and Richard Bradshaw supplied this. Infact he was recently named CEO of the Year and when I wroteto congratulate him I pointed out that in his case this likelystood for Creates Extraordinary Operas. He agreed that thiswas the only possible interpretation.

An Organization’s OrganizationThere is a different kind of organization supporting the Arts. In a way this is an ‘organization of organizations’. It is theCouncil for Business and the Arts in Canada now known asBusiness for the Arts.

This was an organization founded in 1974 as the national association for business leaders who support the Arts. Amongstits founding members were Great West Life,London Life and the Royal Bank.

The purpose of the organization is to increase private sector support of the Arts and to promoteproductive partnerships between private sectorcompanies and Arts organizations.

The problem in Canada when the CBAC started was that Canadian businesses allocatedonly about 3% of their donations budgets to the Arts. With the successful work under-taken by the CBAC, this is now increased to about 10%.

The organization sponsors such recognition events as the Edmund C. Bovey Award andis a partner with The Globe and Mail in their Business for the Arts Awards.

The Board reads like a Who’s Who of primarily senior business people who have a realinterest in promoting the Arts across Canada. The current President is Jim Fleck and hispredecessor was Don Johnson. Don used his presidency to assist in promoting his highlysuccessful campaign with the federal government to get donations of publicly tradedsecurities a tax free status when given to registered charities.

Despite the excellent work done by this organization, from a fundraising standpoint it isa tough sell. Many companies will give directly to the Arts where they get recognition inprograms or have the opportunity to sponsor productions or events. This is more difficultwith an organization that is once removed from the actual delivery of artistic productions.Many of the advantages that business leaders might feel of working directly with an Artsorganization e.g. my ‘Best Seats in the House’ advantages or meeting the artists, do notapply as directly with the CBAC. This illustrates the importance of having well definedbenefits for investors in whatever the organization may be. The CBAC is looking now at


Richard Bradshaw,General Director,

Canadian Opera Company

ways of providing such benefits to corporations to give them direct links to artistic organ-izations e.g. suggesting that if they invest in the promotion of the Arts across Canada,their employees or customers will get discounted access to major Arts events. This helpsto establish a direct link between the organization and the Visual or Performing Artsorganization.

It is easy to demonstrate that the Arts provide a huge boost to any local economy. The leverage for every dollar invested in the Arts is likely at least three times and a recentsurvey indicated that the effect on tourism could be as much as seven times the invest-ment. This does not include the soft impact that the Arts have by making the region more attractive to new employees, raising real estate values by making downtown areasmore liveable and even raising the international profile of an area.

Arts organizations bring their own challenges but certainly have great rewards to the volunteers. We are very lucky in Canada to have so many dynamic Arts organizations all looking for volunteer involvement.


A sample of a promotional piece byBusiness for the Arts

A Piece of a Bigger PieThis pie has its own fundraising flavour. The idea that if organizations in an industry ora community work together for the betterment of their area, everyone benefits by gettinga bigger piece of a bigger pie.

This introduces some interesting fundraising challenges. The benefits are not usuallyimmediate and maybe somewhat difficult to define. You are often pulling together organ-izations who in other circumstances would be competitors. If the action of the organiza-tion is deemed to be lobbying or advocacy, the Canada Revenue Agency may not allowit to give charitable donation receipts.

Over the years I have been involved in variousorganizations such as the Canadian InformationProcessing Society which is an organization forcomputer professionals, the Canadian CableTelevision Association whose name explains itselfand the Information Technology Association ofCanada which is an organization of medium tolarge companies in the data processing industry.

ITAC is a good example of a policy/lobby group. Itdoes not really do fundraising in the normal sensebut rather membership raising. The support for itsactivities understandably comes almost exclusivelyfrom its members and presumably the benefitsaccrue largely to the members. I was theNational Chair in 1993-94. In order to raise theprofile as well as raising some funds beyondmembership fees, ITAC ran major national conferences. Inthose days the hot topic was the Information Highway.These were very high profile events and ITAC conferenceswhile I was Chair attracted the likes of George Gilder, Nicholas Negroponte and LarryEllison. However as we will see when discussing events, if one really factors in the staff time, they were not huge revenue producers. They did however attract additionalmembers and this was really the purpose.

When I was the National President of CIPS in 1970-71, the organization actually pub-lished the Canadian Computer Census. In those days there were no minis, micros, or PC’s. It became quite important to the industry to know who had what computingcapacity installed. We also published such items as Salary Surveys. These were definitelymoney making projects.


I mention these types of activities as fundraising is not always just asking people formoney. Sometimes asking however proved to be the only way.

While I was in British Columbia in the early 1980’s, the economy was in a funk.Increasing foreign competition in the basic BC industries such as fishing and forestry wasbecoming intense. Unemployment was high and a number of single industry communi-ties were in danger of becoming ghost towns.

Grace McCarthy, the Deputy Premier, asked if Iwould set up an organization to try to help these com-munities. We called it Team BC.

My concern was that if it was perceived to be another government organization, it would not have wide acceptance. It was set up therefore as a volunteer industry-runorganization and there was a large fundraising component to get corporations to supportit either in cash or in kind. The staff was largely seconded from the Bank of B.C. andother organizations. Its modus operandi was to work with hard hit smaller communitiesto encourage them to help themselves e.g. if their forest product company was shuttingdown, they needed help in attracting a new high tech industry, converting to tourism orotherwise exploiting the advantages that they did have.

To a large extent it was a cheerleading program to get people to think positively aboutwhat they could do rather than moping about what had happened to them. Of coursewhen the whole economy was in the doldrums, funds from any source were hard to comeby and at best I would say the program was a modest success.

There is one other observation about fundraising for an organization such as Team BC.This applies to any voluntary group. I always have insisted on expending some funds fora reputable audit firm. Nothing gives more confidence to the donor than having KPMGor PriceWaterhouseCoopers certify that the funds are being properly accounted for. Thissounds very basic but it is absolutely vital.

I was President of the Toronto Board ofTrade 1996-97 and this was another exampleof an organization that did no fundraising in the normal sense. Itcertainly however pursued expanding its membership and at thetime I was President, it had over 10,000 members and was oneof the largest Chambers of Commerce anywhere in NorthAmerica. It does of course run many events although a largenumber of these are for educational purposes rather than forfundraising. Its major event of the year is a huge Black Tie dinner held in January that attracts several thousand people. Theyear I was President, we had Conrad Black as the main speaker.I thought it would be a good idea to have Red Green, the TVcomedy star, to warm up the audience. The contrast between


Elyse Allan, Pres. & CEO,Toronto Board of Trade

Red Green’s slapstick jokes and Conrad’s erudite discussion of Quebec politics made foran interesting evening. I am not sure Conrad really appreciated the order of events.

The point was that events for raising profile have to be really outstanding affairs. This is acrowded field and a mid range event will do little for either fundraising or profile raising.

My tenure as President of the TorontoBoard of Trade was the occasion of yet another confrontation with theMike Harris government. It was atthat time that the provincial govern-ment decided to download the costs ofsocial housing and other social needsto municipalities. The latter weretotally ill-equipped to take on suchhuge funding. At that time their onlysignificant revenue base was to taxproperty. This is well known to be avery poor revenue source. It is essen-tially a capital tax and even worsetaxes people on unrealized gains i.e.the value of the property may go up but unless it is sold, there is no additional cash flow.

It is also a concept that is largely out of date. There is nothing wrong with taxing propertyto cover local services but as a major source of income, it has steadily lost significancesince the days when ownership of property was a significant indicator of wealth. For mostpeople nowadays property is a cost, not an asset. From a cashflow standpoint, the costslikely include a mortgage, upkeep, insurance and the ‘asset’ earns no revenue in mostcases. Even for corporations, property is usually viewed as a cost of doing business ratherthan a revenue generator.

As soon as this was announced, Dr. Anne Golden, then President of the United Way andI held a press conference to decry the whole idea. I followed this with as many talk showsand interviews as I could. However the Harris government had no interest in listening toany ideas that countered their own policy thrust.

Now I am not one who is too enthusiastic about reacting to every special interest groupbut a government that will simply not listen to reasoned arguments and at least considerthem is a real travesty.

I am an economic conservative by inclination although a social liberal but my experiencewith this government with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the forced merger of Sunnybrook and Women’s College and then this downloading policy made it very difficult for me to honour my intellectually conservative bias.


Toronto Board ofTrade president

George Fierheller– when this guyis pissed at MikeHarris, you knowsomething is up.

From an article in Eye magazine

My final example of an organization set up solelyto expand the pie is the Greater TorontoMarketing Alliance. During my tenure asPresident (now called Chairman) of the Board ofTrade, I had been an advocate for the Board orsomebody to promote investment in the GreaterToronto Area. This is an area of about 5.5 million people and some 7,000 square kilo-metres. The GTA includes the regions of Halton, Peel, York, Durham, and the newlyamalgamated City of Toronto.

The real impetus for such an organization came from Mayor Hazel McCallion ofMississauga. She chaired a group called the Mayors and Regional Chairs Committeewhich was an informal organization with no legislative backing. I put together an equallyloose group of the Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce in the GTA (over 40 organizations) and together with the Mayors and Chairs group, established theGreater Toronto Marketing Alliance.

I was the founding chair of what turned out to be a Public Private Partnership (PPP) tocoordinate economic development in the GTA. Amazingly enough there was no bodysuch as this in existence. I soon discovered why.

The GTMA did get some initial funding assistance from the federal government and acertain amount of financial backing from each of the five regions including the City ofToronto. The Province essentially has never financially supported the organizationalthough its agencies do work with the GTMA quite closely.

This was now fundraising in the traditional sense. The GTMA had to approach busi-nesses operating in the GTA and sell them on the logic of working together to attractmore new businesses into the area. The mandate of the GTMA was to market the GTAinternationally. This we did by working through our consulates, developing a website andsubstantial collateral material and by direct selling. The GTMA regularly runs investmentmissions to the United States, Europe, India and elsewhere to take the story of the GTAdirectly to interested businesses.

But in terms of motivating private sector partners, the case was somewhat difficult tomake. The benefits were obviously long term and it is always hard to convince organiza-tions to take a long term view. There were some direct benefits one could identify for participating companies e.g. being on the ground floor with a potential new organizationcoming to the GTA and who would need accounting, consulting, human resources, realestate and other services. However some corporations questioned why they would investin bringing firms who might be competitors into the area.

Economic development in Canada has always been thought of as a government respon-sibility. In the United States it is often the Chamber of Commerce that undertakes this


role. However the Toronto Board reasoned that it was better to have an independentbody take on this function as there was no one Board of Trade for the entire area.

That identified another problem with defining the product. The GTA really has no cham-pion. There is no one person responsible for economic development across the wholeGTA. An attempt was made to set up such an organization that would be a co-ordinatingbody for and a champion of the GTA but the Greater Toronto Services Bureau lasted onlya couple of years and frankly was designed in such a way it was almost certain to fail.

For years the GTMA remained the only Pan-GTA organization. The regions and municipalities retain their own economic development organizations unlike Montreal forexample where the staff of these various agencies were all pulled together under MontrealInternational.

Funding from both government at all levels and the private sector remains a challenge.The GTMA may be an idea ahead of its time.

In summary, fundraising for organizations such as Team BC or the GTMA which are in the economic development field can be very difficult and time consuming. In fact,organizations like this have to spend a disproportionate amount of time raising funds andthis reduces their ability to deliver the required services.Governments pay lip service to Public Private Partnerships butreally view them as a way of getting out of some of their fundingresponsibilities by having the private sector pick this up. Inessence instead of enthusiastically backing such PPP’s, govern-ments are really flying with one leg over the edge of the cockpit,looking to bail out if the private sector will step in. However theprivate sector is only there because they perceive that variouslevels of government see such economic development as a priority – a chicken and egg situation if I ever saw one.

Team BC wound down in 1983 as the BC economy turnedaround. The GTMA continues to provide its international mar-keting services as best it can on a limited budget, under thedirection of Karen Campbell, its President.


Karen Campbell,President and CEO,

Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance

Go Where No Man Has Gone BeforeGiven this title and an earlier title Live Long and Prosper, you will realize that I am reallya Trekkie at heart. Live Long and Prosper was the greeting given by Lieutenant Spock,the Vulcan serving on the Star Ship Enterprise.

The title of this section was always used as the lead-in to the TV series.

Star Trek has long since been out of production but an organization that truly does try to go where no man has gone before is now in its 25th very dynamic year. This is the Canadian Institute For AdvancedResearch (CIFAR pronounced seefar). CIFAR is the ultimate in a difficult ASK.

Briefly what it does is to seek out the most fundamental and basic questions in a varietyof physical and social sciences, put together teams of the leading thinkers in these fieldsfrom around the world and provides an atmosphere where these leading edge thinkerscan do leading edge work in teams of their peers.

CIFAR works through Universities in Canada and elsewhere by freeing the time of thebest thinkers in whatever the field may be by easing their teaching load and allowingthem time to explore the frontier areas of their area of expertise. CIFAR has associatedwith it over 300 of the world’s most highly regarded researchers including thirteen NobelPrize winners.

However one only has to look at the list of current project areas to understand thefundraising challenge. CIFAR has programs in evolutionary biology, earth system evolution, population health and human development, cosmology and gravity, geneticnetworks, nanoelectronics, quantum information processing and similar projects.

If it was difficult to raise funds for economic development which sometimes took severalyears for the benefits to be realized, one could imagine what it is like raising money forleading edge research in cosmology or earth evolution where the time frames are billionsof years!

No one dies in the short run from the lack of our understanding of Dark Matter or DarkEnergy. No one has to step over an unemployed electron sleeping on a hot grate on adowntown Toronto street (although I suppose one could argue that a homeless person isindeed made up of electrons and other such physical components).

The CASE has to be built around an appeal to those who are intellectually curious andwho really understand the necessity of Canada retaining and attracting the best minds inthe world by ensuring that these people have the opportunity to work with the best in the


world on the most difficult questions that could be imagined. As Chaviva Hosek, the President of CIFAR, has put it “somepeople get it and some never will”. One of the most encourag-ing experiences I have had in my years of fundraising is just howmany people do ‘get it’. CIFAR receives about half its supportfrom the federal government, about 30% from the private sectorand about 20% from provincial governments. It has an extraor-dinary following of individuals and corporations where the individual or CEO really understands why it is important topush back the frontiers of knowledge in areas that can hardly beconsidered Applied Research.

In fact, a great many practical results do come indirectly frommany of the CIFAR projects but commercial products are notthe intent. The social programs have certainly influenced public sector thinking. Some ofthe advances in basic understanding in areas such as nanotechnology or quantum infor-mation processing have led to breakthroughs in technology. Earth Evolution has openednew understanding of the true causes of global warming which may easily be cosmic innature and only moderately influenced by man’s activities.

I have been on the board of CIFAR for some years and chair their Advancement andCommunications Committee. I suppose I was attracted because it is the ultimate elitistorganization. Once again its Board and its Council of Advisors are comprised of the leading thinkers and leaders across Canada. Under the leadership of people such as Tom Kierans and Richard Ivey, the organization has developed into the leading researchcatalyst in Canada and is developing an international reputation for being amongst thebest institutes of its kind anywhere.

Kara Spence moved over from Trinity College as Vice President, Advancement andCommunities. Chaviva has put together a small but extremely competent staff and theirefforts are leading to quite remarkable results.

The fundraising requires particular ingenuity and perhaps that is what makes CIFAR amost stimulating area in which to work.


Chaviva Hosek,President and CEO,

CIFAR

Getting ClubbyIt is not always thought of in the same way but financing private organizations is also aform of fundraising. For example I was President of the National Club in 1998-99.The National Club is one of Toronto’s oldest private clubs having been found-ed in 1874. It has its own building at 303 Bay Street, right in the heart of thefinancial district in Toronto.

I served on the board for several yearsbefore becoming President and must admit itwas a very enjoyable experience. The boardmeetings took the form of lunches that werelong and liquid but from my point of view,not very productive. As has been typical ofa number of clubs in the Toronto area, themembership was aging and declining innumbers. The competition for what waslargely a luncheon club was by then muchgreater than in the early days with a varietyof new restaurants in the area. In a word itwas probably considered somewhat stuffy.

By a happy coincidence, my term asPresident coincided with Bill Morari whohad been with the club many years, takingover as General Manager. Together we hada wonderful opportunity to revitalize theorganization for the 21st century. First wehad to recreate the product.

There was no point in trying to duplicate the type of venue provided by Canoe or Jump.The club had to provide something that was unique – a sense of highly personalized service by a wonderful and very loyal staff in a location that somewhat duplicates enter-taining in one’s home. However the menu needed a total revamping. We had to providea broad list of wines by the glass (the National Club has an outstanding cellar but notmany people these days order a bottle of wine for lunch).

We had to design programs that would appeal to a younger audience e.g. jazz and martininights. We arranged for new uniforms for the staff (by allowing them to pick the style that suited them which they did extremely well). We arranged theatre nights preceded by dinner. A number of the rooms were redecorated and within a year, the ‘product’ washardly recognizable. We even upgraded the bylaws and changed a strict ‘Code ofConduct’ that would have scared off any prospective member to a simple list of ‘ClubCourtesies’.


The National Club offers a unique combination of old-world charm and values in a modern, efficient downtown business club environment

The board meetings were transformed into real work sessions. Much of the workrevolved around getting new members.

It occurred to me that the National Club had the best catchment area of any club in thecountry. It was surrounded by some of the tallest buildings in Canada and the prospect-ing area was essentially accessible by going up and down the elevators.

I started to host weekly lunches to which we would invite a few prospective members aswell as some of the current board members. A nice lunch was followed by a tour and ifthe new prospect seemed both interested and acceptable, a proposal for membership wasput forward. Within the year we brought in nearly 100 new members. Many of these wereyounger members and they in turn brought in their peers.

The National Club in recent years has been a very financially stable organization andnow it was a dynamic one. I was followed as President by DianeWoodruff, the first woman President. We have had several sincethen and this added impetus to the National Club’s growth. Ishould point out that while it appears that everything wassmooth sailing, not all of the old habits changed quickly.

In the year before I became President, I had complained that themain dining room was painted in a hideous dark green andshould be lightened with a cream or off-white colour. The thenGeneral Manager assured me that the older members wouldnever accept it. I spoke to a couple of them and one gave me the lead I was looking for. He noted that about 30 years earlier,the main dining room had been painted off-white. I took thisobservation to the board and said that thiscolour was in fact one of the great traditionsof the club. The board members agreed thattradition was a wonderful thing and theroom got repainted.

Traditions die hard. About the only personalbenefit one gets from being President of aclub like the National is that you get to sit onthe Wine Committee in the year followingyour term as President. I approached theWine Committee with my usual sometimesmisplaced enthusiasm. I pointed out thatwine should be viewed as a profit centre, we should be concerned about the turnover ofstock, upgrading the wine list from just red bordeaux and white burgundies to new worldwines, have sales of some of our over age stock and should re-examine the mark-up on ourbottles. The members of the Wine Committee who viewed their role as just tasting winelooked at me in utter horror and as I recall I was never invited to the second meeting!


The incoming and past Presidents of the National Club

Diane Woodruff, the first woman President

of the National Club

The National Club for the first time in living memory now has a vibrant much youngermembership and a wait list.

Although I doubt if a Fraternity would exactly be considered a club, it isin somewhat the same category. I was rushed for Sigma Chi during mytime at University and joined in 1953. Sigma Chi never really fit into thenormal perception of Fraternity row. It was founded in 1855 as a literarysociety and always had a strong emphasis on not just fellowship butscholarship. I suspect that some might have thought it a bit nerdy to usea term not heard for about fifty years.

While Fraternities do reach out to their alumni to assist in projects such as buying newfurniture for the Fraternity house, they are not generally known as progressive fundraisers.However for the Sesquicentennial in 2005, Sigma Chi internationally launched a campaign built around scholarship, character building and fellowship. I was on the organ-izing committee of this campaign run out of the International Headquarters in theChicago area and was the one who suggested the name – the Making a DifferenceCampaign. As I might have expected, I ended up chairing theCanadian segment of that campaign (another example of notknowing when to stay quiet!). The Campaign in Canada hasraised about $1.25 million to ensure that the brothers at our chap-ters across the country have the facilities e.g. libraries, computers,study facilities and other physical needs to maintain a high gradepoint average. I even supplemented this by establishing awardsto be given annually for the chapter with the highest GPA and theone making the most progress toward that goal.

Sigma Chi is one of the largest fraternities in North America bothin terms of undergraduate and alumni members. Like other educational institutions, it does have a very loyal alumni base andthis was our only source for the Making a Difference Campaign.

About a dozen years ago, under the leadership of Ted Rogers andothers, a Sigma Chi Canadian Foundation was set up which couldgrant tax receipts for donations as long as the funds were used to support scholarship in one way or another. The Foundationhowever has no paid staff. This meant that everything in the campaign had to be designed and produced by volunteers. Thewhole process reminded me of the YOUTHLINK experience discussed earlier whereessentially I had to design the brochures, pledge cards, letterhead, solicitors manuals andeverything else and ended up paying for this. By now I should know better but as Glennaalways says, if I did not enjoy doing such things, I would do something else.


A brochure for theMaking a Difference

Campaign


Brothers w

ho attended the Canadian Sig R

eception at the Sesquicentennial Celebration of Sigm

a Chi

in Cincinnati, O

hioon June 25, 2005 graciously hosted by Significant Sig G

eorge Fierheller

Liking to be LikedIt is not surprising that individuals have particular motivations to support particular voluntary projects. I have tried to give a number of examples from different areas that illustrate this. However it would be useful to return once again to examine someoverriding motivations that apply in nearly all situations.

Most people like to be liked. Doing something that is ‘good for the community’ is oneway of accomplishing this. This is perhaps not the most noble motivation but for many Ibelieve it is important. There is nothing wrong with this. The opposite of not being likedis not palatable to most and is likely not very productive.

The very wealthy may attempt the same thing by lavish parties or gifts. The RomanEmperors were experts at this with their bread and circuses approach but for many thesedays, a more subtle version of the noblesse oblige approach is more acceptable.

Self esteem can be a huge motivator and recognition by your peers that you are at leastpulling your weight is a boost for this.

I am not sure that digging into this area too deeply is helpful. But I have often questionedmy own motivations in donating to one of my old schools for example. Is it because I amreally concerned about providing scholarships or facilities for future students I will neverknow or is it that I can feel quietly superior at a class reunion? Do I really donate just toshow that I can?

I rather doubt the latter but I cannot rule it out. Perhaps it does not even matter if theresults are satisfactory to all involved – the institution gets what it wants and I get the satisfaction of knowing that some of my time and money is going to something useful.

I am hardly alone in raising this issue. Thorstein Veblen pointed out that altruistic givingmay be an advertisement of dominance or superiority. Richard Dawkins in The GodDelusion reminds us of the Potlatch Effect “named after the custom whereby rival chief-tains of Pacific North-West tribes vie with each other in duels of ruinously generousfeasts”. This bizarre practice has been analyzed by anthropologists for years trying to figure out what the winner actually gains. In many cases, it can only be temporary prestigebecause the result is often personal impoverishment i.e. there really is no winner in thiskind of behaviour.

It does raise another issue however. Are people motivated to donate time or money in the expectation of some form of reciprocity? In my case, while I may have somedoubts about the purity of my motives concerning recognition, I can say categoricallythat expectation of getting anything positive in return has never been a motivation. In fact


for reasons of self-esteem it would be quite counter productive to expect this. Further, italmost never happens.

What are more likely major motivations and where many do derive personal satisfactionis from being involved in a situation that is mentally stimulating, expands one’s experi-ences, exposes a person to a large range of fascinating people and likely does improvethe quality of life for the broad community.

Atheists are perhaps somewhat irrational at this point. They likely do not count on anyreward on earth for whatever they do and certainly are not expecting a reward in heavenor elsewhere. As Einstein said “if people are good only because they fear punishment,and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.

So I have come to the conclusion that most people most of the time do the right thingbecause it is the right thing – not really a bad reason at all.


What have you done for me lately?So as might be expected we seem to be motivated by both lofty and less lofty reasons. Ina way this may not matter as much as the results. But what are the results as we start anew century?

The answer is somewhat disconcerting.

In North America, the absolute amount given to charities over the past decades has goneup steadily. This is hardly surprising if one looks at the huge growth in accumulated capital resulting from a reasonably steady growth in the capital markets.

Fifty years ago in 1957, the Dow was at 435. In the spring of 2007, it is well over 12,000.Even allowing for inflation, this growth has created a huge accumulation of wealth on thepart of individuals.

The experience in Canada has been much the same. The TSX (formerly TSE) index rosefrom about 4,800 only ten years ago to well over 13,000.

It would be quite surprising if this growth in wealth had not led to a growth in theabsolute levels of giving.

Unfortunately, that is not the most helpful way of looking at our philanthropic perform-ance. As Robert Putnam points out in Bowling Alone, the more meaningful comparisonwould be to plot the change in Philanthropic Generosity as a percentage of NationalIncome. His graph (page 124) shows that while this percent did grow fairly steadily from1929 (i.e. post crash) until the early 1960s, it has been in decline ever since. As he notes:

“Through bad times and good Americans grew steadily more generous” in the postdepression and war years but since then “our generosity has steadily shrivelled” despitethe enormous rise in our capital markets as noted above.

I do not have comparable Canadian figures but I would be surprised if they were muchdifferent. Let me give you what is to me a somewhat surprising Canadian example.

If one were asked how many donors there are in Toronto, Canada’s wealthiest city with2.5 million people, who give $10,000 or more to the United Way, our largest annual charity, I expect many would guess several thousand.

In fact the number in 2005 was 716! And this is a dramatic increase resulting from a con-certed effort of the Major Individual Gifts Committee chaired by the likes of John Tory,now leader of the opposition in Ontario, Bill McKinnon, Chair of KPMG and others. As a result of their efforts the number is up from 386 in 2002.


There is however an interesting corollary to this. These 716 individuals who gave over$10,000, actually gave an average gift of $23,700. This illustrates an interesting offset to the relatively small number of people who are considered major donors. Those whodo give at this level do so very generously. The trend in the United States appears to besimilar with more and more larger gifts coming from a smaller number of people.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy of February 22, 2007 reports on the annual ranking of the sixty most generous Americans. In 2005, eleven people gave at least $100 million tocharitable causes. In 2006, that had escalated to twenty-one. Many of these gifts are wellrecorded in the media e.g. Bill and Melinda Gates and the further support theirFoundation got from Warren Buffett.

Not even counting Mr. Buffett’s $43.5 billion donation, these wealthy Americans committed $7 billion to charitable causes compared with $4.3 billion in 2005. It will beinteresting to see what this trend does in terms of Robert Putnam’s graph. We may be onthe verge of a return to a strong growth in donations as a percentage of national income,driven however by the few, not the many.

This trend, if anything, will likely escalate. Dr. Sherry Cooper, Chief Economist of theBank of Montreal points out we can look forward to a ‘Boomer’s Boom’ where the BabyBoomers will soon have both time and money to contribute.

The recent change in tax laws in Canada allowing fully tax exempt donations of publiclytraded securities to registered charities is also already having a dramatic impact.

For some years, the 80/20 rule seemed to apply in fundraising i.e. 80% of the actual revenue came from about 20% of the donors. My recent experience at SunnybrookHealth Sciences Centre would indicate that this is now closer to 90/10. In fact the actualfigure for the ‘quiet’ phase of the campaign is that 90% of the $130 million raised so farcomes from less than 1% of donors (0.7% to be precise).

Is this a return to noblesse oblige?

One could conclude that a major hospital or university campaign might be somewhatbiased and one should look at the broad range of donations rather than just a single campaign. No doubt this is true.

The Statistics Canada Survey based on 2004 figures pointed out that 25% of all donorsaccounted for 82% of all donations and 10% accounted for 62%.

The Stats Can Survey of course includes a broad category of organizations. Some 49% ofdonations for example go to religious organizations and given the broad base of suchdonors, the donations are likely substantially smaller.


One conclusion is obvious however. Today’s campaigns can only succeed if they concentrate on mega gifts. You just cannot raise $100 million by going after 100,000$1,000 gifts. The costs would be extraordinarily high even if one tried to do this and thetrends do not suggest this is even worth trying.

It is worth spending some time looking at some of the trends in the 21st Century that mayreveal more about people’s motivations to donate time and money to charitable causes.


III.FUNDRAISING IN A NEW CENTURY

The New Corporate ClimateThe corporate picture is not much different from that of individuals. A small number oforganizations give the bulk of what corporations do contribute to charitable and not-for-profit organizations in Canada.

“Of the non-profit sector’s $112 billion in revenues, 3% came from corporate Canada in2003 representing about $3 billion” (Forefront, Imagine Canada, Volume 2, No. 2, 2006).This $3 billion may be somewhat hard to reconcile with the fact that only 3% of Canadianbusinesses claimed charitable donations on their 2003 tax returns totalling $1 billion(Easwaramoorthy, Barr, Gumulka and Hartford, 2006). But the $3 billion includes substantial sponsorships which seem to be an increasingly important way for corporationsto support the not-for-profit sector.

The motivation for the latter is obvious as it does tend to increase the profile of corporationsin the community. Three types of organizations got the bulk of that support – sports andrecreation, fundraising and voluntarism promotion, and Arts and Culture.

Another interesting observation made by Imagine Canada is that “large charities andnon-profits receive the bulk of corporate giving. 84% of the nearly $3 billion donated by businesses in 2003 went to 7% of organizations that have revenues of more than $1 million” (National Survey of Non-profit and Voluntary Organizations, 2003). So large corporations give the bulk of the donations and they give it to large not-for-profitorganizations – not that different from the individual donation performance.

In a major capital campaign, we normally estimate that one should not count on morethan about 18% of the campaign goal coming from corporations. Therefore more andmore, fundraising is directed toward individuals.

Before we malign the corporations however we should bear in mind that they supportnot-for-profit groups by “encouraging their employees to volunteer during working hours


or to accommodate their employees’ volunteering activities.” In fact about 54% did thisaccording to a recent survey of over 900 businesses. It is hard to put an exact figure onthe value of this as it is not tax deductible to the corporation and hence is not reportable.However it is an invaluable way for businesses to participate.

So how generous are Canadian corporations? A reasonable comparison would be withthe performance of corporations in Australia. For the same time period based on a surveyof 2,705 businesses, 67% of Australian corporations contributed a total of $3.3 billion.This is from a country with less than two thirds the population of Canada and of coursea much smaller GDP. This comparison with a somewhat similar country would indicatethat we have a long way to go given our 3% and $3 billion performance.

So what motivates businesses to contribute? The Imagine Canada Research Report:Business Contributions to Canadian Communities, 2007 suggests there are four generalreasons for their contributions:

1. Marketing e.g. building a company’s brand and reputation. 2. Shared fate rationale, e.g. companies believe that they will prosper from a healthy

and vibrant community. 3. A social licence to operate e.g. businesses recognize that they need to be accepted

by the communities in which they operate as being good corporate citizens. 4. Improved ability to recruit and retain employees e.g. corporate contributions foster

pride and loyalty amongst employees.

None of these reasons are exactly altruistic and perhaps hark back to the earlier quotedobservation by Milton Friedman which paraphrased says that ‘the business of business is business’.

In fact some very prominent businessmen have a per-sonal conviction that corporations should not ‘give awaythe shareholders’ money’. They feel that corporationsshould earn money, pay dividends, create capitalgains, or pay interest and then allow the recipients to dowhatever they feel is appropriate in the community.While this is not a widely held view, it is held by somewho are themselves very community minded.The largestsingle gift so far to the Sunnybrook Health SciencesCentre Capital Campaign has come from Bill Holland,Chair and CEO of CI Mutual Funds. Bill has alreadygiven $20 million to support what is now called theThe Holland Orthopaedic and Arthritic Centre. WhileBill holds the view that corporations are not the prop-er vehicle for such donations, his personal generosity,and this was entirely a personal gift, is extraordinary.


Bill also exemplifies another trait that is becoming more common with large personaldonations. He has made it clear that his ongoing support for the Centre will depend on the hospital performing i.e. demonstrably improving the services and reducing wait times. I can only applaud this type of business-like approach to a non-business donation.

This also illustrates that we may forget that businesses are run by people and these peopleshare the same motivations as anyone else. Many executives genuinely want to be seento be ‘doing the right thing’ and there is certainly nothing wrong with this.

It has however put considerable pressure on the Chairs and CEO’s of large corporationsto donate their time as well as their own and their corporation’s funds. This in turn hasled to the famous ‘old boys network’. As a small group within any community who areregularly tapped for all manner of charitable undertakings, they tend to be reasonablyreceptive when their peers ask them to assist a cause, knowing that they would probablybe reciprocating in the near future. This has likely grown out of control and is the reasonfor a quite alarming trend in corporate giving, at least by larger corporations.

More and more corporations are setting up employee contribution committees or theequivalent. These are likely staffed by a professional within the organization but a largeportion if not all of the corporate contribution is routed through what is largely a volunteeremployee committee.

The well meaning members of such committees are usually there for a short time. Theirwork is on top of whatever else they do.

However well intentioned, the result is often ‘lowest common denominator contributions’.

If I have heard it once, I have heard it a dozen times. Just about every corporationthrough its employee committee now says something along the lines that our major thrustwill be youth and education. This is understandable because it is understandable. One could have nothing against support of our young people who obviously are going to be the future of our country as we all know. However just about every corporation is doing the same thing. We are going to end up with too much money directed towardtoo few causes.

I may be unduly sensitive to this but getting corporate support these days for somethingas important for the long run development of the country as fundamental research isbecoming extremely difficult when the decisions are made at a relatively low level withinthe company.

My belief is that the pendulum has swung too far and what started off as logical delega-tion has turned into abdication on the part of senior executives.


I empathize with why this has happened. The corporation naturally will assume that theycan best meet their objectives by supporting projects that are high profile and easilyunderstood by their customers as well as their employees. I know this will sound like myusual elitist self, but I am concerned that this trend will lead to too many wheel chairs andnot enough funding for medical research. I hope I am wrong.

So I push for some balance to be reintroduced into the types of projects that corporationssupport.

I also hope that corporations will subscribe to the concept that donations to the not-for-profit sector are a proper use of shareholder funds. While I realize my view is notunanimously held, I do believe that corporations can only be as strong as the economy andthe economy can only be as strong as the communities in which a company operates,from which it draws its employees and to which it sells its products or services.

A corporation is really only a person and in fact is so viewed before the law in manyways. It is born (letters of incorporation), it can marry (merge), be sued and can die (gobankrupt). If corporations are ‘persons before the law’, then they should look at donationslike any individual.

Fortunately many do.


The New CustomersIf my corporate comments have raised a few eyebrows I am sure to raise even more bydiscussing our rapidly changing donor base in Canada. No matter how one approachesthis subject (and almost no one will) there is every danger of being misunderstood.

To use Toronto as an example, the Greater Toronto Area is growing at well over 100,000 people per year. As we know, the domestic birth rate is not what is driving this.It is immigration.

Nearly 50% of the people in Toronto do not have English as their first language. Bravo.

We are a nation of immigrants. Even our aboriginal people were immigrants althoughthey may have arrived here over 15,000 years ago. My own family has been in Canadawell over 200 years but we were immigrants nonetheless. Since the first citizenship cere-mony held in 1947 after the Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect on January 1st,more than 6,000,000 people have become Canadian citizens. This has provided us with one of the most culturally and linguistically diversified countries anywhere and eachgeneration becomes the beneficiary of this continued development.

I perhaps see this more than most as I am one of a number of volunteer Presiding Officersat Citizenship Ceremonies, administering the Oath of Citizenship to new Canadians.

As an aside I might add that this is a veryimaginative idea in itself. As Canada ischronically short of Judges, CitizenshipCanada came up with the idea of askingMembers of the Order of Canada to volunteer as Presiding Officers at such ceremonies. This not only saved thedemand on the time of Judges but is alsovery cost effective – we of course receive no remuneration for this!

However it is rewarding in many ways andthe ceremonies are both touching andencouraging.

At each ceremony, I administer the Oath toabout 80 people. In terms of where they arefrom, I do not recall ever having less than 27different countries represented in a group.Usually this exceeds 30.


George Fierheller presiding at a Citizenship Ceremony

To ignore this huge change in the demographic base of Canada and to not examine the implications for fundraising would truly be folly. My comments are intended to beconstructive, not critical.

It is generally accepted that Americans are the most receptive to the idea of voluntarysupport for good causes. Canadians seem to be somewhere in between there and Europeand elsewhere in the world. We get few immigrants from the United States. The implica-tion of the influx of new Canadians is therefore that we are facing a rapidly growing population of those whose cultures may not support broad based philanthropic activities,at least not as we tend to understand them.

Do not get me wrong. I am not implying that new Canadians are in any way less generousor concerned about their fellow men and women. They may however by reason of religionor culture, tend to ‘look after their own’. For example, have you ever seen a Chinesestreet person? I do not believe that I ever have. One of the great strengths of the Chinesecommunity is that they take as personal responsibility the well-being of other membersof their community and this extends beyond just their immediate family.

I am only using the Chinese community as an example as they are the largest non-Englishlanguage group in the GTA. They are also one of the most advanced in terms of viewingphilanthropic activities well beyond their community. For years the Chinese communityhas taken the lead in the United Way Walkathon which kicks off the United WayCampaign each year. Other ethnic communities are starting to follow their example.

But I can also give an example of where the cultural gap still exists. When I was fundraisingfor Trinity College, we made a trip to Hong Kong. There were a number of Hong Kongfamilies who had children attending the College. As we were in Capital Campaign mode,I felt that we should approach some of the parents of some of the students and ask themto participate in the Campaign.

Our welcome was with all the usual wonderful Chinese hospitality. One set of parentsinsisted on taking us to the Hong Kong Jockey Club for dinner and they expressed theirgreat appreciation for the wonderful education their daughter had received at theCollege. When the dinner had reached what I thought was a logical point, I raised thepossibility of their making a donation to the College in appreciation for the service we had provided. It was as though someone had opened the window and a cold breezehad blown through. The dinner ended rather abruptly and I realized that in my owninsensitive way, I had opened an awkward issue.

I believe that if we had charged them many times the tuition their daughter had beencharged, they would have paid this gladly. Asking for a donation however appeared tobe ‘begging’ and it was embarrassing to them.

Perhaps I should not take too much from this one example, but the culture is different –


not wrong, just different. It is up to us, Canadians with a Canadian view of philanthropy,to bridge this gap.

While Mark Steyn in America Alone may be somewhat overstating the case when he subtitles his book “the end of the world as we know it”, he is pointing out fundamentaldemographic trends and the philanthropic world cannot ignore these.

In fact I believe that the future well-being of philanthropy in Canada or most of NorthAmerica for that matter will depend on our capitalizing on these trends. Is this possible?

The key will be for those already imbued with the North American approach to philan-thropy to make a special effort to reach out to our newer citizens. Every large campaignsays this but few of us do it effectively. In fact when I look at my own Campaign Cabinetfor Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, it is almost entirely composed of those who havebeen in the country for at least a generation and in some cases many generations. Cometo think of it, CIFAR is the same.

But what we can be sure of is that there is a receptive audience amongst the newerCanadians. As pointed out earlier, they may already have a wonderfully generous senseof support for their own community. In the case of the Muslim community, ‘giving alms’is one of their fundamental beliefs. Our challenge will be to build on this base and toexpand that thinking to an even broader support of the community as a whole.

Does it work? Absolutely. I will give only a few examples. Dr. Joseph Wong is a dentistalthough I doubt Joseph has spent much time practicing. He is one of the most energeticvolunteers in the GTA. As you might expect he has been a leader within his own community through the development of a wonderful retirement home for the Chinesecommunity called Yee Hong. But he is a leading example of a Canadian who has reachedfar beyond his community. Joseph has for many years been the Honorary Chair of theUnited Way of Greater Toronto. He was in this capacity during my campaign in 1991 andwas an active member of my Cabinet as well. Once he was aware of a need, he was thereto help the community meet it.

To take an example from another community, one of those I have greatly respected overthe years is Bahadur Madhani. Bahadur is a member of the Ismaili Muslim community.Bahadur was born in Tanzania and lived for a while in London before immigrating toCanada. He is a businessman running a very successful organization based in RichmondHill. In 1990, the United Way invited him to join its Campaign Cabinet. He not onlystayed on as a volunteer for over a decade but ended up chairing the United Way Boardof Directors.

Bahadur is another example of someone who has completely bridged the gap betweenhis own community and the broader community and has retained an active interest inboth. For example he has served on the Board of the ROM while being very active withthe Aga Khan Council for Canada.


But we need not confine our consideration to the so-called visible minorities. One onlyhas to look at the wonderful philanthropic work of Peter and Melanie Munk. During myUnited Way Campaign, Peter hosted a Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I noted to my CampaignCabinet that Peter was one of Canada’s leading philanthropists, he just did not know ityet. This turned out to be prophetic because Peter who is also a first generation Canadiansubsequently contributed to multiple organizations at a very generous level including theMunk Centre for International Relations and the Trinity Library as well as the PeterMunk Cardiac Centre at the University Health Network.

And then one could look to Michael Lee-Chin. I do not know Michael as well as theothers although I have met him on severaloccasions. He is one of the city’s leadingadvocates for broadly based philanthropy.His key donation to the ROM for theMichael Lee-Chin Crystal is perhaps hisbest known donation but there are manyothers.

The ROM did exactly the right thing. Theysought out Michael and got him on theirBoard long before they asked for any contri-bution. They made the effort to outreachand it worked for everyone – Michael andthe community.

I could go on but the important point is thatthe generosity is there although their tradi-tion might not be our tradition. Some yearsago Ted Rogers and I called on Li Ka-Shing.There we met a person with not only incred-ible economic skills but someone with a world view that was well beyond the Chinesecommunity. About 20 years ago, the Li Ka-Shing Foundation was established and hasgrown to be one of the world’s largest. Canada is one of the beneficiaries.

In summary, the old money in Canada was made by and large in this country. It is onlynatural that those who created their wealth here would be the first to return some of this with an investment in their communities. I am sure that newer Canadians will devel-op the same philosophy. It is up to earlier generations to reach out and make sure thishappens.

To quote Forefront, “Immigrants are almost as likely to donate as native-born Canadians(85% compared to 86%) and made annual donations averaging $462 compared to $394for native-born Canadians”.


My grandson, Chris Wittemeier being given apersonalized tour of the Michael Lee-Chin

Crystal by the Royal Ontario MuseumGeneral Manager, William Thorsell

“It may take new Canadians a while to get established and to start making charitabledonations, but once they do, they are almost as likely to make a donation as native-bornCanadians – and their average donation is larger”.

There are other demographics that have to be looked at in terms of their impact onfundraising. One is our aging population. In Canada the 65+ population is currentlygrowing at a rate of 3% compared with 1% expansion for the general population. As pointed out in Global Demographics – Fundraising for a New World by Judith Nichols, “By 2010, with the aging of the baby boom, one in five Canadians will be over 65. By 2021there will be over 5.8 million Canadians over 65 or about 16% of the population.”

Everyone understands that people in Canada are living longer but more importantly areliving better both financially and from a health perspective.

As Judith points out older people are concerned about outliving their assets and aboutunexpected major expenses e.g. health care, nursing homes. Because they will live longerafter retirement they may need to spread their post retirement income over a greater period. They also have little intention of giving up the lifestyle to which they havebecome accustomed.

Finally older people may well have been born in the thirties or during the war which perhaps makes them more careful with their money.

Having said all this, they are a group that have a great deal to offer in terms of their volunteer capability and volunteers are nearly always good donors.

A challenge is keeping in touch with them when they retire. Some move to smaller communities, some winter in Florida but even the latter usually have to spend half theirtime in Canada.

When asking such people to volunteer, it is important to point out that much fundraisingcan be done on their schedule i.e. when they are here. They may even be able to contactsome of their peers down south.

As pointed out earlier, this group may not realize how wealthy they really are and howeconomically attractive it is to give now rather than later. I will touch on this briefly again.

In any case the important thing is to not think of people over 65 as old but rather as available to help. They are likely well off, often desiring the companionship which comeswith volunteer efforts and are often well motivated.

The other end of the demographic scale however is even more important. One of myconcerns over the years is the philanthropic community’s lack of ability to bring youngpeople on-stream. Obviously it is not that they are under-motivated. It is usually because


they are preoccupied with getting established, raising a family, paying off their studentloans or whatever.

I referenced a talk I gave called ‘The Competitive Edge’ which endeavoured to point outthe practical as well as the altruistic value of volunteering. The theme was to encourageyoung people to view themselves as having two careers that run in parallel – one to makemoney and one to give it away. (The full talk is available at www.gfierheller.ca as part ofa book entitled Let Me Say This About That.) If they can be encouraged even while inschool to become involved in extra curricular activities, they will develop a lifetime habitthat will stand them in very good stead. Upon graduation, they should be encouraged tojoin organizations such as the Board of Trade Young Professionals or many similargroups. Junior Achievement is a great place to start.

Some good advice is given in the Imagine Canada Bulletin on youth volunteering whereit is pointed out that to ensure youth involvement, organizations should• Value young people’s opinions• Listen to youth• Provide support that is not directive, but allows youth to be creative in achieving

their volunteer mission• Respect young people for their achievements.

Whatever they do, it should also be enjoyable and I will conclude this book with someexamples of the fun one can have in a parallel career.

If young people go on to university, they will likely get caught up in the Corporate SocialResponsibility rage (CSR). Rage is the word used in the Financial Post Business Magazinearticle where they quote the very good advice given by David Weitzner of YorkUniversity’s Schulich School. He correctly points out that in encouraging youth to take a broad view of the social responsibility of corporations, “I’m not trying to teach my students a right and a wrong. I’m trying to instill a notion of moral awareness.”

Perhaps his efforts and those of others will inspire a new generation to pick up where weleave off.


The New OutlookMega Gifts and Mega GetsWe discussed the fact that larger gifts are getting larger still. However the requirements of the not-for-profit area are also going up sharply. This is compounded by the fact thatgovernments are trying to ease out of support for some areas.

We often hear the statistic quoted that there are over 70,000 charities in Canada. In factif you include the not-for-profits which still have to fundraise in many cases, there were161,000 charities and not-for-profits in Canada in 2003. As noted, these organizations,sometimes called the third sector, had revenues of over $112 billion in that year. Too badwe cannot find a way of supporting an industry of this size with public underwritings –even in these days of mega mergers, this is big business.

And in many cases it does have a product that is extremely useful to society – a bettereducated, more adaptive and healthier workforce.

The investment for example in agencies that help new Canadians become more produc-tive by introducing them to the legal system, the job market, training for language skillsand other needs is essential to keep our economy growing.

Looking at the whole not-for-profit sector according to the Ketchum Canada Inc. Spring2006 Philanthropic Trends, Canadians gave some $7 billion and as well donated some 2 billion hours of volunteer work. They conclude that “our country has one of the mostvibrant non-profit sectors in the world”.

To support such a mega industry does require mega gifts. Fortunately these are starting to happen. In Canada, the break given by the federal government to reduce and theneliminate the capital gains tax on donated securities is having the desired effect. TheUniversity of Toronto ran the country’s first Billion Dollar Capital Campaign. Mega giftsare becoming more common and leadership is being shown by such individuals asSeymour Schulich, the Odettes, the Ivey family, Ted Rogers, Joey Tannenbaum, Hilaryand Galen Weston, Lawrence Bloomberg and the Thomson family just to mention a few.

With their example, others are sure to follow.

We Start at the CurbOne of the motivations for mega giving is obviously naming opportunities. Just abouteveryone I have ever talked to says that it is of no importance to them but most do notturn it down. In fact to most I suspect it reflects a very natural desire for recognition if notsome form of immortality. A medieval saying that only “fame overcomes death” hasprobably more truth in it than most of us would admit.


When we were raising funds for the new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts,one of the staff made a trip to the southern United States to see how they raised moneyfor their new Arts centre. When she asked about the importance of naming opportunitiesthe reply apparently was “honey, we start at the curb”.

And why not? There is nothing new in this.Big money has brought big naming oppor-tunities together with big benefits to the public whether these are Carnegie Libraries,Guggenheim Museums or whatever. If thisapproach was good 100 years ago, then whynot have the Schulich Heart Centre, the IveySchool of Business, the Thomson Gallery orthe Rogers Communications Centre.

In Canada we seem to occasionally feel suchthings are immodest. But then we havenever really valued or recognized the lead-ers in our community.

If it raises money, be ready to name thewashrooms!

The SOHO WorkplaceRobert Putnam documented the dramaticchange in the way people work and live. The tendency he discussed of people being lessinclined to join organizations and certainly a declining loyalty to the corporation (whichis usually reciprocated) has led to people doing more and more on their own.

Don Tapscott in Wikinomics pointed out how this growing trend can be extremely productive. As long as organizations are willing to decentralize their workforce, peoplecan do what they do in the Single Office/Home Office.

Whatever the sociological implications of this may be, this trend clearly has implicationsfor fundraising.

Despite my exhortations that the United Way must try to protect its workplace position,the workplace is declining in its importance. Jobs are outsourced as pointed out in The World Is Flat and where there were once potential donors in Canada these jobs arenow in Bangalore or Hyderabad.

It may or may not be possible to reach such potential donors but if it is, it will only be bythe Internet.


The Schulich Heart Centre at Sunnybrook

The Odette Wing of the Toronto andSunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre

In Canada, I have not yet seen any major impact from online giving but it is growing.The availability of such sites as CanadaHelps is clearly helping. The early users are largelyindividuals who try to get sponsorship for their participation in a fundraising race orsomething of that sort. However it is here to stay and it is going to have to be activelyexploited.

It is interesting that some of Canada’s major banks are now offering managed services for charitable giving. As they have online banking services, this is going to be a naturaltransition.

One of the secrets of fundraising is always to make it easy to for the donor to give. If theyspend hours a day online, need we say more.

Give When You’re Gone is GoingHow often have you heard the expression ‘I have remembered you in my will’? Whilethis is a generous thing to do and every charity appreciates the thought, it is frustratingfundraising. First there is no way of knowing what you will get and certainly no way ofknowing when. Asking an aging supporter if they would consider a bequest can also besomewhat embarrassing. No matter how you word the request, it implies that a potentialdonor has not got much time left! Even if it is known a bequest has been made, meetingwith the donor and asking ‘how are you’ takes on slightly ghoulish overtones.

But beyond these observations, the ‘give when you are gone’ approach is not very taxeffective. In fact for the donor, it is usually not tax effective at all although the heirs mightappreciate it.

A further downside is that the donor misses the satisfaction of seeing the use of his or herfunds.

From the recipient standpoint, a charity cannot usually count the amount toward a campaigngoal as the donor may change his or her mind. There are of course ways to mitigate thise.g. the donation of life insurance policies but it is a tenuous business at best.

More importantly, it may not provide the funds to the organization when they need theme.g. for a building project.

On a personal basis, I have always taken the approach that leaving one’s heirs substan-tial funds when you and your spouse pass on suffers from the same problem. Young people usually need financial help when they are young, not when they are in their late60’s or early 70’s. They need the assistance when they are raising a family, buying houses,educating children and so on. I have taken the approach of giving my own children partof their inheritance either as a lump sum e.g. to pay off a mortgage or on a monthly basisand have done this for many years. It is very tax effective for them as such funds can begifted tax free. It does not help me much but then neither would a bequest.


The most likely reason for people taking the bequest route rather than making an outright donation and getting the tax advantage immediately is the fear that they may runout of money. This however can be mitigated by a variety of guaranteed annuityapproaches that allow the donor to make an irrevocable donation, get the appropriate taxreceipt and have an annuity purchased that guarantees them income for life.

With the capital gains tax eliminated on donations of securities, it becomes particularlytax effective to make donations while you are still around to see the effect.

The above may seem somewhat ungrateful but I really believe that in most cases, if thedonor thinks about it, they will realize that giving now rather than giving when they aregone is better for all concerned.

This means that the person asking has to be well trained to be able to raise points suchas the above. Another example of this is making sure that the volunteer making the ASKclearly explains to the prospect the difference between Capital and Annual giving.Annual giving usually comes out of income and is understandably small. It has a verydirect impact on cash flow. Capital giving almost always comes from Capital. As manypeople have built up substantial Capital resources and often far in excess of what theyeither will need for their golden years or what they probably should pass on to their offspring, the volunteer has to make clear that the hope is the donor will continue to givean annual gift out of income but will make a substantial one time gift from Capital. Thissounds obvious but it is surprising how often people fall into the trap of thinking they canonly give $10,000 a year because they are thinking only of cash flow.

Making an ASK is always interesting in any case. I had the occasion to ask a couple, bothof whom were graduates of my College for a gift to a recent campaign. We had little idea of what they could manage and I had to make an educated guess. On this occasionI used what I call the ‘rolling ask’. When the time came to bring up the amount we werehoping for I started by suggesting $25,000. When they did not blanch, I added the word‘each’. When they still did not absolutely collapse I added ‘a year for five years’. The latter addition was clearly stretching it and did not work but at least I had raised theirsights from $25,000 to $50,000!

Uneventful Events More and more these days, I hear business people saying ‘I would be pleased to supportyour cause but don’t ask me to go to another dinner’. I have great sympathy with theirconundrum. I am sure I could be out every night of the week at some fundraising affair.Worse than that, the money provided does not usually give rise to a tax receipt for thewhole amount donated. The Canada Revenue Agency understandably requires organi-zations to deduct the cost of whatever the dinner, show or attraction may be. In this wayit is not a very efficient way for organizations to raise funds and it is certainly not efficientfor the donor. Participating in a Charity golf tournament may have no financial benefit tothe donor at all.


This does not mean that events do not have a role in fundraising. Clearlysome are extremely successful interms of the net amount to the charityeven though the cost of fundraisingmay be easily 50% of the total rev-enue. Events can be very useful forprofile building. Raising awareness of the work of an organization can be very important and therefore a limited number of well run events canbe useful.

Events can also be motivational. At a hospital for example just gettingphysicians together with board mem-bers, suppliers, fundraisers and othersis often very helpful.

However it is important that thosewho support an event do not sub-stitute in their minds that this is their‘thing’ for the organization. Corpora-tions for example may support eventsfrom their marketing budgets ratherthan from a donations budget. Howeverit is usually helpful to make a single callon a corporation and explain that what you are really looking for is so much in capital,somebody to volunteer to help on a committee and support for an event i.e. package theASK and try to do it just once a year.

Of course events can be fun and as we shall see, there is nothing wrong with that.

Bring on the CompetitionIf variety is the spice of life then the philanthropic field is definitely spicy. The number ofcampaigns being run has escalated dramatically in the last few years. This is partly becauseof governments’ inability to fund everything that people want and partly because of thegrowing population that brings with it a diversity of wants and needs.

This strains not only the donors many of whom simply throw unsolicited mailed solici-tations into the wastepaper basket unopened but it is becoming a problem for the pool ofvolunteers. No matter what the cause, I seem to run into the same group of ‘professionalvolunteers’ like myself who are asked to do everything.


The solution is not to restrict campaigns. I am reminded of Ayn Rand’s prophecy that thegovernment involvement in the free market would ultimately lead to ‘anti dog eat dog’laws that would restrict competition. The better answer is to expand the pool of volun-teers. As noted before, Canadians annually donate two billion hours to volunteer workand this is a huge number. But it appears that many current volunteers are being askedto volunteer more of their time. As Robert Putnam points out, the more people becomeinvolved, the more likely they are to be asked. In fact (page 121) he notes that the mostcommon answer when someone is asked why they volunteer is “someone asked me”.

We need to be more aggressive about looking for sources of new volunteers. For example,large donors who already have a demonstrated interest in the particular cause should besought as potential members of a Campaign Cabinet.

As you will note from the above, I am not a particular fan of events but one side benefitis that they do give a list of people who at least have enough interest in the organizationto show up. Such lists should be scanned for potential volunteers.

Volunteering is a growth business.

The Myth of the Volunteer Led CampaignWhen recruiting, most not-for-profit organizations will emphasize that their campaign isrun by the volunteers. If it is, I predict the campaign will be in deep trouble. This may bea flattering comment for the volunteers but it is not the way any one of us would run ourown organizations.

If the non-executive chair of the board is running a company, the paid president is clearlynot doing his or her job.

The professionals have to manage campaigns. Volunteers arebest used as resources. This is the way it should be. The profes-sionals are on the job 24/7. They are trained and experienced.They are also paid to get the job done. They likely have bonusesto further motivate them.

From my point of view, one of the major considerations whenvolunteering to help an organization is the quality of the staff.Perhaps I have been spoiled by working with some of the bestprofessional fundraisers in the business, such as Kevin Goldthorpbut I have also seen what it is like when the volunteer has to stepin and do the whole job. Volunteers simply do not have the timemuch let alone the training to do this and the campaign will suffer accordingly. We are all busy people and despite the bestintentions, once we leave a Campaign Cabinet meeting and return to our desk withdozens of emails, voicemails and meetings, the fundraising efforts tend to move to the


Kevin Goldthorp -President and CEO,

Sunnybrook Foundation

bottom of the food chain. It is essential that the professional staff are the ones who developreasonable expectations for the volunteers and then reasonably drive them to perform.This takes all the usual management techniques of setting objectives, documenting whatis to be done, scheduling when it is to be done and then following-up with the volunteer.

The point may be obvious but campaigns are too large and too important these days tobe run by amateurs.

Risk Management in FundraisingThis may seem like an odd topic but it is one that seems to be totally neglected. In ourown businesses, we would never consider entering a major project without doing a carefulRisk Analysis and then preparing for possible contingencies. We should do no less in afundraising campaign.

In July 2003, I wrote a memo to the Executive Committee of the Sunnybrook Foundationentitled Risk Management for Fundraising. As it was totally oriented toward hospitalfundraising and was written for a particular situation, I will only paraphrase some of the thoughts.

My concern was that once we got provincial government approval for moving ahead with capital projects at Sunnybrook, the hospital would have to commit the millions of dollars in loans to commence construction. This puts an implied huge risk on the private sector fundraising. The funds raised would of course be required to graduallyrepay the loans.

The Foundation and certainly its Board of Trustees were and are in no position to makeany guarantees. I felt it was essential therefore that everyone understand the risks. I pointedout that “If a corporation were faced with such a risk, it would do a risk analysis to beprepared for possible contingencies”.

“In the Corporate world there would be three aspects to this:• Analyze the external risks and develop programs to avoid these where possible.• Develop a contingency plan in the event the risks are not avoidable.• Insure or hedge against the risk.”

Without going into all the details, I noted that we could minimize the risk by ensuring the CASE contained a good balance of emotionally attractive programs e.g. oncology,cardiology, community medicine that would appeal to a broad range of grateful patientsand then we had to ensure that the physicians were fully involved in being part of thecampaign. I also noted that we needed to dramatically expand our donor base.Sunnybrook has over a million visits annually which means we have a huge number ofpotential donors. But our cultivation of the catchment area was not mature. We also had to clearly differentiate the Sunnybrook campaign from those of competitive hospitalcampaigns.


In terms of managing the risk I felt this was more a hospital than a foundation function.The hospital should assume in the financing of its building program that fundraisingcould be either slow or less than adequate. For that reason, programs had to be priori-tized. Some programs such as research projects could be postponed if required. Whileendowments are desirable, they may not be feasible and the program might have to befunded over say a ten year period through pledges. I also pointed out that endowmentsare often difficult to fund as the donor may feel he or she can do better investing theirown money and simply make annual contributions. Further endowing programs in a fastmoving field such as medical science may not make a lot of sense. Needs change and the funding requirements will change with them. I also pointed out that the repaymentschedule for loans for construction should be as manageable as possible.

When it finally came to insuring the risk, I noted this is something that is rarely consid-ered in a fundraising campaign and is often thought to be impossible. However at onetime Sunnybrook did get insurance for a lottery that they ran and as I recall actually did make some use of the insurance when the lottery did not do as well as hoped and of course commitment to deliver the prizes is irrevocable. At least I thought this is some-thing that should be investigated.

Of course, I am not the best one to examine this. Can an atheist get insurance againstActs of God?

But there is another reason for wanting to do Risk Analysis for volunteer organizations.It is important for volunteers to feel comfortable that when an organization goes beyondjust asking for funds and enters the Ancillary Revenue Generation mode, the substantialadditional risks have been recognized.

Using hospitals as an example once again, there is a great temptation for such organiza-tions to expand into quasi-commercial activities. In fact in many ways, the provincial government is tending to push organizations in this direction. I am very much in favour ofnot-for-profit or charitable organizations making the best use of the resources they haveto generate funds rather than simply fundraise. However the risks should be carefullyassessed.

Just a few of the considerations would be:• Is the hospital venturing into a real business opportunity i.e. is there sufficient market

demand and has a proper business plan been created? • Does the activity really fit within the hospital’s vision and mission?• Should the activity be carried on through a separate corporation and if so does the

hospital lose responsibility and control?• How will the start-up costs be financed?• If partners are involved e.g. suppliers, what are the responsibilities of each party?• Does this in any way upset the hospital’s charitable status?• Is this really within the realm of what the government wants the organization to do?


Many of these are legal questions and anumber were raised by Fasken Martineauat a recent presentation in Toronto. It isbeyond the scope of this book to try toanswer these questions but not addressingthem could be de-motivational to poten-tial volunteers.

I raised all these issues because I felt thatwhen we were motivating volunteers, theywould feel much better if there was a solidrisk management plan in place. This maybe an odd form of motivation but at leastit can remove one of the reasons for a volunteer hesitating to accept.

We have looked at a lot of reasons whypeople donate time and/or money. Thefinal section gives some examples of oneof the main reasons that people do sayYES. Beyond the altruistic sense of doingthe right thing, the exposure to interesting new situations and the opportunity to workwith fascinating people, I have found that fundraising is fun.


IV.THE FUN IN FUNDRAISING

The Ultimate MotivationI remember just after World War II reading a book called the Burma Surgeon by a Dr. Seagraves. He had been as the name implies an army surgeon along the Burma Road.Someone commented to him that surgery must be a very exciting thing to do. He replied“Not really. It is just cutting and sewing, cutting and sewing.” I suppose one could look atfundraising in the same way and conclude that it is just meeting and asking, meeting andasking. If this is your conclusion, then it will look like work rather than an interesting andfascinating facet of your life.

The mere fact that you are working with interesting people opens up interesting oppor-tunities, many of which would not have been available to me had I not been activelyinvolved in the philanthropic sector.

I suppose I have a somewhat unusual approach to life but I enjoy virtually everything


First attract attention! Running a happy ship involves wearing many hats

I do and therefore would not expect fundraising to be any different. As pointed out in Finnie’s Family, I found the various commercial careers I had were largely enjoyabledespite the occasional frustrations that one always runs into. I even tried to make beingpart of any organization I ran fun for everyone involved. I guess I just like a happy ship.I have always been lucky enough to be able to indulge my interests in history, science,music, food and wine, and travel together with my parallel careers in business and voluntarism and somehow combine these with some kind of family life. But let me usetravel just as an example of the fun that can come from volunteer situations.

During my Trinity Campaign, we decided to try to exploit a large base of Trinity grads inBermuda. As noted earlier this is not easy as Bermuda is tax free and therefore one hasto be really altruistic to donate money. In any case Provost Tom Delworth, Kara Spenceand I were on the Air Canada flight to Hamiltonand as I recall had used Aeroplan points toupgrade to business class. The flight attendantcame to take our drink orders and looking atwhere I was seated said “So you’re 1A”. I quicklycorrected her by noting “not actually. I’m A1!”She thrust out her chest and noted “Well, I’m36C!” Another passing flight attendant looked ather and said “Huh, don’t you wish”. All of thissomewhat inane conversation I thought mightupset the Provost of the major Anglican Collegein Canada but I should have known better. Tomthought the whole discussion was hilarious.

But then I have always had an interesting interface with flight attendants. On one flightto the United States for a meeting of the Institute for the Certification of ComputerProfessionals (ICCP), I was sitting in the back of the plane and something was drippingon me from above. I was a naive flyer at that time and did not realize that occasionally it is the air conditioning that causes condensation. I had an awful feeling that it might be fuel. In any case I called the stewardess and pointed out that her plane was leaking.“My, isn’t it lucky this isn’t a submarine” she replied.

On another occasion I was flying to Chicago for a Sigma Chi Committee Meeting andthe pilot made an unusually bouncy landing. The flight attendant calmly announced“Ladies and gentlemen, we have just crashed in Chicago. Please keep your seatbelts fastened while the wreckage is towed to the gate”. Somehow I could not see these kindsof remarks happening anymore. Perhaps we just take ourselves too seriously.

By the way the trip to Bermuda was largely unproductive. Tom and I took a very wealthyif somewhat eccentric prospect out to dinner and after a reasonable amount of wine,made an ASK for $100,000. He said he would think about it but several weeks later acheque arrived for $100. Tom was ready to send the cheque back pointing out that it must


I’m A1

be an error. I said that I thought he had likely told his accountant to make out a chequefor a hundred and the accountant thought he meant $100 rather than $100,000. Wecashed the $100 cheque however just to be on the safe side. At least this paid for a coupleof bottles of wine.

When fundraising, one tries to watch the expenses. Trinity College also had many graduates working in the New York area and Tom and Kara and I set up a number of callsthere. I had left the hotel arrangements to Kara who booked us into something called theWyndham Hotel. I had been to New York on many occasions and had never heard of thehotel. Kara assured us that it would be just fine. On arrival I was more alarmed that eventhe cab driver couldn’t find it. When we got there, there was scaffolding all over the place.I was not sure whether it was under construction or demolition. I hoped the donorsappreciated all our sacrifices.

Volunteering does get you into interesting circumstances. I had just retired as Chair of theInformation Technology Association of Canada with which I had been associated for anumber of years. The members were kind enough to throw a largedinner in my honour. About a day before however Janice Moyer,the President, asked if I would help her in a rather difficult situation.She had undertaken to fly to Japan the morning after the dinner tomake a presentation at the founding of an international group ofassociations similar to ITAC. This was going to be held inYokohama and Prince Akishino of the royal family was going toopen the meeting. Apparently his staff had quietly advised Janicethat it would be an embarrassment to the Prince to have to greet awoman as President of one of the national associations. The staffasked if there was any way somebody could accompany her to fulfillthe handshaking part of the meeting.

Having nothing better to do, I of course agreed to accompanyJanice. After the dinner, we were both slightly bleary eyed on theflight over. However I used the time to try to catch-up on Japaneseculture. I read a magazine in which there was an interview with theChairman of one of the largest keiretsu. In the course of the interview he was asked if heever thought there would be a woman Chairman of the corporation. His reply put thewhole situation in perspective. He said “No. Not in my lifetime. Never.” I am sure theJapanese view of women in business has changed since the mid 1990’s but it certainlyalerted me as to why the Prince’s staff might think it inappropriate for Janice to lead thedelegation.

In fact when I met the Prince, he was completely charming and I doubt if he even knew ofthe request made by his staff. The meeting was held at the Intercontinental which was a beautiful new hotel in the shape of a sail right on the harbour. I of course never missed acocktail party or reception and got quite adept at drinking sake out of square cedar boxes.Janice did all the heavy lifting, giving speeches and officiating at the launch of the new


Janice Moyer -President and CEO,

InformationTechnology

Association ofCanada

organization called WITSA (World Information Technology and Services Alliance). Itoured the Yokohama harbour, the Maritime Museum and other delights while she washard at work. To thank her for being so tolerant, I agreed to take her and a couple of herpeers to dinner. As I had a Yen for something other than sushi by this time, I suggestedthe French restaurant in the Intercontinental. This was probably not a good idea asFrench cooking in Japan while excellent is at the top end of the economic scale. As Irecall it cost me a small fortune. Oh well, all in a good cause.

One of the downsides to fundraising is of course that you are expected to participate injust about everything. I was enticed to buy a table for example at the Toronto Mayor’sLunch for the Arts. We had just wound up the Canadian Opera House Campaign and I thought it would be nice to invite a couple of the senior members of that staff togetherwith Kara Spence to join me at my table. Wendy McDowall had just accepted a positionwith MaRS and Tenny Nigoghossian hadmoved to the National Ballet. Together withKara, they made a stunning trio for me toescort into the room. I was honest enough to tell them that my real motivation was to try to upstage Don Johnson (who was at thenext table). He was past Chair of the Councilfor Business and the Arts in Canada and theprime mover behind getting capital gains taxeliminated on donated securities. Kara kindlysuggested that we should get a photo of thethree of them with me and it could be used formy epitaph as she was sure this would berequired as soon as Glenna saw the picture.Fortunately the picture-taking never took place.

Having nothing in particular to do with fundraising but just an example of my attempt-ing to have fun in any situation, I attended an Empire Club Lunch a short while ago tohear a talk by Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the President of Latvia. The President is a Canadianand was one of the finalists to become Secretary General of the United Nations – a verycompetent and delightful woman. Glenna and I had actually met her in Latvia the prioryear when we were on a trip.

In any case the Empire Club usually has open seating and when I walked into the room,looked for a place to sit. There was an absolutely stunning young blonde with no one sitting beside her. Never one to miss an opportunity I walked over and asked if I couldjoin her. She smiled and I sat down. I then opened the conversation with something like“Hi. I’m George Fierheller and I knew you would want to meet me!” Again she smiledsweetly but did not say a word. After a couple more attempts, I realized that she did notspeak a word of English. She was with the Baltic Press and was there with the President.Another gentleman then joined the table on my other side and he turned out to have adreadful stutter. I slumped in my seat realizing it was going to be a long lunch!


The third member of the luncheon trio - Tenny Nigoghossian between

Gerry Heffernan and yours truly

When I relayed this tragic story to my wife, I understandably got very little sympathy. Infact she calmly asked what I would have done had my young blonde friend invited meup to see her etchings. I had to admit I had not thought that far ahead.

But fun is where you find it. Who would think one could ever get a few laughs from thecosmology project at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. At a major meetingin Montreal, presentations were made by a number of our researchers. I wrote and congratulated the cosmologists in particular pointing out that their presentation was ‘out of this world’.

‘Gravity has an attraction’, I noted.

At a board meeting, the CIFAR Vice President Research was commenting on a group ofinternational peers who were appraising our cosmology project. I said I hoped they werea ‘stellar group’. One of the down sides of volunteer boards is that you occasionally haveto put up with wise-cracking members.

During my tenure as President of the National Club, it was our 125th anniversary. Iarranged for a celebration dinner with Dave Broadfoot as the main entertainment.However as MC for the evening, I also had to welcome the Patrons of the event,Lieutenant Governor Hilary Weston and her husband Galen. I introduced her with a full


Cosmology and Gravity Project

description of her many titles and honors and noted that she was accompanied by afriend. Galen of course took this in fine fettle, particularly after I assured him that all thefood to be served was President’s Choice.

You get the idea. However much grunt work there may be in fundraising, the opportu-nities for fun-raising more than make up for it. For me this was always the ultimate motivation. I guess I was just not cut out to retire to the golf course (for which my golfingpartners are truly thankful).

I am not sure that all these rambling anecdotes shed any light on what really motivatespeople to be involved in voluntary activities but perhaps some of the examples may help.

Hamilton Southam described himself as an aging elitist. I could probably go further thanthis and describe myself as an aging, egotistical, elitist atheist. I am not sure that any ofthese attributes are on the top of anyone’s ‘to love’ list but at least that description mayhelp to explain some of the opinions I have expressed. Besides atheists are not all badnews – have you ever heard of an atheist suicide bomber? Anyway, I have noted that ifyou commit suicide, you will live to regret it!

My concluding hope is that you all find some fun and a great deal of interest from yourvolunteer activities.


Gen (Ret’d) Paul Manson, Mr. G. Hamilton Southam (winner of the 2005 Vimy Award), Henrietta de Concilliis (daughter of Mr. Southam) and

The Hon. Bill Graham. (Bill Graham is the recently appointed Chancellor of Trinity College.)

APPENDIX AAn Essential Grace

Observations by Dr. Samuel A. Martin – from the opening chapter of his 1985 bookby the above name.

Sam used my experience with the United Way of the Lower Mainland Campaign in 1981 to raise some issues.

It is interesting that when he asked “Would you do it again?”, I gave the answer “Yes, but not for another decade”. This turned out to be surprisingly accurate. It wasexactly ten years later in 1991 when I chaired the United Way of Greater Toronto.

“Twelve of 14 campaign cabinet members made it for buffet breakfast on November 16in the Oak Room of Vancouver’s trendy Four Seasons Hotel. The volunteers had begunmeeting intermittently in January, then regularly for breakfast since early summer, todirect the fund-raising campaign of the United Way of the Lower Mainland, 18 commu-nities that sprawled from Vancouver south to the U.S. border.

George Fierheller,10 campaign chairman, dropped the news almost casually. Receipts todate were just under $7 million, about the same as last year and almost a million shy ofthe objective. It was now clear that the campaign would not reach its goal by November 30.

Tough news for a team that had set out enthusiastically to raise 16 per cent more moneythan the previous year despite an iffy economy and a public attitude of growing indiffer-ence to the annual United Way Campaign. This meeting would mark the 130th hour that each member had already invested in the project. All but one, who was retired, werebusiness or professional people responsible for managing companies that were themselvesfacing stiffening competition and eroding profits.

The reaction was interesting. No pessimism. They would extend the deadline toDecember 5 and begin a three-week blitz to get in the money that was in the pipeline andform a special telephone committee to make the calls. They would ask the 60 loaned rep-resentatives to stay on to tidy up the work not followed through by 3,400 volunteers.There would be a one-day media blitz. Fierheller would appear on a series of talk showsstarting with Jack Webster, Vancouver’s disputatious TV personality. He would tell thepeople of the Lower Mainland that the campaign was well on its way but would fall shortof its goal. This meant that 83 social service agencies depending on United Way funds formost or part of their operating funds would have to scale back. Yes, unemployment wasup considerably from a year ago but didn’t that make the need more urgent? They wouldkeep the books open to December 31. By God, they could still make the whole thing!


Fierheller had grown accustomed to the enthusiasm. These were good people to workwith, professionals who worked hard and well on whatever they undertook. They didn’tlike to lose, and neither did George Fierheller.

How and why did he become involved in the United Way? Fierheller moved toVancouver from Ottawa in April 1979 to become president and CEO of PremierCablesystems. A veteran fundraiser, he had been slated to head the 1982 campaign butadvanced a year when the 1981 chairman was transferred out of town in November 1979.

Fierheller was an agnostic. He believed the volunteer approach was a sensible and prac-tical one for the community: “If volunteer giving disappeared then voluntary donation oftime to serve agencies would likely also disappear. The proportion of volunteer-time tovolunteer-dollars-raised is about 5:1. This loss would be a serious drawback to the com-munity. Almost no one volunteers to work for the government.’’

Heading the campaign would be a good way to get to know more about the communityand it would provide a high profile for the company which had not always enjoyed thebest of public relations. Fierheller’s board of directors at Premier felt it would be a goodinvestment from the company’s standpoint.11

Fierheller reflected on the campaign as he drove back to his office. The size of the goalhad seemed reasonable when the committee struck it in April, The 83 participating healthand welfare agencies had tabled budgets totalling $53 million for their community workin 1982. Penetrating budget reviews had failed to establish waste or duplication. In fact,with larger numbers unemployed many welfare organizations clearly would be strainedto meet the inevitable surge in requests for food, clothing and shelter. While governmentswould supply the agencies with 85 per cent of their revenue needs, the United Way component was crucial to their survival. It was discretionary income that gave the organ-izations flexibility to react quickly and to tailor their services to the ever-changing needsof society.

The outlook had remained optimistic until the summer months. By fall the B.C. economy– which is really the pulp and paper, mining and fishing industries – began to fall apartas markets weakened around the world. Corporations, upon which the United Waydepended for half its goal, began experiencing sharp profit declines. Some had to with-draw or cut back on charitable donations, many were able only to maintain last year’slevel of giving, a few managed to increase their commitment.

Fierheller swung the campaign emphasis away from corporations towards the individual:“one day’s pay a year to the United Way.” The strategy had worked well. Roughly100,000 individuals, one out of five potential donors, had contributed to the campaign, asizable dollar and proportional increase. “Most who did not give were not asked, or werevery poorly canvassed.”


It had been a good experience, more fun than his last campaign in Ottawa in 1972.Ottawa was a civil service town and once that sector was organized the campaign becameroutine. The size, complexity and diversity of the southern British Columbia regionposed a much more challenging organizational problem, with more opportunities forimaginative action. The team,12 his team, because Fierheller had recruited them all, hadbeen splendid. Morale had been high throughout the campaign and report meetings suchas the one that morning were always lively, fun affairs. Regardless of the final total,Fierheller relished the personal satisfaction of having done a big job as well as could bereasonably expected given the state of the economy.

Would he do it again? Yes, but not for another decade.”

FOOTNOTES

10 George Fierheller was born in Toronto in 1933, attended the University of Toronto Schools, and was graduated Bachelor of Arts from U of T’s Trinity College in 1955. Fierheller levered asuccessful career with IBM into a major equity interest and position as founding president ofSystems Dimensions Ltd. in Ottawa. He sold out that interest to Crown Life Insurance Co. in 1979and moved to Vancouver to head Premier Cablesystems Ltd. A natural leader, Fierheller hasalways participated actively in community affairs where he invariably becomes chairman of theboard.

11 Premier Cablesystems estimated the cost of Fierheller’s involvement to be $60,000, likely a conservative figure since they valued time on the basis of actual cost without reckoning the costof lost opportunities. Time (value): 20 per cent of Fierheller’s plus benefits ($30,000); secretary($6,000); v-p marketing and public relations director ($10,000); other employees ($4,000).Expenses (actual cost): supplies ($3,000); lunches and breakfasts ($4,000); thank-you gifts ($800);thank-you advertisements ($2,200).

12 All first-stringers: D.E. (Ed) McGeachan, president, Bank of British Columbia, in charge ofmajor corporations; Hugh Magee, chairman, Great West Steel Industries Limited, manufacturingcorporations; George C. Reifel, vice-president, Daon Development Corporation, trade andfinance corporations; Allan R. McKenzie, general manager, Toronto-Dominion Bank, generalbusiness; Marion Jones, C.A., individual gifts; R. Beverly (Bev) Harrison, senior partner, ArthurAndersen Co., professional; David S. Catton, v-p and director, Ian Roberts Inc., public service;J.B. ( Jim) Flett, president, Vancouver General Hospital, health, education and welfare; S.J. ( John)Hatchett, B.C. Tel., training; R.W. Bonner, chairman, B.C. Hydro, loaned representatives; FrankPalmer, Palmer Jarvis Associates Advertising Ltd., public relations; Art Kube, Canadian LabourCongress, labour; Howard Nephtali, executive director, United Way of the Lower Mainland.


APPENDIX BOASIS

While I have emphasized that this book is not a ‘how to’ description of fundraising, the following was recently prepared at the request of a friend of mine.

It does give some thoughts on how smaller charitable organizations might approach setting up a fundraising campaign. It was designed to be distributed to the some

126 member agencies of the organization OASIS.

OASIS

Meeting the Needs of Those with Special Needs

What is this all about?Your President, Gerry Sutton asked if I would put together some notes that might helpthe 100 or so OASIS member agencies in developing fundraising programs.

My background in fundraising is as a volunteer over about 50 years. I have chaired cam-paigns for universities, hospitals, the arts and have chaired United Way campaigns ineach of Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto. However none of this makes me an authority.The best I can do is use my experience to make some suggestions about how to approachfundraising for your organizations.

I should note that in scanning the list of your members, there are some that obviously donot need any help. These are long established and sophisticated agencies with manyyears of fundraising experience.

My observations are for those smaller agencies, likely operating without the benefit of alocal United Way and probably without a lot of experience in trying to supplement theirfunding from government sources through an approach to the private sector.

So here goes – I hope these thoughts help.

What do you really need?Every fundraising program starts with the development of a CASE.

You have to develop a well thought through statement that explains what you are doingand what you need from the public to do it even better. Whether you are looking for$5,000 or $500,000, you have to start here.

Fortunately you know your agency better than anyone. You obviously have a great dealof enthusiasm for what it does. I would suggest that you write this in your own style


describing your programs and outlining what you would do with the additional funds e.g.if you could add two more caseworkers, you could serve an additional 15 needy clientsand there is a backlog of 30 such people seriously needing such help in the community.

The CASE need not be long. In fact most people will not read too much. However it doesneed to be positive. You can gauge how successfully you have written this by steppingback and assessing whether or not you would be convinced if someone handed you thisdocument.

It does not need to be expensively produced. In fact for most small agencies, this wouldbe viewed as a waste of money.

What is essential however, is that you add ‘proof statements’ showing that you have astrong track record of success. Add stories of your agency’s accomplishments and partic-ularly get endorsements from those who have been helped or from their families.

The CASE must state the amount of money you are looking for in this particular campaignand what you will do with it expressed in terms of results for the community.

Using What You HaveI will assume that your organization is short on resources of all kinds. The paid staff islikely small and is obviously busy fulfilling its service obligations.

You are going to have to rely to a degree on your volunteer Board and other non-paidmembers.

If you are like most organizations, your Board members are not experienced fundraisers.They may or may not be well known in the community. Your first task therefore will beto build-up your volunteer support. To do this you likely need a Lead Volunteer.

By this I mean you need to recruit a respected figure in the community, assuming you donot already have this, and that individual should put together an Honorary Board ofnames in the community that will give your organization both profile and credibility.

These are the people who will have the contacts within the community and the clout tohelp you raise funds.

It will be essential that your Board and the Honorary Board members thoroughly believein and buy into the CASE.

You may be tempted to use a professional fundraising firm. Such organizations may noteven be available in your community but if they are they are best used if you are planninga major capital campaign as opposed to just expanding your annual donor list. Whilethere are excellent firms around, they can be expensive and you do need to watch thecosts of raising funds – only the net amount counts!


Raising the ProfileWith a solid volunteer group in place, the next need is to establish a sense of urgency inthe community by raising the profile of what your organization does for the community.

You need the solid support of a local radiostation, newspaper, Rotary Club or otherenthusiastic supporter.

You may then consider running an event.This could be anything from a garden partyto a raffle to a bake sale or even setting upand running a thrift shop or some ongoingactivity.

Events have their role but frankly it is usuallynot to raise funds. It is to raise profile.

Events take a great deal of effort and personpower for the amount they raise. ABrazilian Ball can net in excess of $1 millionbut requires a huge professional staff andsuch Black Tie events only work in verylarge centres. A golf tournament can begood for raising profile but often costs 60-70% of the gross amount raised.

If viewed as being a forerunner to asking for donations, however an event can be effective.It should be used to showcase what you do, it should be fun for the participants and itshould be clear at the event that there will be a follow-up ASK.

Preparing for the ASKOkay – you are probably not a professional salesperson and fundraising is just salesman-ship. However you are probably a much better salesperson than you think.

In fact you are all selling all the time. You sell your ideas to your superiors or your Board.You sell your spouse on going where you want to go for a vacation. You probably evensell your dog on not barking at the door!

This is no different. If you are enthusiastic about your ‘cause’, you are well on your way.

The rest is just simple preparation.

Louis Nizer was one of the greatest trial lawyers in U.S. history. When a young lawyerasked why he was so good, he replied “Preparation. Preparation is what makes an average lawyer good, a good lawyer great and a great lawyer consistent”.


So what do you need to do to prepare both you and your volunteers for their newfundraising role?

The first is to establish your own frame of mind. Remember that you are doing the potentialdonor a favour, not the other way around. You are asking them to help themselves byhelping their community.

In the case of those with special needs, you can point out that such services may berequired by any family in the community at any time. You are probably not surprised toknow that most families have someone in their background with special needs, eithermental or physical. If they do not now, they could have that situation in the future. Olderpeople develop Alzheimer’s or dementia. Anyone can be crippled in an accident.

What you are really doing is asking your potential donors to make an investment in theircommunity through a form of community insurance.

The respect for you in the community will go up dramatically as people realize that youare doing them a service.

Making it Easy to HelpIn addition to the CASE, you will need a pledge card. Again this does not have to be anexpensive proposition. It can simply be a ‘contract’ that you are going to ask the donorto sign. This is what you use to close the sale.

It can be on your normal letterhead (but remember it must show your CharitableDonation number) and it simply confirms the amount the donor will give and the methodof paying the pledge.

Ideally it would be personalized i.e. with the donor’s name and address already on theform. You do not want the donor to have to go to any effort to make the donation. Youcan make it easier by having them just write in the amount and sign the pledge.

If you are asking them to mail the pledge to you, provide a stamped self-addressed envelope.The fact that you have put an actual stamp on the envelope will indicate that you are serious in wanting a reply. However you are much better to try to get the form signed inyour presence. Material left behind can easily get left in the wastepaper basket.

The calls must be made in person. Letters are fine to introduce the fact that you are goingto make the call and they are essential as a follow-up thank you. But letters will not dothe job and direct mail is expensive, overused and usually relatively ineffective.

In making it easy to help, many people would like to use Visa or MasterCard. Certainlyif you can provide this facility, it is a great help. Just remember however that if the donorwishes to make a monthly contribution, you are going to have to originate the monthlycharge to their card and this is a time consuming process. Card cards are fine for annualor perhaps semi-annual donations however.


Finally you need to be specific about what you are asking for. When in doubt, make surethat you ask for enough. If you ask for too large an amount, the donor will quickly pointout that that is not ‘in the cards’. However you will have flattered the donor by at leastimplying that you feel they have the capability of assisting at that level if they so wish.Obviously you do not know what their other commitments may be.

Do not be shy about concluding the meeting by making the specific ASK.

You will never get what you do not ask for.

Recognition LevelsIf your campaign is large enough, youshould have well established recognitionlevels. This enables you to approach thedonor to assist at the $100, $500 or $1,000level as appropriate.

In subsequent years this will help you up-sell a current annual donor by gettingthem to move up to the next level.

You do need to be specific about how theywill be recognized e.g. a donated ad in thelocal newspaper, recognition at an eventor acknowledgement in your newsletter.

People will say that they are really notinterested in recognition but everyone is.It is also amazing that everyone out ofcuriosity looks at what everyone else doesand if they feel they are not at the appro-priate level, they will likely up their gift.

Qualifying Your ProspectsAn essential bit of preparation will be to develop a list of prospects. This is of coursewhere your volunteer Board can help.

Bear in mind the three C’s – Capability, Commitment and Contact.

Obviously there is no point in wasting your time on someone who does not have the financial resources to make a reasonable donation. They must therefore have thecapacity.

They should also have a demonstrated commitment to charitable work and most


particularly you must get them to have a commitment to your particular project. This iswhere your CASE, tours of your facilities and your own enthusiasm will play a big role.

Finally you must have a contact. There is no point in putting a name on your prospectlist e.g. the President of a Bank when there is no one on your volunteer group who canhelp you access this individual. You simply have to be realistic here.

So what are the realistic choices? Obviously you are trying to sell prominent local businesses and individuals on improving their community and this is an excellent placeto start. Your Board should be asked for contacts amongst their peers.

Do not forget suppliers or others who benefit directly by having you in the communitye.g. the Bank that holds your mortgage, the supplier of your food, medicine or whateverelse your users need.

It may be appropriate to apply to your local United Way if there is one. You are probablyalready exploiting government grants but they may also agree to a further matching grantprogram – a powerful fundraising tool.

There may be some foundations that willsupport your type of activity althoughfoundations tend to support capital campaigns more than annual campaigns.You can scan these through the Imaginedatabase. Their directory is availableonline and you can visit their websitewww.imaginecanada.ca

Getting In Front of the ProspectIf you have held an event, you alreadyhave a mailing list and those attendinghave already expressed an interest in whatyou are doing. For others, I have foundthat a letter of introduction together withyour CASE (but not the pledge card) isoften a good way of opening the door.

The letter should of course be signed bywhoever has the best contact with theprospect but by you if there is no otherdirect entry.

Your request for a meeting can be on thebasis that you just want to ensure theprospect understands what is happening


in their community in this particular area. It should indicate that you will ‘call within twoweeks’ or whatever is appropriate.

Then you must call within that period or you will lose all credibility.

Follow-up After the meeting, whether you were successful or not, always follow-up with a letterthanking the prospect for his/her time. In this way you are building a future base and maywell get a donation the next time.

If you were successful, send a receipt along with the letter and do so within a week or soof the call.

If you get a cheque, cash it promptly. Uncashed cheques signal to the donor that you areeither badly organized or you do not really need the money (otherwise it would be in thebank earning interest).

Do Some ReadingWhat I have provided is only a check list of the obvious. A good investment would be acouple of books on fundraising. These go into more detail on making the ASK, handlingobjections and up-selling the potential donor to the level you wish.

I could recommend ASKING by Jerold Panas, which describes itself as “a 59-minuteguide to everything Board members, volunteers and staff must know to secure the gift”or Fundraising For Dummies (from which I have ‘borrowed’ the cartoons). However thereare many others and the more you read, the more successful you will be.

EnjoyBelieve it or not, you will actually enjoy your fundraising experience.

You will meet a great many wonderful people in your community.

You will elevate your profile and that of your organization to everyone’s benefit.

You will be helping everyone to help themselves.

There really is FUN in FUNdraising. Spring 2007


APPENDIX C

A Journey of the MindThis was a good example of being volunteered. My grandson Chris had apparently mentioned to his grade six teacher that he had a grandfather

who was ‘into everything’. The teacher asked me if I would talk to the class about anything I thought might be interesting.

The Power Point presentation is shown below. It was one of the more enjoyablevolunteer activities I have been involved in. The questions and discussion were just as lively as one would expect from any motivated group of 12 year olds.


APPENDIX DThis is a bit dated i.e. over 30 years old but it is an example of the type of analysisthat an organization should go through to determine whether or not to launch a

major fundraising effort. The situation at the National Arts Centre was somewhatunique but the approach to analyzing the risk would likely still apply today.

Considerations on Corporate Fundraising for the National Arts Centre

July 1975George FierhellerPresident, Systems Dimensions Limited

Charity has not always been treated charitably. At any point in history, therehave been those who have been suspicious of the motives of those who give.

“It is quite clear that most people are generous in their gifts, not so much by natural inclination as by reason of the lure of honour – they simply want to beseen as beneficent” – Cicero

“I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for thepublic good. It is an affectation indeed, not very common among merchantsand very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it”.Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

“Few trends so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free societyas the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than tomake as much money for the stockholders as possible. This is a fundamentallysubversive doctrine” – Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

Before the National Arts Centre begins a major fundraising project, the Board of Trusteesshould be sure they understand the real motives for so doing.

This is particularly true during a period of growing confusion over the role of business involuntarily supporting the Arts, or other socially desirable projects.

There is, on the other hand, no confusion about the present status of the financing of theNational Arts Centre.

The Position of the NACThe Five Year Plan of the NAC calls for federal government financing to cover about58% of the total expenses of the Centre.


The assistance that can reasonably be expected from the municipal government willprobably be under 1%. The rest comes from ticket sales.

Essentially, at the present time, there is no support for the Centre from other than tax dollars or ticket sales.

This is an enviable position. The Board should be very careful to avoid upsetting this delicate balance. Essentially, the National Arts Centre has arrived at the place that I suspectmost cultural organizations would like to be at.

This is essentially the position of State Support for the Arts that has been attained in theSoviet Union and elsewhere. It is a growing trend in most parts of the free world. In fact,it is only in the United States and, to a lesser degree in Canada, where there is still significant private support for the Arts. Even in the United States, the trend is away fromprivate support of the Arts. This is understandable because of the pressure corporationsare under from a profit standpoint. In addition, the foundations are under particular pressure because of declining stock markets and because of the tax structure, which nolonger makes it possible for individuals to accumulate huge fortunes, and then shelterthese easily in foundations.

In summary, having established a precedent for a totally ticket/tax supported Centre, we should approach the private sector very selectively.

Areas of Possible Corporate SupportThe National Arts Centre could be criticized if it uses its national appeal to attract fundswhich might otherwise go to the support of more local projects. There appears to be agrowing trend for corporations to be asked to support very local charities, arts projects,etc. As soon as something is big enough to require national support, then the trend seemsto be toward tax supported funding.

However, this does not mean the National Arts Centre should not seek any outside fund-ing. There are, in fact, two sources of funding from corporations:

1. Donations CommitteeMost corporations have a limited budget for direct charitable donations fromwhich the corporation can expect minimal direct benefit, e.g. such donationsare justified on the basis of social responsibility of the corporation, using theshareholders’ money in a general way to improve the community, etc.

Commonly, the amount of money available in such a budget is less than 1% of the grossprofit before tax. Usually, this money is dispensed very broadly, i.e. hundreds of smalldonations are given from this one pot. In a word, this is not a very satisfactory source ofpotential funding for the National Arts Centre.


However, the donations budget might be good for items, such as …• scholarships • prizes

There is a likely need at the National Arts Centre for a variety of scholarships to bringyoung people to Ottawa to understudy, observe, or undertake other creative projects. Inaddition, if the proposed Violin Competition is held, corporations might well be willingto provide awards from their donations budget.

The donations budget is usually only good for amounts from $500 to $10,000. Often,these larger amounts are made available only on a five year pledge, which further reducestheir value to us. In general, the donations budget would be fine for a small local theatregroup needing very limited funding, but would really not be generally suitable for theNational Arts Centre.

2. Public Relations BudgetAs expenditures under this budget are directly tied to improving the corporateimage, or promoting a particular product, the budget is normally larger andmore flexible. Decisions to spend money here are usually made by a particularVice President, whereas the regular charitable donations must be decided uponby a Committee of Vice Presidents.

In examining the types of things for which the National Arts Centre might receive support, it is important to realize what the corporation is looking for. For example, toattempt to get support for an opera production would be very difficult, as we have discovered. There is a very limited audience per dollar spent. For example, if we were to seek $100,000 for an opera with only five performances, the opera might only reach 10,000 people and cost, therefore, $10.00 per viewer. This is expensive PublicRelations.

In any case, because of the likely direct government financing of “Festival Canada”, Ibelieve we would be on the wrong track to try to get outside financing for opera produc-tion directly.

Instead, I suggest the following as possibilities...

Television ProductionA corporation might well make the commercial decision to sponsor the taping of one ofour operas or other productions. I realize all the potential union problems with this butstill believe it would be worth exploring. I would not see any major problems in havinga national showing of one of our productions after the production has had its useful life,e.g. two seasons at NAC.


The caption on the films would indicate that the production is by the National ArtsCentre with grants from the Canada Council, POCA, or whatever, and the productionwas re-created for television through the support of the XYZ Company.

I believe this approach would meet the government’s objective of a wider distribution ofthings for which they have provided support, would certainly meet the corporation’sobjective of trying to reach as many people as possible with their corporate contributionand, as the support would be coming from the Public Relations rather than the CharitableDonations budget, would not really impact the dollars available for support of smallerlocal projects.

TouringAs touring is really something covered mainly by the Touring Office, I do not believe this will have as much appeal for corporations, although several have indicated someinterest. For example, both Bell Canada and Metropolitan Life expressed an interest inthis aspect.

It might be possible to get support for specific industrial tours, e.g. noon hour concerts in plant locations. It might also be possible to extend a Western tour, for example, byplaying in cities where a large corporation has a number of clients or employees. The corporation might pick up some portion of the touring costs.

Sponsorship of Specific EventsThere is already the precedent of commercial organizations, such as Seagram’s, payingfor a performer for a particular concert. More of this could be encouraged. In general,this does not interfere with the basic funding of the Centre. It does allow, however, anupgrading of artistic presentation that might not be possible with basic funding.

In addition, there has also been the precedent of sponsorship for particular Conferences,e.g. the Arts and Media Conference. Again, this is not in the category of funding deficitsincurred in regular production items.

Other ProjectsThere are many other items that could be considered from the Public Relations budget.Some of these are in use now, e.g.

• special programs as provided by ALITALIA for Festival Canada• advertising in programs. (This is an area of considerable potential but

would have to be approached aggressively.)• sponsorship of National Arts Centre recordings. IBM sponsored such a

recording of Canadian music a couple of years ago• commissions for new works. Organizations might be willing to provide

commissions for new works to be premiered at the National Arts Centre.


SUMMARYCorporate donations to the Arts are on the increase. In a sample of twenty-one corpora-tions, the amount of the charitable donation budget being contributed to the Artsincreased from 11.5% in 1967 to 22.6% in 1973 – the only major increase in allocation.(Financing Humanistic Service, Dr. Samuel A. Martin, 1975.)

The amounts, however, are still small. This would indicate that the National Arts Centreshould avoid seeking corporate support for things, such as:

• building projects• regular programming support• operating expenses

Instead, the Centre could seek corporate support for some of the items noted above that are in the general category of extras that we could not reasonably expect to have supported by tax dollars.

I believe this would be particularly true where the support is directed toward the artistrather than the production. I particularly favour the approach of scholarships, com-missions, or funding for the appearance of artists, who might otherwise not be able toappear.

This concept is reflected well in the suggestion made in the “New Patrons of the Arts”published by the Business Committee for the Arts in the United States, which notes:

“Talent can also be deflected, corrupted, and, for all practical purposes, rendered mute when the artist is forced to do hack work in order to earn a liveli-hood. Talent can be effectively suppressed too when, as in Russia, the form or content of an artist’s literary or artistic expression might be regarded as political heresy”.

This comment also serves to remind us of the one other important reason for seekingsome outside corporate support for some types of projects. This is the general principlethat a measure of voluntary support is some protection against possible government interference with the programming of the National Arts Centre. This, to date, is more a possibility than a fact, but governments and attitudes change. It may only take severalletters to a Minister, objecting to a certain production put on by the Centre, to cause subtle pressure for a change in artistic policy.

For example, if the National Arts Centre program staff really believed that the best singer for a particular opera came from a country with whom we were not enjoying the best relations, and the government objected, private funding might still allow us to proceed.


Specific Recommendations1. That the National Arts Centre seek limited corporate funding of the types of

projects discussed above.

2. As this will not involve general fundraising and, as the number of corporationsto be approached will be very limited, such approaches can be made by members of the Board of Trustees and the staff without the addition of an outside fundraising firm or the hiring of a permanent fundraiser.

3. As the most important project could be the taping of some of our productionsfor television, the staff should investigate the legal, financial, and artistic feasi-bility of proceeding along this line. This is particularly important because ofthe national publicity this would give to the National Arts Centre, as well as to the corporation or corporations involved.

4. That the staff of the National Arts Centre create a list of smaller projects, e.g. commissions, scholarships, special concerts, etc. that they would like tosee supported, with the emphasis on the individual artist rather than the totalcost of production.


APPENDIX E

BibliographyHow To BooksAsking. Jerold Panas, 2005-6, Emerson & Church Publishers.

A 59-Minute Guide for Volunteers and Staff.

Fundraising for Dummies, 2000, John Mutz & Katherine Murray.Hungry Minds Inc.

Growing from Good to Great, Judith E. Nichols, 1995.Bonus Books Inc.Positioning your fundraising efforts for BIG gains.

Thanks, Penelope Burk, 2000.Burk & Associates Ltd.A Guide to the Donor – Centered Fundraising.

DemographicsGlobal Demographics, Judith E. Nichols, 1995.

Bonus Books Inc..Fundraising for a New World.

America Alone, Mark Steyn, 2006.Regency Publishing Inc.The End of the World As We Know It.

Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam, 2000.Simon & Schuster.Particularly the section on Altruism, Volunteering and Philanthropy starting on Page 116.

Oldies But GoodiesThese are likely available only at libraries.The Art of Fundraising, Irving R. Warner 1975.

Harper & Row.One of the first and best books on fundraising.

Financing Humanistic Service, Samuel A. Martin, 1975.McClelland & Stewart.Anything by Sam Martin is worth reading and is Canadian.


An Essential Grace, Samuel A. Martin, 1985.McClelland & Stewart.A classic on Canadian Fundraising.

More PhilosophicalStrategic Giving, Peter Frumkin, 2006.

University of Chicago Press.A thoughtful overview but a challenging read.

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006.Houghton Mifflin Company.Might seem a strange choice but his discussion on The Roots of Morality; Why Are We Good (Chapter 6) is well worth reading.

Primarily U.S.American Philanthropy, Robert H. Bremner, 1988.

The University of Chicago Press.Part of the History of American Civilization series discussing the dominance of philanthropy in the U.S. versus other countries.

Charity, Philanthropy and Civility in American History, Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, 2003.Cambridge University Press.A more readily available discussion of the same history.

Periodicals & WebsitesImagine Canada (formerly The Canadian Centre for Philanthropy).

Forefront magazine.www.imaginecanada.caAlso regular Research Bulletins and Monographs e.g. Business Contributions to Canadian Communities, 2007.

KCI (Ketchum Canada Inc.).Philanthropic Trends.www.kciphilanthropy.com

The Chronicle of Philanthropy (U.S.).www.philanthropy.com


APPENDIX F

ChronologyEvent Time Period

The Most Noble CauseUnited Appeal - Ottawa ..............................................................1962-72United Way of the Lower Mainland - Vancouver ....................1980-84United Way of Greater Toronto ........................................1986-PresentYOUTHLINK ............................................................................2002-04

The Old SchoolCarleton University ......................................................................1972-79University of Toronto Schools ....................................................1990-92Simon Fraser University ..............................................................1981-84Trinity College - University of Toronto..............................1988-Present

Live Long and ProsperRoyal Ottawa Hospital ..................................................................1977-79Vancouver General Hospital Foundation ..................................1980-85Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre ..................................1987-Present

Best Seats in the HouseOpera Atelier - Ottawa ................................................................1968-72National Arts Centre ....................................................................1973-79Canadian Mediterranean Institute ..............................................1978-85Vancouver Opera ........................................................................1980-84Vancouver Chamber Choir ........................................................1980-84McMichael Canadian Art Collection ........................................1992-99Canadian Opera House Corporation ........................................2002-06Council for Business and the Arts ......................................2003-Present

A Piece of a Bigger PieTeam B.C. ......................................................................................1980-83Canadian Cable Television Association ....................................1980-84Information Technology Association of Canada ......................1989-94Canadian Information Processing Society..................................1966-74Toronto Board of Trade................................................................1992-97Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance ..................................1997-Present

Go Where No Man Has Gone BeforeCanadian Institute for Advanced Research ......................2000-Present

Getting ClubbyThe National Club........................................................................1989-99Sigma Chi Canadian Foundation ......................................1986-Present


APPENDIX G

Biography

“A modest man with much to be modest about.”– Winston Churchill

Oh! Oh!

Who is he anyway?Mr. Fierheller graduated from Trinity College at the University of Toronto with anHonours Degree in Political Science and Economics in 1955. He joined IBM in Torontothat year and subsequently progressed through a number of positions in their sales organ-ization. He was Marketing Manager for IBM’s federal government business in Ottawaprior to founding Systems Dimensions Limited (SDL) in 1968.

Mr. Fierheller was President of SDL from the inception of the company until it wasacquired by Crown Life of Toronto. SDL was one of the pioneering companies in thecomputer services industry in Canada.

In April, 1979, Mr. Fierheller moved to Vancouver as President and Chief Executive


Officer of Premier Cablesystems Limited. In July, 1980, Premier merged with RogersCablesystems Inc. to form one of the world’s largest cable TV companies. Mr. Fierhellerwas a Vice Chairman of Rogers Cablesystems Inc. and Chairman of CanadianCablesystems Limited, as well as the President and CEO of Rogers Cable TV - BritishColumbia Limited.

During 1983, Mr. Fierheller led the team that was successful in winning the mobile cellular radio licences for Cantel. He was the founding President and CEO of Cantel Inc.In September 1989, he was promoted to Chairman and CEO of Rogers Cantel MobileInc. He was Vice Chairman, Rogers Communications Inc. until 1996 and now heads aprivate investment and consulting firm.

Mr. Fierheller has been actively involved in community affairs in Ottawa, and Vancouverand Toronto including: Chairman of the Board of Governors of Carleton University;Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Board of Governors of Simon FraserUniversity; Chairman of United Way Campaigns in Ottawa in 1971, Vancouver in 1981 andin Toronto in 1991, President of the Canadian Information Processing Society; memberof the Executive Committee of the National Arts Centre; a Trustee of the VancouverGeneral Hospital Foundation; a Director of Vancouver Opera; and a member of theVancouver Centennial Commission.

Since returning to Toronto, Mr. Fierheller has served as Chair of the Board of the UnitedWay of Greater Toronto; Chair, Information Technology Association of Canada; Chair,Smart Toronto; Trustee of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection; President of TheToronto Board of Trade; Director, Ontario Exports Inc.; Chair of The Spirit ofLeadership Campaign, Trinity College, University of Toronto; Chair of the Sigma ChiCanadian Foundation; and President of the National Club.

Mr. Fierheller currently serves as the Chairman of the Honorary Board of the GreaterToronto Marketing Alliance. He is currently Chair of the Sunnybrook Health SciencesCentre Capital Campaign; a Director of The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research;Past Chair, Toronto Adventurers Club; is on the Campaign Cabinet of the CanadianOpera House Corporation; and the Board of the Council for Business & the Arts inCanada.

He has also served on a number of public company Boards including: Extendicare Inc.,Falconbridge Inc., Telesystem International Wireless Inc., GBC North American GrowthFund and Rogers Wireless Inc.

Mr. Fierheller has received many awards including a Doctor of Laws degree fromConcordia University in 1976; a Doctor of Sacred Letters from Trinity College in 1999;the Award of Excellence from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association;is a Significant Sig from Sigma Chi Fraternity; and in March 1991, he received Toronto’shighest honour, The Award of Merit. In 1998 he received the highest award from the


United Way of Canada, the André Mailhot Award. In the Fall of 1998, he was admittedinto the Canadian Information Productivity Hall of Fame, as well as receiving the ArborAward from the University of Toronto.

In July, 2000 Mr. Fierheller was appointed a Member of The Order of Canada.

In May, 2001, he was honoured by the Association of Fundraising Professionals as the Outstanding Volunteer of the Year during The International Year of the Volunteer. In 2002, he received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and the Salute to the City Awardfor service to the City of Toronto. In 2005 he was made a member of the Sigma Chi Hall of Fame.


APPENDIX XThe following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of

Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so “profound”that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is,

of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools when itexpands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know therate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I thinkthat we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, nosouls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell toincrease exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell becauseBoyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same,the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, thenthe temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then thetemperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, “it willbe a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you”, and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell isexothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct... leaving only Heaven therebyproving the existence of a divine being which explains why last night, Teresa kept shouting“Oh my God”.

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY “A”.


new i gave 54 · 2014. 11. 26. · i gave at the office : views on voluntarism / george a....

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