Remarks by Richard Frost, CEO, The Winnipeg Foundation
MTC, March 8, 2006

MTC and The Winnipeg Foundation have a long relationship:

• We've managed money for your foundation since the ‘80s:
• Over the years we've made grants totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars;
• In the last five years MTC has created the largest agency fund held at The Winnipeg Foundation; and
• We share many donors

Today I want to put the relationship between MTC and the Foundation into a broader context. I want to talk about the work of the Foundation generally, but also with enough specifics that I can shed some light on how we see grantmaking in the arts community.

Most of you know the story of our Foundation's beginnings.

In 1867, when Canada first became a nation independent of Great Britain, Winnipeg was a very small and isolated settlement in the western wilderness.

The American Civil War had just come to an end and our newly formed national government was all too conscious that the American army could be turned North. Canada was anxious to claim the western provinces so that our country could extend across the continent from sea to sea. So, in 1870, a military expedition was sent to Winnipeg and among this contingent was an 18-year-old private named William Alloway.

Alloway settled in Winnipeg and became an important part of our city's history and development.

• He became a city councillor and volunteer firefighter.
• He owned a tobacco shop at Portage and Main, a toll bridge and ultimately hundreds of red river carts.
• He has been credited by some as Manitoba's first veterinarian.
• In 1879, at the age of 28, he opened Alloway and Champion Bank.

By 1920, he was the most prominent private banker in western Canada and he was very well connected to the banking industry in the United States.

This was a time when American bankers were founding the first community foundations –beginning in Cleveland in 1914. Their motivation was straight-forward. Bankers were working with clients to establish charitable trusts. They wanted to manage the money and they wanted to help their communities, but they were not so interested in dispersing the annual interest earnings to charity. S,o they invented community foundations to fulfill this responsibility.

In 1921, William Alloway made a gift of $100,000 to create Canada's first community foundation in Winnipeg. This money was to be invested as capital with only the annual interest earned available for charitable work. So, in 1922, The Winnipeg Foundation made its first $6,000 in grants to charities.

I recently re-read Alloway's letter dated June 4th, 1921 which began with the following words:
"Since I set foot in Winnipeg fifty one years ago, Winnipeg has been my home and has done more for me than it ever may be in my power to repay. I owe everything to this community and I feel that it should derive some benefit from what I have been able to accumulate."

I'm sure that this same sentiment is what motivates many of the donors who are gathered here today.

A couple of years later, in 1924, a second gift arrived – this time only three gold coins valued at $15 in a plain envelope marked only with the words "The Widow's Mite."

And so, our first endowment fund is capitalized with $100,000 and our second endowment fund is capitalized with $15, establishing a fundamental value: it is not the size of the gift, but the act of giving, that matters.

Today, The Winnipeg Foundation has more than 1,700 funds with a market value of about $400 million. The names attached to these funds reflect our city's history over the last 85 years. The interesting reality is that these funds were created by people from all walks of life – sometimes as individuals – sometimes as groups.

You are, of course, familiar with the MTC experience, so let me refer to another endowment fund for illustration.

A few years ago, Miles Macdonell Collegiate was celebrating its 50th anniversary. The planning g committee decided that over the weekend of events and renewal of old friendships should be an opportunity to create a new scholarship fund. As a result of their effort, several hundred gifts were received, amounting to a $90,000 endowment. Here we see people from all walks of life working together to create a legacy for the future well-being of our city in general and for Miles Mac graduates in particular.

During the first quarter of our current fiscal year – between October 1st and December 31st of 2005 – The Winnipeg Foundation received 451 gifts, amounting to $251,381, for the MTC endowment fund. This is surely a remarkable example of many individual donors and corporations working together for the future well-being of an institution we all enjoy and want to prosper.

I believe that stories like these give insight as to who we are as a community, a city, and a province. Manitobans are a generous lot. Each year, Statistics Canada reports that among all Canadian tax filers who report charitable giving, the province with the highest percentage of donors is Manitoba. There are also several "generosity indexes" and again, Manitoba always fares very well.

Winnipeggers see themselves as a closely-knit community, sharing common aspirations for a better future and generally dealing as well as possible with the realities and challenges of:

• Our geography,
• Our demographics,
• Our economy, and
• Our political positioning.

Our views are challenged from time to time – and in the last two weeks, we have seen two examples of this.

The Globe and Mail ran a three-page feature on Winnipeg that portrayed our inner city in its most negative light. And a TV network, CBC I think, ran a feature story on the harsh realities of life in our city for young immigrants from Sudan, with one young man saying that he might as well die in his homeland as die from gang violence on the streets of downtown Winnipeg.

And so, we see the interesting and contrasting challenges of urban living – successful and well-supported public amenities like MTC that add so much to our quality of life and the harsh realities that some face trying to survive in our inner city.

We are all familiar with the travel section that appears weekly in the Free Press or other newspapers. I have never seen a city portrayed on the basis of its suburban malls. And so, as upsetting as it may be from time to time, we have to appreciate that others will brand our city with images that we don't necessarily find fair or appropriate.

In my years at City Hall – not just here in Winnipeg but in four different cities as well – i came to appreciate just how demanding and difficult it is to allocate limited public resources. There is never enough money to go around!

The city's financial capacity it stretched to the limit. And we take our services so much for granted. You wake up in the morning – take a shower, drive your car through 20 traffic signals on the way to work – never expecting that the system will fail. So, I for one am sympathetic to those that have to decide how public resources should be divided. I am also very supportive of the good job city workers do overall.

But, I also recognize that even though the city is spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars improving our sewage treatment systems and standards, no one is going to "brand" our city based on the success of this effort – unless it fails! We expect our toilets to flush in an environmentally safe fashion.

Since coming to this city in 1989, I have participated in a number of studies and exercises aimed at improving our city's profile. At the end of the day, I believe that the image of Winnipeg is created within ten blocks of Portage and Main. There are unquestionably some serious challenges within this circumference, but there are also some considerable assets – and MTC is certainly one of them.

The Winnipeg Foundation sees itself as a leadership organization that has a clear interest in city-building. Our vision is: "a Winnipeg where community life flourishes."

I believe that organizations like MTC and The Winnipeg Foundation, and the volunteers and donors who support them, are critical to:

• The quality of life in our city, and
• How our city is branded.

Individual donors and corporations like those represented here this evening all care very deeply about how we deal with:

• Public amenities that enhance our collective quality of life – on the one hand, and
• The needs of the less-advantaged on the other.

We want to be seen as a vibrant and friendly city as well as a caring and compassionate one.

Our leadership work at The Winnipeg Foundation involves many different activities, ranging from our very active Youth in Philanthropy initiative, to challenge grants for endowment building – a program that has benefited MTC and many other groups as well.

All of our work is ultimately aimed at community building.

From a grantmaking perspective, much of our effort divides into two broadly defined and sometimes overlapping areas of focus: supporting social justice issues on the one hand and creative communities on the other. I'll speak to each in turn.

Manitobans share a common belief in a mixed economy involving three strong sectors:

• The private sector, led by business, corporations and individual entrepreneurs;
• The public sector, consisting of governments at the national, provincial and local levels together with their various agencies; and
• The third sector, variously called the voluntary sector, the charitable sector, the not-for-profit sector or NGOs.

Of course, we all move freely between these three sectors – just as a prominent business leader chairs the United Way campaign, a lawyer in private practice sits on the Law Society, a bus driver coaches the swim team and a shipping clerk is a leading volunteer at Winnipeg Harvest.

With any appreciation of our history, it is impossible to imagine how this city would ever have been created or survived without a successful partnership between the private, public and voluntary sectors.

However, there is also a reality that in our society authority, responsibility and power are ultimately distributed between these three sectors.

This distribution has a profound impact on our collective quality of life. Government regulates the activity of business and not-for-profit organizations. It decides how wealth is accumulated by individuals and corporations and it establishes the framework in which non-profits operate.

All of this is a giant "system" and how many times have we heard about someone or something that is "caught in the system?"

When it comes to social justice issues, community foundations take an active interest in how this system is operating. The Winnipeg Foundation receives hundreds of grants submissions and we see leadership emerging from every part of this community, through individuals and organizations advocating solutions and proposing worthwhile projects. In supporting a wide range of charities, we try to use our knowledge, resources and influence with impact. When some group is less advantaged, falling behind or not being treated fairly by the "system," our grants try to correct the balance. This may involve:

• Research;
• Supporting risky pilot projects; or
• Convening discussions on troubling issues.

Our Centennial Neighbourhood Project, for example, is focused on one area of our city where many of the residents have suffered great inequities under our system and as a result are often:

• Less educated;
• Less likely to be employed;
• More impoverished; and
• More likely to face various social problems.

The people who live in Centennial Neighbourhood have not been well-served by our "system" and The Winnipeg Foundation is focusing significant resources and energy to address the resulting inequities. We have engaged other NGOs, business partners and government agencies to help us in this effort.

The Centennial Neighbourhood Project is social justice grantmaking on a grand scale but I would say that just as important are, for example, the 20 or so smaller grants we make every year to day care centres serving communities with high need.

As I said, our vision is a "Winnipeg where community life flourishes" and community life can not flourish so long as only 25% of young people in our inner city are graduating from high school.

And so, a large percentage of our grants are aimed at helping the less advantaged. Winnipeg is a compassionate community. Certainly the donors that we represent want our foundation to be actively supporting charitable activity so that "the race" to enjoy to benefits of our society is as fair as possible.

The other part of our work is about supporting creative communities. Here I am using a very broad definition. Our two largest project grants this year will go to:

• The new Siemens Centre at Health Sciences Centre; and
• To the University of Winnipeg.

Medical research and post-secondary education is almost always about fostering creativity.

Other grants in this area would include:

• A remote controlled camera in the marches at Oak Hammock to support youth programming;
• Furnishings for a reading room in a personal care home; and
• Our recent sponsorship of Bears on Broadway or the Jane Goodall exhibit at the Museum next door.

So far in 2006 – and it's obviously still early – we have approved about $800,000 in cultural grants. Here are some examples:

• $125,000 to Cercle Moliere for a new performing arts facility;
• $3,750 to Jazz Winnipeg to undertake a governance review;
• $25,700 to Art City for two projects involving seven artists who will act as mentors; and
• $5,000 to Crescent Fort Rouge United Church, which plans to stage a children's opera.

An interesting new initiative that I am very excited about is called eyeGo to the Arts. Here we will invest $35,000 into a three-year effort aimed at audience development – getting high school students to the performing arts.

You could generally categorize our work in three ways, and I think that MTC fits into each of these categories. This likely explains our long and fruitful relationship.

First, we support creative places. This includes a wide range of venues:

• MTYP;
• Prairie Theatre Exchange;
• Pantages Theatre;
• Graffiti Art Gallery; or
• The West End Cultural Centre.

Second, we try to foster creativity. This would include music competitions, mentorship programs, various productions like the Ballet's "Cinderella Story" or exhibitions like WAG's "Post Impressionist Masterworks." Another example would be a project we are funding called Learning Through the Arts, which integrates arts into the elementary school system.

And third, we try to provide access to arts programming. This would include audience development, marketing and outreach support, but also other diverse projects such as:

• The efforts of Manitoba Artists in Healthcare, who bring art to those living with health issues;
• The work of the John Howard Society whose art progamming merges with justice issues;
• The Beaver Magazine which is digitizing images to facilitate access; or
  
• Organizations like Urban Shaman who work to provide equal opportunity.

Many studies have demonstrated the powerful role of the arts in community building. At The Winnipeg Foundation we see evidence of this every day. We bear witness to artistic vision becoming reality, to fruitful collaboration and partnerships, and to the creative synergy within the arts community. We, at The Winnipeg Foundation, feel fortunate to be included in this dynamic.

I spoke earlier about our interest in city building and how our city is "branded." Our vision is:
"a Winnipeg where community life flourishes".
And I can assure you that we will remain actively involved in supporting our arts community.

In closing, I want to reference June Jacobs' latest book, ominously entitled Dark Age Ahead. June Jacobs is Canada's foremost authority on urban life – some would say that she is the world's foremost authority on the health of cities in North America.

One of her chapters is called "Unwinding Vicious Cycles." Here, she mostly talks about housing issues and the credentials of city planners and other professionals, but she eventually gets into an interesting discussion about "efficiency."

She says: "when human beings are nurtured, efficiency and economies of scale don't apply. Helping individuals become acceptable and fulfilled members of a culture takes generous individual attention to each one."

We've all heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child. And that's Jacobs' point – a fulfilling life requires redundancies. In today's society, the private and public sectors are driven by competitiveness and the search for ever more efficiency. The nurturing of our society, "the village," is increasingly becoming the role of the voluntary sector – admittedly with the support of corporations and government.

That's why institutions of public character, like Manitoba Theatre Centre, are so important. These institutions can only exist with the support of volunteers and donors. MTC is a leading example in our community of a successful voluntary sector organization. Such success is only possible with the leadership and commitment of many people, each bringing their time, talent and resources. To everyone involved in that effort, I say "congratulations and keep up the good work."