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Vital Signs is an annual check-up conducted by community foundations across Canada that measures the vitality of our communities, identifies trends, and shares opportunities for action in areas that are critical to our quality of life.

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Socially responsible investing - big dollars, big change

Will socially responsible investing ever really catch on? I asked that question when I conducted a study for Vancity Credit Union on the future of socially responsible investing (SRI) five years ago.

Today, the answer is “thumbs up.” Pretty well every prediction from that study played out, particularly the mainstreaming of SRI. Check out these numbers:
* $200 trillion – the estimated size of global capital markets
* 800 – the number of asset managers around the world who have signed on to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which commits them to take environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into their investment decisions
* $22 trillion – the assets under their management
* 530 – the number of institutional investors who have signed on to the Carbon Disclosure Project, to increase disclosure on how their investments manage carbon and energy use
* $64 trillion – the assets under their management


From my vantage point, that’s great progress. More than 10 per cent of the global capital market is now aligned with ESG factors. So what can we do to continue to catalyze this progress?


Malcolm Gladwell says, “The theory of the tipping point requires that we reframe how we think about the world.” So we’re on the right track.  A big driver of this capital markets shift is a reframed definition of socially responsible investing.


More than 20 years ago as a Vancity Credit Union board member, I was a founding trustee of Ethical Funds Inc., the first family of socially responsible mutual funds in Canada. Back then, SRI was all about values-based investing: no nuclear, no tobacco, no weapons, etc.


Today, SRI is more broadly defined as the integration of environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions. It may or may not include sector exclusions on the basis of social or environmental factors. It often includes shareholder engagement where asset managers dialogue with their investee companies to seek improved ESG performance. It can also include targeted investments in community-based initiatives or clean technology.


SRI’s financial performance also gets a “thumbs up.” Investments which take social and environmental factors into account can do as well as, or even outperform, traditional investments. For example:


* The Jantzi Social Index (JSI), which measures a basket of SRI investments, outperformed the S&P/TSX over a decade. Since its inception on Jan. 1, 2000 through Jan. 31, 2010, the JSI achieved an annualized return of 5.01%, while the S&P/TSX Composite and the S&P/TSX 60 had annualized returns of 4.98% and 4.83% respectively.
* A review of 160 socially responsible mutual funds in the US in 2009 found that the majority of the funds (65%) outperformed their benchmarks in 2009, most by significant margins. These SRI funds topped benchmarks across nearly all asset classes, including balanced, large cap, small cap, and global funds, as well as bonds.


With this progress, I wonder what it will take to reach the tipping point.


A good strategy is to introduce SRI principles to new sectors such as foundations; to encourage them to reframe how they think about the power of their investments. Recently I worked with Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) and Philanthropic Foundations Canada, to help inform, train and build the capacity of foundations to consider SRI in their investment policies.


One outcome of this effort is the launch of the first SRI online resource for foundations in Canada, sponsored by CFC. I also put together a how-to tool for asset owners who want to hire an SRI oriented fund manager, Responsible Investment Questions for Fund Managers, also funded by CFC.


Growing foundation interest in Canada has the potential to swing $34 billion to SRI principles. If foundations around the world reframe their investment principles, we might just reach that magical tipping point.


Coro Strandberg, principal of Strandberg Consulting, is an influential sustainability strategist and thought-leader. This commentary first appeared on her own blog. Find out more about Coro and her work at www.corostrandberg.com

RAPP lends meaning to words for newcomers, and their children, in London

The Reading and Parents Program (RAPP) is helping words make sense to newcomers, and their children, in London, Ont.

LUSO Community Services founded RAPP in April 2008 to meet an obvious need. Indeed, 14 per cent of the City of London's population were classified as visible minorities in 2006, with 10 per cent of Thames Valley students identifying their first language as something other than English or French, according to London's Vital Signs.


RAPP is a practical family literacy program that provides parents, caregivers and their children with reading resources to use in their homes. It has received funding from the London Community Foundation, the City of London and Lambeth London Rotary Club.


Each RAPP pack consists of five elements: a quality children’s book, reading and language hints, poems and finger plays, a craft, and age-appropriate activity sheets, all of which reflect the theme of the story book.

Literacy staff meet with parents individually to demonstrate the pack and its use as a tool to encourage emergent literacy in children. Packs can be tailored to individual families to include books for younger and/or older siblings and/or books on topics pertinent and relevant to each family’s unique situation. Participants borrow and exchange the packs bi-weekly. Several of the kits are dual-language books, containing translated materials in a variety of languages, including Spanish, Vietnamese and Arabic.

“We loved the kits – we can find a story in our language (Arabic),” one excited mother told RAPP representatives. “My children loved the book and craft – me, too! I loved it. It helped me learn English.”

The program received a $6,050 Community Fund Grant from London Community Foundation, which is committed to welcoming immigrants and supporting them in the community.

“The Reading and Parent Program encourages literacy skill development through key parent-child interaction and bonding – skills that will be carried throughout childhood, adulthood and life,” says Elisabete Rodrigues, LUSO Community Services Executive Director.

“It’s a benefit to individuals, families, and the community as a whole."

LUSO Community Services is a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to promoting inclusiveness, well being and the prosperity of the London community. Founded in 1979, it provides a range of programs and services to help newcomers and immigrants of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as well as other disadvantaged populations.

National Philanthropy Day pays tribute to great contributors, lasting contributions

By Skana Gee

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

The quote is from an American – 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt – but it crosses all borders, real and imagined. And it’s worth consideration today, especially, as we mark National Philanthropy Day.

The idea is that on this day we recognize and pay tribute to the great contributions that philanthropy – and those active in the philanthropic community – have made to our lives, our communities, and our world.

Today is the 25th anniversary of National Philanthropy Day, spearheaded by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. It was officially declared in Canada just last year, by the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

I’ll be using some of my time today to think about the amazing work being done coast to coast my members of Community Foundations of Canada, and its thousands of affiliated programs, initiatives and projects.

While I’m quite new to the community foundation movement, my respect and admiration for all of its players is great – I feel I have been welcomed into a family of dedicated, enthusiastic and, most of all, compassionate Canadians who are “doing what they can, with what they have, where they are.”

That drive will be palpable as we gather May 12-14 in Vancouver for CFC Conference 2011, a much-needed opportunity to reflect, reconnect and recharge with colleagues from around the globe.

We’re eagerly anticipating the featured speaker – another U.S. President. Bill Clinton is sure to inspire with his philanthropic message, as are the other plenary speakers, including Naomi Tutu and Bill White, who leads the renowned Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

But mainly it’s a chance for all of us to learn how to be better philanthropists, through professional development, networking and Community Learning Forums, which will see conference-goers visiting venues and organizations funded by Vancouver Foundation.

I’ve become acquainted with such grantees across Canada – and the work they do: what they can, with what they have, where they are – via my communications work on Canada’s Vital Signs.

Some of these impressive efforts include hands-on environmental action by Hamilton Community Foundation’s Youth Advisory Council, a quick response by the Foundation of Greater Montreal to help newly arrived Haitian immigrants, and Vancouver Foundation’s role in establishing the new Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia. Others are also documented in our Vital Signs Impact Stories.

With those in mind, I raise a toast to all of you. Happy National Philanthropy Day!

Skana Gee is Communications Coordinator with Community Foundations of Canada

Death of long-form census robs funders of ability to gauge success of programs, efforts

By Ernie Ginsler

What's all the fuss about cancelling the long-form census?

Just because it is “arguable” that a voluntary questionnaire sent to 30 per cent of the population will still give good results – as the federal government claims – does not mean it is true. (The mandatory long-form census went to 20 per cent of the population).

About 370 professional groups and government bodies agree that all we will get from a larger survey, which will under-represent low-income Canadians, immigrants, and other marginalized groups who tend to not respond to voluntary surveys, is a very expensive, unreliable survey.

So what will we lose if the long-form census is cancelled? Governments in Canada at all levels spend a lot of money – probably in excess of a hundred billion dollars each year – on services to improve the lives of Canadians. They help pay for adult literacy programs, immigrant settlement programs, subsidized child care, affordable housing, skills training, education from kindergarten to post-doctoral studies, health services for Aboriginal communities, and much, much more.


This funding will continue to be provided to some extent, but we will lose a significant amount of our capacity to evaluate whether it is producing positive outcomes. We won't be able to tell whether immigrants are able to use the skills and education they brought to Canada, and we won't know whether their earnings match their education and training. We won't know whether the general population in our community has the education needed for the jobs that are being created. We won't know where to build subsidized child-care centres because we won't know where people with young children and low incomes are settling. We won't know where to set up adult English-as-a-Second-Language programs because as new immigrants settle in new neighbourhoods, we won't know which ones they are moving to.

The loss of the long-form census is of specific interest to community foundations across Canada because of the impact it could have on their annual Vital Signs reports.

I know, because for the past four years I have been the data consultant for Waterloo Region’s Vital Signs. I have also provided consulting to many community-based planning initiatives, including a recently completed 40-year plan to reduce violence in Waterloo Region. I have done research for federal, provincial and municipal levels of government.

All of these plans and reports were heavily dependent on data directly from or dependent on the long-form census. Producing such plans and reports at their current level of comprehensiveness – or anything approximating it – will be utterly impossible.

Governments, community and other foundations, United Ways, and individual donors base their funding on identified needs in their communities. They judge the success of their efforts by measuring positive changes in the lives of those in their communities.

"My gut tells me" or "I think" are not sufficient criteria for making decisions on where to direct money to improve the lives of Canadians. We need solid information and that can only come from having solid, reliable, valid socio-demographic statistics from which to work.

Ernie Ginsler has been actively involved in community-based research and nonprofit governance as a professional and as a university faculty member for almost 40 years. He has taught at York University, the University of Waterloo, and, currently, at Wilfrid Laurier University

Congregation connected to community through Victoria's Vital Signs

By Leah Baade

Reverend Allen Saunders is a get-things-done kind of man. He finds a need and he fills it.  As lead minister at First Metropolitan United Church, he is full of energy for our community – members of the congregation and the city he lives in.

The church houses the Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria (ICA) in the low-income housing complex on the church property. It’s also a stepping-off point for many of the church’s outreach endeavours. From supporting initiatives such as Our Place, Inner-City Dinners and Out of the Rain Shelter for street youth, to recreational outlets for youth in the form of a basketball team, or for drop-in recreation. Still other initiatives focus on the environment and sustainability, health and wellness, music, and youth.

Rev. Saunders leads an active congregation of 627 households at the downtown Victoria church; the 1915 heritage building is a hub of belonging and leadership in our community.

So what’s the connection to the Victoria Foundation? Rev. Saunders regularly bases his Sunday sermons on the findings of Victoria’s Vital Signs.

To coincide with Rights of the Child Day, he highlighted some of Victoria’s challenges and achievements that were identified by our youth respondents. And just last month, his sermon took a serious look at what Victoria graders identified as the top five issues in our community, noting that homelessness, cost of living, addictions, housing and mental illness are all interrelated.

The Vital Signs indicators play a valuable role in how the congregation at First Metropolitan decides where there are challenges that need to be met. They help to prioritize opportunities for outreach. A shortage of funding for the arts in Victoria-area schools means an extra-special opportunity for a music program at the church. Cost-of-living constraints find Rev. Saunders pondering a community kitchen program that would facilitate community building and a sense of accomplishment as participants cook for themselves and each other.

Victoria’s Vital Signs is a key tool for the church in its strategic planning process. While putting together its vision for 2020, First Metropolitan is able to examine future staffing needs and identify the church’s greatest potential for redevelopment.

It’s evident that Rev. Saunders has an inspiring effect on his congregation. Parishioners travel to this church each week from as far away as Sidney and Sooke. First Metropolitan’s message reaches much further than the back pew as he encourages each and every member of the congregation to put their faith into action as soon as they step out the doors.

Leah Baade is Youth in Philanthropy and Social Media Coordinator with Victoria Foundation

Vancouver Foundation hosts Vitality Sessions to engage business, government, nonprofits, and citizens

By Meriko Kubota

Vancouver Foundation released its Vital Signs report for Metro Vancouver on Tuesday, Oct. 5, along with 15 other community foundations across Canada. To find out how Metro Vancouver is doing, come On the Road to Vitality with us by watching this video.

Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs for Metro Vancouver helps to inform the Foundation’s decisions with respect to grants, community partnerships, organizational collaborations and other program activities.  It also serves as a key resource of community knowledge to engage donors, funders and partners, as well as community stakeholders.

The Vital Signs report is created by the community for the community. Many volunteers contributed to the selection of relevant and reliable data. Sharing the Vital Signs information and encouraging its use is integral to our vision of healthy, vibrant and livable communities across British Columbia.

With the support of Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, Vancouver Foundation will be hosting community dialogues, “Vitality Sessions” from November 2010 through March 2011. These Vitality Sessions will be hosted in the six sub-regions of Metro Vancouver:

Our conversations will be co-hosted by community foundations in these sub-regions, engaging business, government, nonprofit, and residents of the regions. The purpose of these Vitality Sessions is to provide a space for conversation and support for positive change in our Metro Vancouver communities.

Please visit our website for more information on Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs for Metro Vancouver and updates on our Vitality Sessions: www.vancouverfoundation.ca/vitalsigns

Meriko Kubota is Manager of the Vancouver Foundation’s Vital Signs Team