Words and photos by Daniel C.
Today, we went to the Victoria Foundation, a non-profit organization in Victoria. We learned about the organization itself, especially on the ‘Vital youth’ fund. This is a fund that will grant selected student groups a total of $2,500. We can then decide where to donate it.
The Victoria Foundation is a registered charity accredited by Imagine Canada, and the second oldest of Canada’s 191 community foundations. It dedicates their funds to investing in people, projects and non-profit organizations that make the Victoria local community stronger – now and for the long-term. We also learned the detail of their day-to-day operation. One of the women we met is responsible for communication with the donors. She told us how she connects with current donors and reached out to the potential donors who have been recommended by the current donors. She said that the foundation has approximately 385 million dollars in total, and it is still growing at a speed of 7% by a sophisticated investment groups. However, the organization only grants about 4% to make the fund very stable. Not only does this strategy assure the fund is able to provide steady money stream to the charities every year, it also creates a “lasting legacy” with the donors money which can be appealing to some of the donors.
After we came back to campus from the foundation, we went to the library and started to explore what we are interested in, who do we want to help. We researched the ‘Global sustainable goals’ to see where our values aligned. In the afternoon, we came up with the group’s top two Global sustainable goals which we are going to focus on : sustainable cities and communities, and zero hunger. We researched many organizations which align with our values. We then contacted those by phone. Unfortunately, we didn’t make any appointments today but we left some messages. We are very excited to find out what kind of volunteering we can do to help them and learn about their mission.