Eco-Funding Crisis Grips B.C.

TheTyee.caFrom the Great Bear Rainforest to the Taku River basin, British Columbia's environmental advocates have grabbed a lot of global attention.A lot of attention and cash.Educating the public, organizing boycotts, tinkering towards sustainable economies and doing baseline scientific research in B.C has cost tens of millions of dollars in recent years, much of that doled out by private donors, many of them based in the United States.But donors are scaling down as governments, too, are cutting back. As the money dries up, environmental groups aren't just worried about their own survival. They remind that the non-profit world, which stands between public and private sectors, has been called the third pillar of society. That pillar in B.C., they say, is crumbling.The 9-11 ripple effectThe terrorist attacks of 9-11, the stock market drop, and governments focused on deficit reduction have meant hard times for environmental groups after a funding boom in the mid-1990s, according to Tim Draimin,  executive director of the Tides Canada Foundation. Tides helps foundations, donors and potential donors pair up with charitable organizations working for social change and environmental protection."The last two years have been very challenging," says Draimin. "And it's also more competitive. All of sudden universities and hospitals have jumped in and made it a much more competitive environment for charitable organizations."And there's no indication that things are going to get better any time soon. Two big U.S.-based foundations, W. Alton Jones and Packard, both major funders of environmental projects, have recently pulled way back in British Columbia. W. Alton Jones has been completely disbanded and the Packard Foundation, which is based 100 per cent on Hewlett Packard stock, has seen its endowment shrink from around $13 billion in the late 1990s to roughly $5 billion and subsequently has had to refocus its philanthropic vision.B.C. has taken the hit. Between 1999 and 2001 the David Suzuki Foundation received grants worth $837,100 from Packard. In 2004 Tides Canada and the Sointula-based Living Oceans Society will received $250,000 and $50,000 respectively.U.S. poured $18 million into big B.C. projectsIn addition Packard has helped to bankroll the Great Bear Rainforest and Taku River Basin campaigns to the tune of a staggering $18 million (US) through groups like Forest Ethics, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. But the tap may run dry come the end of 2004."Over the course of 2001 and 2003 we've had to reduce our grants by 70 per cent and we decided that we'd have to pull back from our investment in B.C.," says Jim Leape, director of conservation for the Packard Foundation. "This shift in resources has nothing to do with a lack of interest in the Great Bear Rainforest."Leape says a formal decision has not yet been made regarding the Great Bear Rainforest but that the foundation will look for ways to advance the central coast conservation agenda.Ian McAllister, one of the founders of the Raincoast Conservation Society, says if Packard decides to walk out of the Great Bear Rainforest the timing couldn't be worse."It's premature for Packard to be pulling out. The agreements are taking us in the right direction but not nearly where we need to be," McAllister says "I think a lot of these foundations are based on a corporate model and they need to show short-term results. The problem is campaigns like the Great Bear rainforest are not short-term projects."One environmental insider who asked not to be named is cynical about the influence large foreign foundations can exert on B.C.'s political culture, and says there can be an inverse relationship between funding and productivity in the environmental movement. Environmental groups that suddenly find themselves awash in cash can lose touch with the grassroots energy that got things started in the first place.Twelve funders feed Georgia Strait AllianceBeyond sexy internationally appealing environmental issues, the flight of major funders is having very real impacts for other small non-profit organizations working on lower profile issues says Laurie MacBride, executive director of the Georgia Strait Alliance.The Nanaimo-based Georgia Strait Alliance was formed in 1990 to protect the Georgia Strait marine environment. In recent years the Alliance has been a vocal opponent of the province's net cage salmon farming industry. Beyond personal donations, the organization gets most of its $500,000 budget from approximately 12 foundations of varying size, half of which are American."Fundraising is a big part of my job and more and more of our staff are having to spend time on it," MacBride says.MacBride says general support funds - to pay the rent and bills - have always been hard to come by and that she has to dream up new projects every year to catch the attention of funders."This affects our ability to do long-term work. And the stuff we do is not short-term," MacBride says. As a large three-year grant started in 2001 nears completion, the future for her organization is uncertain, MacBride says.Exhausting money chaseUncertainty is a fact of life for the Squamish Watershed Society, an organization that has been doing salmon stream assessment and restoration work since 1993. In 1999 its annual budget ranged from between half a million and $1 million. Today the society struggles along on a bare-bones $100,000 budget, drastically reduced after Forest Renewal B.C., Fisheries Renewal B.C. and the Habitat Restoration Salmonid Enhancement Programwere discontinued."We can tough it out for a year but I hope it doesn't last forever," says director Edith Tobe. "I'm doing a lot of work now that I used to get paid for."According to a report published last year by the Canadian Council on Social Development, the exhausting scramble for funds is the norm. Right now, volunteer and non-profit groups eat up too much time just "chasing short-term sources of funding," and can't get on with the work they exist to perform, writes Katherine Scott, author of "Funding Matters", which drew from focus group sessions with over 100 Canadian non-profits.Many of those non-profits, Scott writes, will be in jeopardy unless government and private donors change the way they dole out cash.That's not news to Angela Smailes, project coordinator of the Millard/Piercy Watershed Stewards in Courtenay. She estimates that nearly one-third of her working hours is spent knocking on the doors of various foundations, writing up proposals and fishing for funds.Though she'd rather be out in the field protecting the Millard/Piercy watershed, she says chasing down cash is job one. "It's like writing a research proposal every month and then there's the interim reports that are required," Smailes says.In fact she welcomes the demand for more accountability, adding that it can only help a non-profit group constantly re-focus and refine its mission. However Smailes says when you're filling out forms and proposals for a half-dozen funders, you can feel shackled by paperwork.Half of B.C.'s non-profits fear demiseLast fall an ad hoc committee drawn from various non-profits trained a lens on funding for British Columbia's environmental and stewardship groups. Gretchen Harlow, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Vancouver, is a member of the committee and says that the soon to be published report echoes much of what was unearthed by the Canadian Council on Social Development. The list of issues ailing this sector is long.Non-profits are hobbled by short-term funding and an increasing load of report writing to satisfy their funders. In turn this burden leaves employees and volunteers burned out and their organizations in a chronically precarious state. Furthermore funders are now less willing to pay for essential administration costs that will keep the lights on and the phone bills and rent paid. Rather, they are targeting funds on a project by project basis with distinct measurable results.The effects of these financial stresses can be profound - wide swings in funding from year to year, a blurred organizational mission and increased stress about day-to-day survival, not to mention erosion of infrastructure, reporting overload and employee fatigue.To compound the situation, many donors now require matching grants from other foundations, leading to what has been called the "house of cards" effect - meaning if one funding source dries up the whole house can come tumbling down.Harlow's committee often found groups caught in a Catch-22 situation. "On the one hand if there's no core funding to keep the lights on and pay the rent you lose focus of your mission. Then you have people running around trying to tailor projects to the desires of various funders," says Harlow.Of the 100 groups surveyed in B.C., half of them, Harlow says, doubt they can last as effectual organizations.Offloading to the third pillarB.C., like a lot of other regions in North America, increasingly relies on the "third pillar" to perform services once handled by government. But just when governments are eager to "offload" more responsibilities to non-profit and volunteer groups, those groups find themselves competing for shrinking funding.The Canadian Wildlife Service, Harlow says, observes that shoe-string non-profits fueled by a pool of volunteers and meagerly paid staff are doing activities like fish stream monitoring and habitat assessment, functions that used to be performed by various ministries at both the federal and provincial level and remain key to making sound environmental management decisions.At the same time, says MacBride, non-profits often find themselves bending to the whims of funders. For example the Georgia Strait Alliance has had to sideline its campaign for better sewage treatment in the region, a project central to their mission and to a healthy Georgia Strait but one that is not considered in vogue among foundations and donors.Groups like the Georgia Strait Alliance argue they generate so-called social capital. Their work, they argue, is key to a healthy society and a functioning democracy.They also help to pump cash into small towns. "We're bringing a lot of money in and spending it in our communities," says Angela Smailes, of the Millard/Piercy Watershed Stewards.Indeed the third pillar of Canada is huge. There are almost 100,000 registered non-profit organizations in Canada. More than 900,000 Canadians are employed in this sector and every year Canadians donate one billion person hours to voluntary activities.Wary of U.S. experienceScott argues that Canada's government must take the lead in funding such groups in order top spur private donations. In the U.S., cuts in government budgets haven't been met by stepped up private donations. On the contrary, Scott finds U.S. research shows "lower government funding sets a lower standard of responsibility for private giving."Tides Canada's Tim Draimin says there are bright spots in this grim financial picture. He sees potential growth in philanthropic giving in what he calls "intergenerational transfer of wealth."For example people are discovering that their parents may have bought a house years ago for $20,000 that's now worth a cool million, says Draimin. "You can build charitable giving into your estate planning," he says.Also as non-profits figure out how to make more with less, they may discover entrepreneurial opportunities. A non-profit group that specializes in point source water pollution reduction may want to hire out its expertise at a small mark-up that will help fund its core activities, Draimin suggests.'Don't rehire'However in the near term, the road ahead for non-profits is bound to be rocky. The Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation, which funds groups working to protect, restore and maintain the natural environment of the Pacific Northwest, recently circulated a memo with some suggestions for non-profits.The memo urges groups to reduce costs by "cutting an edition of the newsletter." Or even better "if a staff person leaves, don't rehire."In other words: Heads up non-profits, prepare for lean times.Andrew Findlay is a Vancouver Island-based journalist whose pieces have appeared in the Vancouver Sun and many other publications.