$110,000 in Funding: What the Quadra Island Foundation Accomplished

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Quadra Island Foundation recently distributed $110,000 to four non-profit organizations. In today’s interview the foundation’s Vice Chair, Marc Doll, explains the rationale behind those choices and a little of what he expects the money to accomplish. 

Marc Doll: “There was this recognized recognition of how much this province uses and depends on nonprofits. So the government of British Columbia put together a pool of $25 million, which went to Vancouver Foundation. From the Vancouver Foundation, it trickled down to foundations like the Quadra Foundation, Cortes Community Foundation and Campbell River Foundation.  It was administered at the local level by local foundations, but from a pool of money that came from the British Columbia government.” 

“We advertised - online through local media, press releases etc - to indicate that we had this fund of $110,000 to distribute locally. We were almost triple subscribed, we had about $300,000 in total applications.” 

“So to whittle that down we hired a coordinator, Jennifer Banks Doll, who headed up the grant committee. She was tasked with finding a committee populated by regular Quadra Island citizens and a board member or two. They then went through the grants. We had a way of weighting the grants in terms of what was going to be the most returned to the community and from there allocated the grants to the four successful applicants.”  

Cortes Currents: Tell us a little about each of the successful applicants.

Marc Doll: “There were 4 successful applicants. There was Quadra Circle that received about $54,000. Quadra Circle is an organization on Quadra that serves the seniors population. They have weekly meetings. They offer help to seniors that are housebound, need medical, exercise, or social gatherings. They have quite a portfolio of things that they do, and they were looking to build their capacity through the hiring of a part time Executive Director. The largest allocation went to them.” 

“The Quadra Island Seniors Housing Society received about $30,000. Again, I believe it was for a part time Executive Director. The Quadra Island  Seniors Housing Society was incredibly successful. To be able to build affordable housing on Vancouver Island is an incredible task. They were able to successfully get that done a couple of years ago and I think they're looking at  increasing the number of dwellings on the island.  They have a waiting list  in the dozens and dozens of people for the units that they were able to create. They're looking to future growth and getting paid staff to facilitate that.” 

“The third successful Grantee was the Quadra Island Climate Action Network, which on the island is known as ICAN.  That organization is relatively new. It's been around for maybe five, six years, and their focus is building community capacity with a climate focus, and they've been doing a lot of great work on water,  food security, and a bunch of different high profile projects that they've been undertaking.  They are looking to, again, hire an Operations Coordinator to provide some support  in all those many and varied projects that they're working on.”

“The final successful grantee was the Quadra Island Recreational Society. It was a subgroup within the rec society, which operates the Wednesday lunches and the idea was to increase the capacity of that kitchen to serve  the 100, 150 people that they do every Wednesday during  the shoulder or the slower seasons. There were some kitchen upgrades that were going to enable them to better serve the people of Quadra. So those were the four successful grantees.” 

Cortes Currents: Which sectors of Quadra's population are in the greatest need? I'm thinking of age groups, but there might also be other factors which I haven't thought of.