Tim Harper is a Toronto journalist and author. He spent more than three decades at the Toronto Star as a reporter, Ottawa bureau chief, Washington correspondent, national editor, and national affairs columnist. Tim covered war and revolution in Latin America, upheaval in Russia, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the rise of Barack Obama in the United States. He covered seven Canadian elections and three American elections. He is co-author, with Alok Mukherjee, of Excessive Force, a study of policing in Toronto, and a contributor to Fish Wrapped: True Confessions from Newsrooms Past, an anthology of life in the golden age of newspapers.
In the follow-up to a piece about policy schools operated by philanthropic foundations across Canada, contributor Tim Harper shares the stories of six graduates of these programs, and their policy wins.
The need for the sector to lead on policy advocacy has been described as a moral imperative, yet it often faces criticism that it has lost its sense of urgency and become too content as a service-delivery vehicle. Contributor Tim Harper looks at policy institutes across Canada that are teaching the pragmatic skills of building support, refining a policy “ask,” and having bureaucratic and political doors open.
Hopes are high that changes to the Income Tax Act will make it easier to fund non-qualified donees, meaning more resources, more flexibility, and more collaboration between funders and organizations that have often been shut out. The two-month consultation period on the draft guidelines ends January 31.
Philanthropic foundations can manage their investments to provide much-needed support on the most urgent issues facing the planet in a variety of ways: divestment, transition financing combined with shareholder engagement, impact/ESG investment – or even winding down and freeing up their endowments to accelerate work toward a net-zero Canada by 2050.
Canadian foundations know that responsible investing can reap both positive impacts and benchmark-beating financial returns, but it isn’t easy – knowing where to invest, measuring social outcomes, even agreeing what to call it. It’s “tough, ongoing work,” says one foundation leader.
The House of Commons finance committee passed key amendments to the BIA at the end of May, ridding the bill of language described as “‘direction and control’ on steroids.” But a prohibition on “directed giving,” which prevents pooled funding if those funds are solicited for a specific cause, remains.
Canada’s charitable and philanthropic sector won a major victory Monday, May 30, when the House of Commons finance committee voted unanimously to eliminate wording in the budget implementation bill that had been described as “‘direction and control’ on steroids.”
With the government poised to enact legislation that threatens to set back efforts by charities to more easily fund “non-qualified donees,” the sector has mounted a full-throated pushback.
