With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1071224
46 BCBUSINESS FEBRUARY 2019 P H I L A N T H R O P Y account, which doesn't pay out interest, is free to set up and use. The charitable invest- ment account tier—donations are actively managed and invested—charges fees.) But donor-advised funds also have their critics. Because tax receipts are immediately issued—but the actual funds can be distributed later— DAFs (and private foundations) can potentially create a funding logjam, where money destined for charity remains invested, but outside of any charity. In Canada, unlike in the U.S., there's a disbursement requirement, but it's low: like all charities, DAFs are only obliged to spend 3.5 percent of their war chest annually. It's called "warehousing wealth." Bromley admits that it's a legitimate concern—but. "My personal view and experience is that donors who are engaged, donors who are developed, who care about what they're doing and are doing it according to a plan, do not ware- house wealth," he says. "The ones who are more likely to warehouse wealth are the ones that are going, Oh, man, I just sold my company for a lot of money, and this is a good way to get a tax credit." G I V I N G B A C K T O T H E L A N D Anchoring Main and Hastings streets in Vancouver, the Carnegie Community Centre, like a dignified society matron who got off at the wrong bus stop, always seems a little out of place. The 1903 Romanesque Revival struc- ture, one of roughly 2,500 libraries funded by industri- alist Andrew Carnegie, would become both a landmark and a metaphor: today the Carnegie is ground zero for a community that could certainly use a charitable hand. A gift from an earlier, gilded age, the Carnegie repre- sents the transformative power of philanthropy, a pro- cess that continues today. Chinese artist Yue Minjun's A-maze-ing Laughter, the "laughing men" sculpture over- looking English Bay, might never have found a permanent home if not for the intervention of Lululemon Athletica founder Dennis (Chip) Wilson and his wife, Shannon, whose $1.5-million donation to the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation in 2012 ensured a permanent home for a beloved piece of public art. Besides altering the built environment, philanthropy plays a role in preserving the natural world. In B.C., organizations like Greenpeace, the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee, Tides Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation transcend their good works with a value that is almost existential. To that end, contem- porary benefactors are championing environmental concerns, using methods that in some cases bear a remarkable resemblance to turn-of-last- century philanthropy. Since landing in the East Kootenay town of Invermere back in 1992 at the age of 23, Toronto native Elana Rosenfeld has gone from running a restaurant and café to, in 1996, co-founding Kicking Horse Coffee Co. In 2017, she got an offer she couldn't refuse and sold 80 percent of the company to Lavazza, the Italian-based coffee multinational. (She maintains her position as CEO.) Instead of hoarding her spoils, Rosenfeld, whose love of nature drew her to the wilds of B.C. in the first place, cut a personal cheque for $3.2 million to the Nature Con- servancy of Canada. Part of an ongoing philanthropic effort by Rosenfeld and 130-employee Kicking Horse Cof- fee, the money will help fund the acquisition of the Dark- woods Conservation Area in B.C.'s Selkirk Mountains, protecting the area in perpetuity. It wasn't just about doing good, Rosenfeld says. There was also a business case to be made—sort of. "As you choose your philanthropic partnerships, you're making a statement around your values," she maintains. "What does the business stand for? What does the brand stand for? Who are they going partner with? What did they work with?" Still, it's not all about brand buoyancy. "The fun piece of it is uniting goodness with prosperity," adds Rosenfeld. "Not just financially. The more good you can do, the more good you create; more good you create, the more good you can do. It's just like this cyclical thing that is creating a lot of good on many different levels." Trevor Linden agrees: "You do it because you want to make a difference to other peoples' lives. But at the end of the day, you realize that you probably get as much out of it personally." It's a sentiment that may have been shared by the turn-of-last-century benefactors. But there is a differ- ence. For so-called robber barons Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller, their business practices were predatory, verging on brutal—by burying the competition and over- seeing monopolies (and then exploiting those who had the misfortune to work for them), they created misery as a byproduct of wealth. In a sense, philanthropy was their atonement for lives spent actively opposing social good. For many of the new philanthropists, things couldn't be any more different. "We're building things using a business model to make the world a better place going forward," notes entrepreneur Manny Padda, who, at the behest of his parents, began a lifetime of giving back by volunteering when he was 16 years old. He doesn't see this as an isolated thing, not among his demographic. It may be true that, compared to previous generations, they're donating less to charity. But they may be doing more good. "The new generation, their belief is that you can make money and do good at the same time," Padda says. One can hope. n PUBLIC GOOD The Carnegie Community Centre (top) and the Amaze-ing Laughter sculp- ture are two B.C. philanthropic landmarks