Gord’s Story: A Short(ish) History of our Beginnings
By Gord Gallaugher, Founding Chair, April 2025In my 18 years of municipal council involvement, including nine years on Dufferin County Council, I became exposed for the first time to the many different charities and non-profits serving children, seniors, people with disabilities and other groups in our area. The common thread for all of them was the need to raise funds.
At a museum board meeting, community foundations were mentioned, and it piqued my interest. I was intrigued by the concept of perpetually endowed funds, the annual income of which could be used to fund charitable organizations.
Fundraising is not at the top of my favourite things to do and this sounded like a better option to me – ask for donations, large and small, and invest them rather than immediately spending them.
Give away the earnings on the investments and hold the original gifts forever. The bigger the pot, the more annual grants that can be given away.
Kind of a delayed gratification scheme, but in the long run it works.
Gord & Debbi – founded a charity
And for charities, it would ease the burden of annual fundraising drives, which could consume easily 20-25% of staff or volunteer time – time that would be better spent serving the community.
But it was another decade and half before the concept came back for consideration. I joined Headwaters Communities in Action (HCIA), an organization designed to mobilize and support community groups and new non-profits. Once again the concept of a community foundation was discussed, and a group of service clubs, local charities and non-profits was convened. However the concept was roundly discouraged – they all felt it was not needed, they already did fundraising and this would only compete with that. So it died… for then.
Can’t Keep a Good Idea Down
In 2014, I retired from full-time work. I was still involved with HCIA and Shirley Boxem was their Executive Director. That group was still supportive of the community foundation concept, so I started to talk to friends and acquaintances about it.
The Boomers were starting to retire, as a generation, many of them had done quite well financially.
Over the next 25 years or so, billions of dollars would change hands to the next generation. People were talking about estate planning, not just retirement planning.
Local entrepreneurs were aging like the general population, and some of those owners could benefit from a charitable tax deduction upon disposing of their business.
MaryAnn Lowry speaks with Raymond Soucy, then Executive Director of Centre Wellington Community Foundation and others at an early event.
In the picture: Gord Gallaugher speaks to a crowd about the community foundation, accompanied by MaryAnn Lowry, Steve Doney, Laura Ryan and Joan Waechter.
We were aware of many private family charitable foundations, created and managed by individual families. Traditionally these were the domain of the ultra rich as foundations can be expensive to operate. With rising wealth in the middle class, some may have considered creating their own foundation, but accountants and other advisors generally agree they need a minimum of $5 million to be viable. However, create a family fund within a community foundation and costs are pooled. A donor-advised fund within a community foundation could give essentially all the benefits of a private charitable foundation at a fraction of the cost, and without the family having to deal with the day-to-day management.
It seemed like the perfect time to create a community foundation for Dufferin. There were almost 200 across Canada at the time, ranging in size from the Vancouver Foundation with over $1B in investments to one serving Minnedosa, MB, population 6,000.
Most importantly, community foundations are very local – grants are made to a defined area, which usually corresponds with the area targeted for donations. Give local, grant local.
A Community Comes Together
Soon we had a core group that included Steve Doney, an investment advisor at TD Waterhouse, Joan Waechter whose brother had been instrumental in creating the Stratford Perth Community Foundation, MaryAnn Lowry, retired from Mercer Consulting who had headed a Mulmur Economic Development task force, and Shirley Boxem – Shirley has been a part of DCF as long as I have – acting as secretary and liaison with HCIA. At times we were joined by Ken Topping, retired teacher and community volunteer, Mayor Janet Horner (Mulmur), Mayor Laura Ryan (Mono), Sonya Pritchard (CAO Dufferin County) and Jill Stephen, previously with United Way Mississauga, who sadly died of cancer before we were incorporated.
HCIA took us on as an incubator project. They received donations and issued charitable receipts for gifts that paid our startup and legal costs.
That arrangement lasted until Dufferin Community Foundation was incorporated and had received charitable status from CRA – over 3 years.
HCIA was a good partner for us, as they were already working across many charitable sectors in Dufferin.
Foundation Board Directors in 2019
From left to right: Steve Doney, Laura Ryan, Gord Gallaugher, MaryAnn Lowry, Joan Waechter and Paul Sutcliffe
The Founders Circle was created to fund our earliest operations. The Circle consisted of any person or organization that contributed $2,500. We made the pitch to most councils in the county and most of the service clubs. In total, almost $50,000 was raised over three years. Members of the Founders Circle were excited by the concept and helped spread the word about the start-up foundation that could serve the needs of our charities forever.
Carters was hired to do the incorporation and gave us a 16-page list of things to consider! MaryAnn was our resident writer – having done this with Mercers – and drafted the objectives you see on our corporate documents, outlining the types of activities we would fund. MaryAnn tended to think in broad concepts and to write in a tone more familiar to Fortune 500 companies, and you see her impact in many of the early documents.
Carters produced a draft operating bylaw, which was refined and approved by the group and purposely included such things as maximum term limits to ensure the Board of Directors attracted new people with new ideas, and at the recommendation of Carters, a small Board supported by strong committees.
Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) had a wealth of information on creating a community foundation, including recommended policies and classifying different types of funds that we could create. In 2018, during the first year after incorporation, the Board would adopt between one to three policies each meeting.
Here Come the Funds
Part of our learning process was to visit various other local community foundations. The Treasurer at Grey Bruce Community Foundation in Owen Sound showed us his spreadsheet with 160 funds listed. A major learning from them was their advice to not create too many small funds. They had one endowed fund of $1,000 to support students taking music lessons in Markdale! Establish minimums, keep the funds attainable, but of a size to make an impact.
We also met with Muskoka, Centre Wellington, Prince Edward County, and Cindy Lindsay, founding CEO of the Guelph Community Foundation, then working for CFC.
As a start up foundation, gaining donors was the first priority. We needed to build funds that would appeal to donors. The beauty of a community foundation is its ability to allow the donor to either choose a ready made fund or to design one that’s aligned with their aspirations. Infinitely customizable, I would call it.
Launch event at Adamo Estate Winery in 2019
We had our first Donor Advised Fund (DAF) in the works even before we were incorporated or registered as a charity. The Greenwood family had been talking to their accountant about creating a private foundation. Their accountant said, “No, you really don’t want to do that. Talk to your local community foundation.”
The next funds we developed were a general community fund, called the Dufferin Vision Fund, with a wide scope on what causes to support, and a Sustainability Fund to support our operating costs. Field of Interest funds are designed to appeal to individuals with specific causes in mind and will accept donations of any size. We started by creating the Arts, Culture & Heritage Fund and the Environment Fund. Since then, donors have established the Refugee Resettlement Fund, the Rosemary Molesworth Memorial 3D Art Fund and the Children and Youth Fund. More can be created if there is a donor demand as well as charities working locally to support the particular cause – an important factor to consider.
There is an opportunity for local charities to create their own fund – what is called an organizational fund – where supporters of the charitable cause can donate to an endowed fund for the exclusive support of that charity – forever. Perfect for bequests.
Local Charities Benefit
Even before we were incorporated and charitable, we knew we had to establish ourselves as a granting organization. So for our first three years, we held competitions for what we called our Mini-grants. Businesses and professionals were solicited to sponsor from $1000 to $1500 for three grants to local charities each year.
That was a great way to get our feet wet, but it was nothing like what happened during COVID, when the federal government flowed more than $160,000 in emergency funding to us through CFC in 2020 to support our local charities, followed by $270,000 in 2023 to help them strengthen and rebuild. Those kinds of dollars certainly attracted attention, and showed what we could do in our community.
From starting with half a million dollars in 2018, we have grown to over $4 million in endowed funds now. I believe it was in 2019, our second full year of operating, we decided we needed to have a concrete way of showing how our community foundation could impact the charitable sector locally.
We set a target to build $10 million in endowed funds in 10 years, which would flow at a minimum about $450,000 annually to local charities.
Suddenly, the potential for Dufferin Community Foundation to make a big impact locally felt real. And we are well on our way.
Community Living Dufferin was one of the early recipients of the federal
Emergency Support Fund during the pandemic
Early 2019 grant
The Greenwood Family Fund’s first grant went to Streams Community Hub in 2022.