Duane Hicks
It’s possible the town could see the formation of a Fort Frances Community Foundation to fund local projects in the future.
The idea first was identified in council’s strategic plan.
The town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee then reviewed the concept and recommended that the creation of such a foundation be investigated, consultant Tannis Drysdale noted in a report received by council Monday night.
Drysdale said in her report that community foundations exist in many municipalities across Canada, with more than 60 in Ontario and at least 40 in Manitoba.
“The foundations support community work by attracting charitable investments and making grants to various good works,” she explained.
“In most cases, these funds operate on expenditures of interest only,” she noted.
“In nearly all cases, the foundations have a variety of funds that are dispersed based on either donors’ requested purposes or the foundation’s priority areas.”
Such a foundation might have a single bequest that is specified for playground equipment and another pool of money to support arts programming, Drysdale said.
These types of foundations are run by boards of directors who may or may not be appointed by the municipal government sponsoring them.
Foundations are registered charities, and responsible for legal filing and reporting.
While the review committee concluded such a foundation ultimately should be district-wide, they agreed that due to budgetary limits, it should start with a focus on Fort Frances and expand further geographically down the road at the request of other partners in the district/region.
A community foundation committee would require the following from council:
•a small budget to cover the costs of registration and legal filings, start-up materials, and initial marketing material expenses;
•administrative support, meeting rooms, and miscellaneous materials;
•either the authority to appoint an ad hoc committee, which would become the initial board of directors, or for council to appoint such a committee; and
•a commitment to absorb all accounting and administrative costs for at least the first five years of the foundation’s existence.
Council referred the report to the Administration and Finance executive committee for its recommendation.
