Innovative Program Makes the Right Connection

Innovative Program Makes the Right Connection-New Home Improvement Program

It was the perfect example of connecting people, ideas and resources when Hamilton Community Foundation helped launch a program that trained out-of-work people in construction and gave downtown residents small exterior property renovations they could not otherwise afford.

Last spring, HCF grants manager Sharon Charters learned about the need for a home renovation loans program and brought it to the Hamilton Funders network.  There the idea was sparked to create a grants program, using provincial training money available for job seekers to do the work.

Called the Neighbourhood Home Improvement Program, the partnership links job-readiness funding from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities with the non-profit Threshold School of Building’s teaching expertise to help low-income homeowners.

The Foundation and the City of Hamilton are providing additional funding, as well as matching job seekers to the opportunity and overseeing the project applications review. Threshold provides the training: 26 weeks of paid onsite construction experience for 21 unemployed Hamiltonians as they complete the renovations CEO John Grant says the workers were “unbelievably gung-ho” about the program.  “They are very proud and feel they are really giving back to the community.”

The program results?

Everyone associated with the program agrees it is an overall success. One homeowner called the construction crew an “army of hardhat angels that came to my rescue” while a crew member stated that aside from obtaining work experience, “being part of a positive change for Hamilton is what is most important.”

‘Tis the season to Skate the Dream

The Foundation’s ability to connect local needs with national resources means kids will be on the ice this winter at Eastwood Arena.

Skate the Dream is a local program that helps remove barriers preventing Hamilton children from learning to skate and to play hockey.  This season, the program will be fully funded by a grant from the Daryl K. Seaman Canadian Hockey Fund at The Calgary Foundation, which supports amateur ice hockey across the country.

An entrepreneur and philanthropist, “Doc” Seaman is famous for bringing the NHL’s Flames to Calgary.  He made headlines again this year when his estate made a $117-million donation to The Calgary Foundation — the third-largest gift ever to a Canadian charity.

HCF learned about the availability of nation-wide hockey grants through its community foundation network and linked the two.  “HCF has previously supported Skate the Dream but the need for this type of program is great and more funding is always required,” says President & CEO Terry Cooke.  “Making the connection to Calgary represents funding which may not have otherwise come into Hamilton.”

Supporting Active Living for Seniors

Supporting Active Living for Seniors - Ancaster Seniors Centre

A Hamilton Community Foundation grant is helping to support Expansion 2013 at the Ancaster Senior Achievement Centre (ASAC), a project that will enable the centre offer its more than 30 arts, music and health programs and social opportunities to a burgeoning seniors population. 

Established in 1974, the Centre has undergone a number of expansions. Today, with 1,100 members, it is operating at capacity — visits have increased 32 per cent over the past five years — and numbers are on the increase with the rapid growth of the senior population in the Hamilton area. 

In fact, Statistics Canada predicts that within the next 10 years one in four residents will be 65 years or older.

Expansion 2013 responds to ongoing demographic changes and the need for more social and programming space,” says ASAC Advisory Board Chair Al Gordon.  “Most important,” he adds, “more older adults will have an opportunity to become part of a welcoming and supportive community of friends.”

Known as “The Meeting Place,” the Centre provides a relaxed environment where members can socialize, make new friends and participate in a variety of activities to improve health and fitness and to learn new skills. 

The Geritol Follies

NOTE: next application deadline is October 1, 2023. Apply online here.

These wonderful entertainers, all over age 60 – and some well into their 80s – regularly sell out their Hamilton variety show. They have also entertained audiences across North America and abroad.

In 1989, the Geritol Follies members decided to turn over their accumulated profits – more than $100,000 at the time – to set up a student bursary fund with HCF, encouraging “rising stars” to pursue post-secondary education in the performing arts. Follies members saw it as a way “of returning some of the blessings and benefits” they received in their younger days to talented Hamilton youth.

They also wanted to celebrate their own love of the stage, create a lasting legacy and be remembered for their unique impact on seniors everywhere.

By 2014, more than 100 young people from our community have received bursaries to help them pursue their dreams in the arts.

The Young Fund

The Young Fund

In the spring of 2000, one of the largest charitable donations in Canadian history was made to the Hamilton Community Foundation – transforming our organization’s resources and ability to respond to the charitable priorities of our community. This gift comes from Joyce Young – a private, soft-spoken, Hamilton-area woman – who made a donation of $40 million to the Foundation. More broadly, Mrs. Young’s remarkable gift to the Hamilton area has inspired people throughout communities across Canada, sparking dialogue and awareness of the power of individual citizens to change their communities.

The desire to help their nephew, Bob Young, in a high tech business venture left Joyce and her husband Bill with a financial windfall that exceeded their wildest expectations. Joyce made an investment in Red Hat Inc., the company established by their nephew. After holding the company’s stock for three years, she took out her original investment, leaving a little in “just for fun”. The “fun” translated into stock worth over $40 million.

Mrs. Young’s concern was to use the money responsibly to strengthen the services and supports in our community. It is significant that this generous gift, which, by virtue of its magnitude will transform the grant-making capabilities of the Foundation, results from the field of technology, which has had such a major impact on transforming our community. The Community Foundation will ensure that the Youngs’ generous gift has a broad and significant impact, strengthening our community and the quality of life enjoyed by all who live here. Joyce and Bill Young also hope that their gift will inspire others who reap financial windfalls to make similar charitable donations and, equally importantly, that each of us will be inspired to “give back to our community”.

By the tenth anniversary of that extraordinary gift, there had been grants totaling more than $11 million to innovative programs in Hamilton, across Canada and internationally. These grants have touched areas including education, health, the arts and the environment.

Perhaps one of the best examples of the impact is Pathways to Education, a trailblazing program that has proven to reduce high school dropout rates dramatically among disadvantaged youth and help them go on to post-secondary education. Pioneered in Toronto’s Regent Park, The Young Fund has supported its expansion to 11 Canadian communities including Hamilton, where it is addressing the critical issue of low high school completion in challenged neighbourhoods.

Their gift has also improved the life prospects of countless Hamilton young people through the creation of NYA:WEH, an Aboriginal stay-in-school initiative, and a model that is having an influence across the country.

Transformative to the Foundation and to Hamilton, the Young gift in 2000 virtually doubled the granting capacity of HCF’s Community Fund, which is directed to the city’s highest needs. It continues to contribute to this fund annually. At the same time, it enabled the Foundation to pilot its Growing Roots…Strengthening Neighbourhoods program. Together, these components have come together to inform and enable HCF’s neighbourhood-based poverty-reduction work.

“There are many remarkable aspects about this gift,” says President & CEO Terry Cooke, “and perhaps most humbling is the trust placed in the Foundation and the confidence the Youngs have in Hamilton and its future.”

The Young gift continues a family tradition of giving back to their community. Their roots in the community are deep and their commitment to its welfare is profound. Joyce’s great-great grandfather, Colin Ferrie, became the first mayor of Hamilton in 1847. Bill’s ancestors established the Hamilton Cotton Company and his father, James Young, was one of the founding board members of Hamilton Community Foundation in 1954.

The Young Fund is a legacy that will continue to transform this community for generations to come.

The John & Esther Marshall Memorial Fund

John and Esther MarshallWhen John Marshall asked a friend to set him up on a blind date for a University of Toronto dance, he had no idea he was about to meet the love of his life. “From the beginning, I could see that Esther had a quiet and steady presence. She was well liked and respected by everyone. She had a good laugh.” The date and the dance were a huge success. John married Esther, a Brantford native, on May 29, 1948. Although both graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School, John, who also completed a degree in aeronautical engineering and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1967, says they seldom talked law. “Esther practiced for a year in her father’s firm, but when the first of our four daughters came along, her attention turned to family and community life.”

Esther gave extensively to the community through her volunteer activities, including membership on the Board of Directors of the Hamilton Community Foundation from 1979-1983, the Junior League of Hamilton-Wentworth, volunteer committee of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Board of Governors for McMaster University.

The value of public service may well have been learned from her widowed father, Ross Macdonald, who served as a Member of Parliament for Brantford, Speaker of the House of Commons and a member of Lester Pearson’s Liberal Cabinet. When he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Ontario in 1967, Esther often acted as his hostess for official engagements.

Through a gift of securities, John and his four daughters – Ann, Claire, Mary and Janet – established a fund in honour of their wife and mother who died in September of 1995. The Fund is used to make contributions to arts and cultural organizations in Hamilton. Daughter Mary Prime says the Fund is a wonderful way to keep her mother’s memory alive. “My mother always put others first. She was admirable in every way and she remains a strong reference point in all our lives.”

In 2003 the fund was passed to the daughters on John’s death. Because they remembered the lifelong value of their early experiences in the arts, they now use the fund to provide similar opportunities to children in Hamilton today.

The four siblings work closely with Hamilton Community Foundation staff to make grants from the fund their father established in memory of their mother in 1995 and passed down to them on his death in 2003.

They support the organizations Esther and John favoured, but they have also branched out to fund priorities identified by HCF. “The Foundation has been superb in giving us options to consider,” says Janet. The sisters are attracted to projects that expose low-income children to the arts, like hands-on summer arts camps and artist-in-the-classroom programs. They feel their parents would have appreciated that direction too.

“Our parents loved the arts and they enjoyed contributing time and resources to the arts community in Hamilton,” says Ann. “We want to make sure that continues.” Now that the family is scattered across Canada, the fund is “an anchor back to the Hamilton community where we grew up,” adds Mary.

“Dad was so pleased to have established this fund in memory of Mum,” says Claire. “We’re very, very pleased to continue it.”

The E.B. Eastburn Postdoctoral Fellowship Fund

Hamilton industrialist and philanthropist Eugene B. Eastburn believed in the power of education to make a difference to people and to their communities.

Half a century later, his legacy to help young scientists pursue their research studies continues through the E.B. Eastburn Postdoctoral Fellowship,” said HCF Board Chair Dr. Gary Warner during the presentation of the 2011 fellowship to McMaster researcher Dr. Constance O’Connor.

Mr. Eastburn, who died in 1962, was president of National Hosiery Mills in Hamilton and also served on the HCF Board. Through a gift in his will, the Foundation has awarded 32 fellowships since his death to researchers located at universities across Canada. Fellows have come from a diverse spectrum of scientific fields ranging from biology and medical sciences to mathematics and zoology.

In presenting the award at the university, Dr. Warner also announced that in future the fellowship will be offered exclusively at McMaster, representing “another level of partnership between the two organizations.”

Considered one of Canada’s most prestigious research fellowships, it provides $80,000 over two years to fund Dr. O’Connor’s research into the genetic makeup of cichids, a highly social fish native to Lake Tanganyika in east Africa. She hopes to provide an evolutionary picture of how social behaviour evolved, and establish a mechanism for underlying social disorders that could apply to mice, birds and mammals.

“Our postdoctoral fellows are members both of the McMaster community and of the Hamilton community,” said Dr. Allison Sekuler, McMaster’s dean of graduate studies. “This partnership with HCF greatly increases our ability to attract the best researchers to Hamilton.”

Excerpt from Spring 2012 Newsletter

Pioneer Energy LP

 

PioneerPioneer Energy and its long history of community support were recognized this fall when it received the corporate Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Murray Hogarth, Pioneer’s founder, says he is “proud to have been the leader of a company that has been able to make a difference.” A seasoned volunteer in countless community leadership roles, Murray’s example established Pioneer’s corporate value of philanthropy.

In 1999, Pioneer marked the millennium by establishing the Pioneer Petroleums Children’s Foundation at HCF, and has made more than 250 grants totalling over $2.5 million. The company also created the Pioneer Petroleums Foundation Fund within HCF’s Community Fund to help address Hamilton’s most pressing needs. In addition, Pioneer generously supports a range of other charities across the communities where they are located.

 Equally important, Pioneer paves the way for others to make a difference through community philanthropy. Programs at their retail outlets, like Cent a Litre Days, Give What You Can, and School Bucks Community Bucks, encourage customers and partners to join them in meeting local needs.

 “Pioneer’s people take a lot of pride in supporting the community,” Murray says. “We’re successful because of the communities we work in. It makes good business sense – and it’s just right – to give back.”

Excerpt from Fall 2011 Newsletter

Note-Able Music Fund

The value of arts education for children has been well researched and documented. 

It enhances children’s learning by developing motor, language and literacy abilities.  It provides an alternative way of learning and a means of expression, serving to build bridges among different cultures and life experiences. 

Unfortunately, the arts have been dramatically reduced in Hamilton schools due to budget constraints.  Many families are unable to personally provide these opportunities for their children. 

 The Note-Able Music Fund fills that gap.  It has been funded initially by gifts from two people who were motivated by their love of music and in recognition of the importance of music to their own development: Olive Poulton and Laurie Connon.  Their hope is that this fund will inspire other like-minded individuals to respond similarly and help provide the gift of music to children in our community

Music Fund

Hamilton Community Foundation received two bequests that have been directed to providing bursaries for music students.  These came from the estates of Irene Norris and Merle Williams.  The bursaries are granted to students identified in the music programs at Mohawk College and McMaster University.  Music was very important to both Ms. Norris and Ms. Williams and they wanted to leave a legacy that would help promising and deserving students who were pursuing their music studies in Hamilton.  The first bursaries were awarded in 2013.