Animal welfare donors put $1 billion in the kitty

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From Voiceprint Canada

Animal welfare donors put $1 billion in the kitty
Vancouver hosts annual conference to divide North American pet pot
Nicholas ReadVancouver Sun

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

                               
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CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun FilesThe Vancouver Foundation distributes about $60,000 in grants annually to help benefit the welfare of animals.


About 40 individuals gathered in Vancouver this week to talk about how to divvy up grant money from a $1-billion North America-wide kitty -- a kitty earmarked for cats and almost any other animal you can name.

Of that, $7.5 million comes from British Columbians.

On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and for the first time in Canada, the Vancouver Foundation played host to a convention of Animal Grantmakers, a select group of 24 foundations -- all but two of them American -- that sit on endowments collectively worth almost $1 billion.
The money, which comes primarily from a few immensely wealthy people, is invested, and the proceeds -- about $60 million a year -- are given to everything from cat and dog shelters, to wildlife protection to fostering new rules for the treatment of farm animals.

Eight years ago when the Animal Grantmakers was established, the foundations it represented were worth about $120 million and gave out about $200,000 annually.
"Animal welfare donors are the most passionate and dedicated of any kind of donor," said Vancouver Foundation program director Patty Holmes, by way of explaining the phenomenon. "Compared to any other kind of donor, they're by far the most driven."
Currently, the Vancouver Foundation is the only community foundation in Canada to have a committee dedicated to distributing money to animal-welfare work. Its fund is worth about $7.5 million, and each year it distributes about $60,000 in grants.
The other member groups are all from the U.S., except for the Antonio Haghenbeck Foundation, which is based in Austin, Tex., but whose funds are spent exclusively in Mexico.

This week members from all 24 foundations -- as well as several non-member groups -- converged on the Wosk Centre for Dialogue in Vancouver for what has become an annual convention.

Included among the 24 is the San Francisco-based Maddie's Fund, launched with a $250-million US contribution from California billionaires Cheryl and Dave Duffield in memory of their rescued schnauzer. It finances projects dedicated to ending the slaughter of healthy shelter dogs and cats within 10 years.

It and the Phoenix-based PETsMART Charities are the richest foundations in the group, but none is poor.

Retiring Grantmakers president Eve Lloyd Thompson sits on the board of the New Jersey-based Bernice Barbour Foundation -- named for its late benefactor -- that is worth about $40 million US and gives away about $1.2 million US annually.

"She loved animals," said Thompson. "Her husband predeceased her, and she said she was going to use the money he left her to benefit animals. So that's what she's done."
Thompson said that when the foundation was conceived in 1986, people did ask how so much money could be earmarked for animals when people were suffering.

But as Lloyd explained: "We are carrying out the wishes of Bernice Barbour. And it was her wish that the money be left to animals."

The foundations' principal benefactors are extraordinary in that they are all hugely wealthy, says Thompson, a zoologist, but at the same time she does see a trend towards less wealthy people deciding to leave their money to animals as well.
"As the population ages, more people are living alone, and so a dog or cat takes the place of the person's family," Thompson said. "They are the family."

The three-day conference also invited a number animal welfare groups -- including some of the Lower Mainland -- to "educate" foundation representatives about their work.

Conventional protocol forbade anyone from asking for money, but Holmes said she saw several people "chatting over coffee" between events.