An endow­ment in Van­cou­ver has given over $725 mil­lion dol­lars to the area’s poor since 1943. Peo­ple con­tribute to the fund because they like the idea money help­ing oth­ers long after they are gone. For the endow­ment only uses the inter­est that is gained from the money donated.

The Van­cou­ver Foun­da­tion endow­ment has a rich his­tory and some of that was shared in an arti­cle from Canada’sGlobe and Mail. Writer Robert Matas tells us how the fund was orig­i­nally set up.

Alice MacKay intro­duced an inno­v­a­tive approach to charity-giving in Van­cou­ver almost seven decades ago that con­tin­ues to attract more and more enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers with each pass­ing generation.

Ms. MacKay left an estate of $1,000 when she died in 1943. With­out any chil­dren, she had decided to leave her life sav­ings to women liv­ing in poverty.

But she did not want the funds to be handed over directly to the indi­gent. She insisted that only inter­est earned from the funds should be used for charity.

Local indus­tri­al­ist W.J. Van Dusen was intrigued with the idea of financ­ing com­mu­nity char­ity with an endow­ment fund.

He spoke to some of the wealth­ier fam­i­lies in Van­cou­ver about con­tribut­ing to a foun­da­tion ded­i­cated to help­ing less-fortunate peo­ple in the city.

Mr. Van Dusen and nine oth­ers put in $10,000 each, pro­vid­ing the Van­cou­ver Foun­da­tion with its first endow­ment fund of $101,000.

The con­cept of a legacy fund, giv­ing across the gen­er­a­tions, has res­onated with British Columbians. The Van­cou­ver Foun­da­tion has a col­lec­tion of endow­ment funds worth $660-million as of Decem­ber, 2008, which is the most recent, pub­licly avail­able sta­tis­tic. The foun­da­tion has dis­trib­uted around $725-million since 1943 to groups and indi­vid­u­als in the com­mu­nity. The funds came entirely from inter­est on invest­ments, while dona­tions to the funds remained untouched.

Like

Unlike