Ensuring sustainable funding for a thriving sector
Since it was established by legislation in 1969, the Foundation has taken its responsibility for stewarding the funds it receives from the interest on funds held in lawyers’ pooled trust accounts seriously. Over 50 years later, the Foundation is building on lessons learned through many cycles of constricting and expanding revenue, decades-long partnerships with the legal profession and the non-profit sector, and its engagement with an increasingly diverse and equity-focused philanthropic sector.
The Foundation’s statutory mandate is clear — establish and maintain a fund to be used for the following purposes: legal education; legal research; legal aid; law reform; and establishing, operating, and maintaining law libraries in British Columbia. Fulfilling that mandate requires that the Foundation engage across a diverse sector to make strategic decisions that support today’s demands for legal services, advance Indigenous justice, anti-racism and equity, and ensure that funds are available for ongoing and emerging needs in the future.
“The Foundation is somewhat unusual in the philanthropic community in that most of its funding goes to support ongoing programs, many of which provide direct legal services to low-income people.” — Patrick McNary
“The Foundation is somewhat unusual in the philanthropic community in that most of its funding goes to support ongoing programs, many of which provide direct legal services to low-income people,” says Patrick McNary, Director of Finance. Advancing the Foundation’s mandate and upholding its values requires a careful balancing of the need for reliable investment in those ongoing programs year after year with the need to pay constant attention to emerging needs and past omissions in the portfolio of funded programs.
Managing a thriving and sustainable foundation also requires balancing conservative financial management for long-term sustainability with granting money into communities where it can be used to support grantees’ missions and meet immediate needs. The importance of striking the right balance is something the Foundation has seen firsthand during past financial crises and most recently in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a sharp decline in the Foundation’s revenue due to interest rate cuts. Careful planning and diligence in building up a healthy grant stabilization fund during times of higher revenues protected Foundation grantees and the communities they serve. The Foundation was able to maintain funding levels to ongoing programs while also supporting grantees to purchase technology and personal protective equipment and access training on emerging legal issues. The Foundation was even able to invest some funds in in new initiatives, funding new programs and expanding its support for existing programs to help them cope with rising costs.
Until 2022, the Foundation’s policy target for the Grant Stabilization Fund was to maintain two years’ worth of annual grant and operating expenditures. The dramatic variation in our revenue during the pandemic has made clear that prudent fiscal management requires us to carry a larger reserve. The Foundation now targets a grant stabilization fund of between 3.5 and 4.5 times annual expenditures, in line with our peer institutions in Alberta and Ontario. This model will help guard against variability in trust interest revenue, as well as ensure the Foundation continues to fulfill its commitments under its mandate and strategic plan well into the future.
This article originally appeared in our 2022 Annual Report.
