| As President and
CEO of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, Tim Brodhead
leads one of Canada’s largest and most progressive foundations.
The McConnell Foundation recently announced
a growing commitment to the work of citizen engagement, resilience
and community collaboration.
On January 18, 2005 Tim joined us as the
featured speaker of a tele-learning seminar. Tim shared why
the Foundation chose to make this commitment and why they
have invested in Vibrant Communities, a bold, national collaboration.
Tim was joined by Mark Cabaj, Tamarack who
leads the Vibrant Communities initiative.
Tim Brodhead is President
and Chief Executive Officer of The J. W. McConnell Family
Foundation, a private foundation based in Montreal.
 Prior
to joining the Foundation he was Executive Director of the
Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), a
national organization representing over 120 non-profit Canadian
international development agencies.
Tim attended McGill University and subsequently
spent five years in Africa with the Canadian organization
CUSO. He went on to do international development work in Africa
and South Asia and co-founded Inter Pares, an Ottawa-based
non-government organization.
In a voluntary capacity he has served on
a number of Boards, including currently Vartana, the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC),
the ETC Group (formerly Rural Advancement Foundation International)
and the Calmeadow Foundation. He is past Chair of Philanthropic
Foundations Canada, the national association of Canadian independent
foundations.
In 2001 he was appointed an Officer of the
Order of Canada and in June, 2002 received an honorary Doctor
of Laws degree from Carleton University in Ottawa.
 Mark
Cabaj is the Director of Community Engagement for
Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement and
is the project lead for the Vibrant Communities initiative
– a network of communities and national organizations
collaborating on exploring community-based approaches to substantially
reducing poverty. Find out more about Mark here.
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A brief summary of the seminar is provided
below.
Investment in Collaboration
tele-learning seminar (Runs 53:55) |
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*Download
free players from the following websites:
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Working Collaboratively
We have seen a significant growth in the
number of organizations and people working collaboratively
to address issues in their communities (e.g. poverty, crime
prevention, neighbourhood change). Here's why we think that's
happening:
- Scarcity of Resources - Encourages people to reach out
and work together.
- Emphasis on Results - As people look at the entrenched
problems of communities, they recognize that these complex
issues require systems change. To address these issues,
they need to work with others to complement their strengths
and to increase their ability to achieve scale.
Collaborations can emerge spontaneously,
but more often than not, they are the result of people coming
together in recognition that we are all part of the problem
and all part of the solution.
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Characteristics of Collaboratives
- They tend towards comprehensiveness and are reform oriented.
Members of collaboratives understand that the way they
currently work does not address the root of the issue,
so they choose to take a more comprehensive approach.
- They strive to be multisectoral and inclusive, recognizing
that they need to bring the whole system to bear on the
issue.
- They use multiple strategies to address their issue
of concern.
- They are long-term in nature. Collaboratives may work
on short term objectives or activities but they plan for
the long-term.
- They are evolutionary in nature.
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The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation's
focus on collaboration
How people respond to change is dependent
upon their sense of control over the factors that affect them.
But change is a constant and so we must be able to look at
it constructively and find opportunities within it. If we
are more engaged in the issues that face us, we will feel
a greater sense of control and can respond appropriately.
Thus, the Foundation is looking for ways
for people to participate, to be engaged in communities. The
Foundation aims to enable resilient communities - communities
that are able to adapt and to change without losing their
sense of community identity.
 on
the Foundation's new focus
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Vibrant Communities
 Vibrant
Communities is "a collaboration of collaborations."
15 collaboratives across the country are involved and they
are deliberately exploring an approach to address poverty
that focuses on:
- reducing, rather than alleviating, poverty;
- comprehensive thinking & action;
- multisectoral collaboration;
- community learning and change;
- community assets, rather than deficits.
on
Vibrant Communities
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What we've learned about collaboration
There is a "con" involved in collaboration
- People often find it difficult to collaborate because it
takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. You have to build
relationships and constantly address them. Funders must understand
that a significant amount of time is required to keep the
collaboration healthy and to feed these relationships. This
is crucial.
Collaborations can be inspiring, sometimes
brutal, but most often they are hard work.
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- Additional resources mentionned during the seminar:
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