Creating More Impact with Giving

Increasingly, foundations seek to leverage the impact of their grants by partnering with other philanthropic organizations that share their interests.

So when the Jimmy Pratt Foundation in St. John’s, N.L., launched in September, it teamed up with its more established New Brunswick neighbour, the Margaret and Wallace McCain Foundation, to fund its first beneficiary. Together, they each made a grant of $150,000, to be spent over three years, to the Faculty of Education at Memorial University of Newfoundland for early childhood research.

That’s in keeping with the Pratt Foundation’s mission to support research and program development to ensure that vulnerable children in Newfoundland and Labrador have opportunities to live resilient lives.

The seeds of this partnership were planted when the foundation’s chair, Kathy Pratt LeGrow, met Margaret McCain three years ago at a conference and discovered they had common philanthropic interests. “We became quick friends,” said Pratt LeGrow, “and have since formed a partnership on local research here—and there will be more in the future.”

Caption: Margaret McCain (left) and Kathy LeGrow (right)

The alliance allows her newly created organization to be mentored by the McCain Foundation, she says, and to build on the successes the latter has had in the Maritime Provinces. The McCain Foundation has partnered with the New Brunswick and PEI governments to create 10 integrated children’s centres. (Each centre combines child care, education, family and community health services into a single, accessible program designed to meet the needs of children and their families from the prenatal period to elementary school.)

Although the Pratt foundation’s focus is to be on projects in Newfoundland, Pratt LeGrow recognized that “by pooling resources, you can broaden your scope from coast to coast.” So the Pratt foundation joined with other grant-makers, including the McCain foundation, to support a recent study by Dr. Fraser Mustard and the Council for Early Child Development on the status of early learning and childcare across Canada.

Looking ahead to future collaboration, the two foundations have set up an Early Years Working Group, which will meet in person annually and by phone twice a year. “This is a way to make decisions on how best we can work together and pool our resources in the interests of vulnerable children and their families,” says Pratt LeGrow.