For almost 20 years, MakeWay has helped the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to fund impactful environmental action in Canada.
Few conservation organizations have as much financial clout as the Moore Foundation. Formed in 2000 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty, the foundation has an annual budget of $315 million to support science, environmental conservation, patient care, and preservation of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Moore Foundation’s generous support for grassroots action projects in British Columbia has had some serious impact over the years.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6098″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” parallax_scroll=”no”][vc_column_text text_larger=”no”]The Moore Foundation’s support first helped organizations collaborating on the MakeWay platform to develop the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements, a monumental piece of conservation legislation that incorporated Indigenous rights with still unresolved Indigenous leadership within that vast geographical space, and saw that traditional values were protected. To this day the Moore Foundation’s financial support, with the guidance of MakeWay advisors, helps preserve pristine salmon habitats in Northern BC. MakeWay is incredibly proud of their work with the Moore Foundation.
One might wonder why a large US-based funder such as the Moore Foundation wants to fund projects in Canada.
Ivan Thompson, a senior advisor with MakeWay who previously spent a decade working at the Moore Foundation, says that there are several enticing reasons why a large-scale US philanthropic funder of conservation projects would want to support projects in Canada. “Firstly, here in Canada we have a tremendous richness and diversity of ecosystems. Secondly, Canada is a place where it seems possible to succeed in making a difference, where various stakeholders are able to collaborate in order to make things happen,” Thompson explains, “this became most apparent in the formation of the Great Bear Rainforest.”[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6246″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” parallax_scroll=”no”][vc_column_text text_larger=”no”]
Measurable success
The objective of the Moore Foundation is to fund projects that they think will have the greatest impact, and Canada has certainly given them those opportunities. “The foundation’s Wild Salmon Ecosystem Initiative which wrapped up in 2016, had a particular interest in protecting wild salmon systems. The decision was made not to get embroiled in restoring all the broken watersheds basically from Vancouver Island south through the western US states, but rather to focus the resources on how to kind of hold the line on these more pristine systems in the North Pacific,” Thompson says.
The Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) Agreement was starting to take shape just as the Moore Foundation was getting started, and besides holding a significant amount of the world’s remaining temperate rainforest, the region also has genetically diverse salmon runs throughout. “This was the biggest conservation deal going, so that got the Foundation’s attention; it demonstrated what could happen collaboratively in British Columbia,” Thompson explains.
When the Agreement was reached, Thompson says, it showed that protection at a significant scale can actually happen. “This was the first major investment by the Foundation in Canada, and it led to other major wild salmon ecosystem outcomes in the decade that followed.” When the Moore Foundation invested in the GBR, it went through the MakeWay platform, joining with other funders, NGOs, industry, Indigenous leaders, and government, to make this monumental piece of protection possible. When they looked to fund other projects in Canada, they often chose to do so through MakeWay.
The focus of relationship has expanded to include ongoing partnership activities between Moore’s Marine Conservation Initiative and MakeWay in British Columbia and the Canadian North.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6247″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” parallax_scroll=”no”][vc_column_text text_larger=”no”]
Utilizing the MakeWay suite of tools
Over the course of MakeWay’s relationship with the Moore Foundation, they have taken advantage of most of the tools available on the platform. At a most basic level, MakeWay has made it simple for a donor like the Moore Foundation to put a significant amount of money into Canadian projects, connecting them with grassroots action that matches their mandates. “From the Moore Foundation’s perspective, the value of MakeWay has always been as a platform providing a suite of tools to make philanthropy much more effective when operating in Canada,” Thompson says.
The ability to pool funds with other likeminded funders in order to work collaboratively on projects, and have projects set up for limited amounts of time in order to serve a definite and set purpose, are both appealing aspects of working with MakeWay. The right leaders are found for projects and brought on board by MakeWay rather than being limited to set staff who work on all projects. This is part of what makes MakeWay so effective, and agile. “These big organizations don’t always have those relationships and connections in Canada, they need someone that they can trust. The projects have someone who is more closely connected on the ground,” Thompson says. “Part of what MakeWay provides is that platform for the trusted advisor.”
This platform enabled the Foundation to make charitable donations from its Wild Salmon Ecosystem Initiative. “This included making full use of MakeWay’s donor advised funds, funder collaboratives, pooled grant-making, shared platform projects and agile project-focused expertise,” says Thompson. “These responsive and flexible services allowed the Foundation to optimize its financial support to Canadian civil society leadership.”
During the decade that Thompson spent as a program officer at the Moore Foundation, he found MakeWay to be an invaluable partner. “The single most valuable thing for me in my decade at the Moore Foundation was my relationship with MakeWay,” Thompson says. “I do not believe I could have had anywhere near the level of success had it not been for MakeWay and the range of tools that it has available.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
