At Sephora Canada, belief in beauty has always meant belief in belonging.
In 2024, the retailer introduced the Sephora Canada Impact Fund, the next milestone of its Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) Heart Journey Strategy, designed to help people access the resources, opportunities, and support the need to thrive and belong.
“The Sephora Canada Impact Fund at MakeWay was created to bring greater intention, consistency, and long-term impact to how we support communities, moving to a focused and sustainable philanthropic approach,” says Salma Dhanani (she/her), Senior Manager, Inclusion & Belonging (DEI & Social Impact) at Sephora Canada.
A Fund Rooted in Belonging
The fund grew out of Sephora Canada’s broader DE&I Heart Journey, a company-wide commitment to inclusion that touches employees, consumers, and the communities where Sephora Canada operates. Under Sephora Canada’s “community” pillar of its strategic framework, the Impact Fund lets Sephora Canada put that commitment into practice by supporting organizations across the country that advance equity, inclusion, and community wellbeing.
It also solves a quieter problem. Grant recipients often spend real time and energy on the administrative demands of corporate funding: applications, reporting, and renewals. By channelling its giving through a Donor Advised Fund at MakeWay, Sephora Canada can support community-led work across the country while trusting MakeWay to ease that administrative burden for grant recipients. This leaves grantees freer to focus on the work itself.
Trust as a Starting Point
Sephora Canada’s approach to giving centres on equity, partnership, and trust, and the fund is structured to put those values into practice. Rather than prescribing how grant dollars should be spent, Sephora Canada favours flexible, unrestricted funding and long-term relationships with organizations that bring deep lived experience and community trust to the table. The idea is simple: the people closest to a community’s needs are best positioned to decide where resources should go.
“We work with organizations that bring lived experience, community trust, and a clear understanding of the needs they are addressing. By providing trust-based, unrestricted grants, we enable partners to direct resources where they are needed most, whether toward operations, programming, or emerging community priorities.”
— Salma Dhanani
Shared Values, Shared Vision
For MakeWay, the partnership made sense well before the fund existed on paper. “We went into these early conversations curious. We wanted to understand how Sephora wanted to show up in this work, not just what they wanted to fund,” explains Lee Burton, Director of Philanthropic Services at MakeWay. What we found was that we shared a lot of values and a similar vision for how philanthropy can drive community-led systems change. That kind of alignment is rare, and it’s exactly why this partnership works.”
“The fund extends Sephora Canada’s strategy beyond our business and into the communities we serve, helping ensure our commitments are reflected through both our actions and our investments,” adds Salma.
MakeWay’s role is to provide the infrastructure and advisory support that makes this kind of giving possible without adding complexity for Sephora Canada or its grantee partners: administering the fund so that the organization/company Sephora can stay focused on strategic impact, thoughtful grantmaking, and building relationships with the organizations it supports.
Where the Fund Shows Up
That trust-based approach has taken the fund into some of the country’s most pressing spaces for equity work. Through the Impact Fund, Sephora Canada has supported many initiatives: Rainbow Railroad’s work protecting 2SLGBTQ+ people facing persecution, the Black Business and Professional Association as it builds pathways to Black economic opportunity, and GEM (Girls E-Mentorship), which mentors girls and young women as they navigate who they want to become. It has also backed the Pink Pearl Foundation, which supports young women facing cancer, A.C.C.E.S. Employment’s work connecting newcomers to meaningful work, CAMH in its efforts as Canada’s largest mental health and addiction hospital, and Inclusion Canada as it advances the rights and full inclusion of people with an intellectual disability.
No single cause connects these organizations. What connects them is a throughline: helping diverse Canadians access the resources, opportunities, and support they need to thrive and belong, in ways defined by the communities themselves rather than by Sephora Canada.
What Trust-Based Giving Teaches
The biggest lesson has been less about any one issue area and more about the model itself.
“Flexible funding and trust-based, long-term partnerships are essential to meaningful impact. When we align on shared goals and allow organizations to direct resources where they are most needed, we reduce administrative burden and help create stronger, more sustainable outcomes.”
— Salma Dhanani
It is a lesson Salma is quick to pass along to other companies still working out their own approach to giving: start with purpose before process. Understand why you want to give and how you want to partner with community organizations before deciding what to fund. Impact, in her view, grows when giving is embedded into a company’s strategy and carried by long-term, trust-based relationships, not treated as a line item apart from it.
Learn More!
Learn more about Donor Advised Funds at MakeWay.
Interested in establishing a Donor Advised Fund or Community Advised Fund at MakeWay? Reach out to advisedfunds@makeway.org.
Learn more about Sephora Canada’s DEI & Social Impact efforts at Inside-Sephora.