BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER

Published November 26, 2013
ECONOMY AND FINANCE
 
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Corporate donors come in small, medium and large

Annual philanthropy award winners prove you don't need to be big to make an impact

By Jen St. Denis

"If a little coffee guy like me can do it, anyone can do it."
 
Parminder Parhar is speaking from the coffee shop he owns on Simon Fraser University's Burnaby campus. It's a typical busy Monday morning for Renaissance Coffee, the business Parhar started in 1996, and which now boasts three locations at the university.

But he's not talking about opening or running a successful small business. He's referring to starting an ambitious charitable endowment, which he plans to eventually grow to $1 million.
 
He started contributing $25,000 a year to the endowment three years ago when he was 50; he hopes to see it reach $1 million within his lifetime. The endowment will fund scholarships for SFU students.
 
British Columbia businesses of all sizes contribute around $370 million to charitable causes every year, according to a Business Council of British Columbia study released in October.
 
"We're very lucky to have such good corporate donors in our city," said Cary Gaymond, a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals Vancouver who chaired the annual Giving Hearts awards. The awards recognize individual and corporate philanthropy, as well as volunteer work.
 
"We had a tremendous response to the nomination process this year," Gaymond said. "We had 12 nominations for the small and large business categories."
 
Renaissance Coffee won in the small business category, and Vancouver-based mining company Goldcorp Inc. (TSX:G) won in the outstanding corporation category. Over the past few years, Goldcorp has developed standard practices for philanthropy, said Christine Marks, Goldcorp's communications manager.

The company developed a "community investment framework" in 2011. The plan is based on guidelines from Imagine Canada, an organization that supports Canadian charities.

"[The guideline] designates 1% of pre-tax earnings toward corporate giving, community investment, philanthropy, etc.," Marks said. "We took that framework as the operating budget that would allocate the funds."
 
Based on community needs in the remote Canadian and Latin American communities in which Goldcorp operates, the company has also developed four funding areas: health, education, community development and arts and culture.
 
Marks recommends aligning a corporate giving program with the corporation's culture and values. When done right, corporate philanthropy can benefit the business as a whole.
 
"I think it's one of the pieces around employee retention and recruitment that really resonates," Marks said. "People feel good about working for an organization that's aligned with their core values."
 
At first, Parhar had a hard time getting his mind around the idea of diverting $25,000 from his business every year to charity. An employee from SFU's advancement department who was helping him set up the endowment suggested he break it down to a less scary $2,000 a month.

But "that's still a lot of money," said Parhar.

He wondered if he could raise the money by somehow increasing sales by $100 a day.
 
The breakthrough came when he started thinking of the endowment payments as an invisible employee.
 
"What if I had an employee who I don't know, but I have to pay him like I get paid," Parhar said. "That was the spark and that's all I needed. I immediately set up an auto-payment." 
 
© Copyright 2013, Business In Vancouver

Story URL: http://www.biv.com/article/20131126/BIV0102/311269957/corporate-donors-come-in-small-medium-and-large