Charity Begins at Home
by Nicole W.Sharpe
When one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded in the Western hemisphere –Hurricane Gilbert – unleashed its wrath on the island of Jamaica in 1988, UWI’s Mona Campus was one of the institutions that found itself in the category 5 hurricane’s path of destruction. After surveying the devastation left behind by Gilbert, a small, dedicated team of Jamaican businessmen rallied together to form the Jamaica Appeal Committee. In one year this committee raised enough money to contribute significantly towards the repair of the buildings necessary to keep classes going and to allow the University’s teaching hospital to continue functioning. Impressed with their success, Sir Alister McIntyre, the then Vice Chancellor, asked the group to reorganize themselves into a more long-term entity. So began the UWI Development & Endowment Fund.
In 1990, the Fund was incorporated as a private foundation with the mandate to generate philanthropic resources to advance The University of the West Indies and “to create a bridge between ‘town and gown’”. It was in 2002, however, that the Fund, chaired by the Hon. Dennis H. Lalor O.J., began to build momentum with the adoption of a strategic plan that took a holistic approach to fundraising and fund development with the aim of cultivating philanthropy throughout the region.
The Fund’s team recognized the need to educate the mass society on philanthropy. A public education drive was absolutely necessary for the Fund to expand its donor base and increase monetary contributions. Operating in an environment where formal philanthropy was not widely practiced by the general public, this seemingly insurmountable task of generating new contributions required a new level of thinking and a dynamic approach to mobilizing individuals, foundations and corporations. In pursuit of this mission, the Fund’s development plan was carefully crafted with the main objectives being to execute aggressive strategies in cultivating philanthropy regionally, to expand the donor base by building relations and confidence, and to educate the public by sharing information.
In 2003, the Fund made a mass appeal to the region to help accelerate the process of cultivating donors. While it was a bold move to rally support from Alumni who were never before asked to contribute, a mass appeal strategy was justified; based on the reality that tertiary education is a main driver of growth in developing societies, as well as the fact that the vast majority of the University’s Alumni are leaders in every sector throughout the region. The Fund’s mission in this drive was to cultivate a strong philanthropic sector including non-profit organizations, corporations, private and community foundations, as well as non-governmental and community-based organizations.
The result was a campaign focused on the growth and development of civil society. Every major developed nation has a strong, viable Philanthropic/Third Sector. So it was evident that the Caribbean too, needed to establish philanthropy as a key aspect of society. Furthermore, it was necessary to provide philanthropists with a forum to discuss best practices, share challenges and create collaborative strategies in their resolution to transform communities.
This perspective gave rise to the Fund planning a biennial Conference on Caribbean Philanthropy originally scheduled for 2004. Due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the conference was rescheduled for February 2005. This event was hailed a success, with outstanding presentations from the University’s alumni as well as from Chancellor Sir George Alleyne, on the conference’s theme: The Relevance of Philanthropy in Developing Nations. The second Conference on Caribbean Philanthropy was held in May 2006, and this international event launched CaribPhilanthropy: the Region’s Philanthropic Movement.
The two conferences provided an opportunity for international and local philanthropic organizations to re-examine their investment in the Caribbean. The positive response signaled that the Fund’s public education mission had been effective. It was now time to formalize the process for continuity and sustainability. The Fund designed mechanisms to share cutting-edge information, conduct research, publish documents and train the next generation of philanthropists through the Centre for Caribbean Philanthropy, and its signal publication, The Gift: Journal for Caribbean Philanthropy. The Fund also established a student-run initiative called the Students CARE Foundation in 2004. An acronym for the words “Conscious, Active, Responsive, Empowered”, CARE aims to make UWI students conscious of their privileged position in society; encouraging them to take an active role in re-shaping their countries and empowering them with the knowledge that they can make a difference. Each semester, the initiative seeks to raise a significant sum of money to contribute toward addressing a social challenge.
Within the last few years, the Fund has generated over US$3.8 million. Endowment has also grown significantly from approximately US$899,501 in 2001 to over US$5.9 million to date and there have been several new philanthropic investments and the formation of strategic partnerships in giving.
Today, for instance, the Fund benefits from a donor who has contributed annual amounts totaling approximately US$2.3 million over the last two years. Several of our Century Club Donors (those who have donated J$1 million or more to the Fund) have renewed their commitment to the organization by making additional contributions to various projects and programmes. Collaboration with the Lion’s Club of Mona, has resulted in the Fund successfully raising over US$449,750 to build a Resource Centre for Students with Disabilities. The vision is that this project would be funded completely by donations, and to this end, it requires an additional US$104,942 for completion. The University’s faculty and staff are also demonstrating their commitment by making annual contributions and establishing restricted endowments to support faculty initiatives. And our alumni have not been outdone. Recently the Fund received a US$29,983.40 contribution from Dr. Oswald DeLisser, who formed an endowed scholarship fund in honour of his parents – the Harry and Gertrude DeLisser Scholarship Fund – to support Mathematics.
Determined to keep the momentum going, the Fund is constantly working toward new fund development challenges. Plans are underway to launch a capital campaign in 2007 specifically to raise US$7.5 million for the University Library. In addition, an aggressive Annual Campaign geared toward mobilizing contributions from individuals and raising monetary gifts to support the renovation of the University’s sports facilities, is also planned. The Fund is also undertaking a faculty and staff housing project involving the construction of 140 new homes.
On the horizon is the official launch of the Centre for Caribbean Philanthropy, including a comprehensive philanthropic library to support the research and training programmes. Regional research in partnership with University faculties has already begun with an examination of three major areas – corporate giving, remittances and informal giving throughout the region and regional training is happening in two streams. The first is a series of symposia geared towards further organizing the philanthropic sector. The series’ external partners are the Caribbean Community Foundation and the Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas (FAVACA). The second stream encompasses comprehensive entrepreneurial training to encourage social entrepreneurship. The external partners for this series are Workshop in Business Opportunities, a forty-year business development organization in New York and CARIBIZ, an organization of Caribbean Business Professionals.
With a dedicated Chairman, committed Board of Directors, visionary staff and an enlightened and growing donor community one thing is certain – the commitment to cultivate philanthropy within the Caribbean is sure to succeed.
