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Toronto’s Vital Signs is precisely that report that helps us get a snapshot of the
city on a year to year basis. But we don’t stop there, we take the additional step and
we go out to the community and we identify those organizations that are providing solutions
to the needs identified in Vital Signs and those organizations are vital ideas. They
have vital ideas that in fact help alleviate a lot of the needs identified in Vital Signs.
I think one of the really important things of Toronto’s Vital Signs is that it looks
at all the issue areas of the city and not only does it do it discretely through each
issue area, but it connects them.
We talked to some collaborative partners in Toronto, including United Way, YMCA, Maple
Leafs Sports & Entertainment, the school boards and before you know it we had a program that
could actually address both youth violence, youth engagement, youth health and youth employment.
The sports program is a coaching program. It goes through three different coaching certificates
and basically they teach you different ethical trainings on how to deal with children and
how to base their coaching on different aspects of life. It was actually fun because I’m
an athlete so basically to be able to coach and train children to be somewhat like me
is a good feeling. It gives them a chance to show themselves off instead of just being
nobody.
Donors are increasingly saying to us, "What are the issues in your/our city that need
attention?" and they want to be strategic donors. It of course informs our grantmaking;
it is all the teriffic research that goes into the indicator work prior to the report.
It makes us better grantmakers. And, the other thing we saw which I am really pleased about
as a communications person, is it allowed us to engage Calgarians.
In it I think the big shame of it all would be to compare one community to another which
has never been the intent of Vital Signs. I think the great opportunity is to start
to have some dialog that leads us to what our national perspectives are, to what national
issues are, and how can we collectively work together to make a greater impact on those
national issues as opposed to being not merely but to being significantly viewing ourselves
as stand alones. I think we are all a part of a bigger picture and our ability to identify
with those trends and issues are, for the nation, are really important.
What we think is really important, and particularly around Vital Signs, is that this is a tool
that demonstrates that while the financial contributions community foundations make to
communities are absolutely important, there are other contributions they can make and
so we are trying to open up the thinking of boards and staff to what those possibilities
are.