Foreword By Zita Cobb
We live in a terrible world.
We live in a wonderful world.
The world will be what we make it.
-Kate Marvel, climate author, NASA
Barb McInnes showed us how to make the world. Lucky us who knew her and learned directly from her.
These lessons in philanthropy, from the legacy of Barb McInnes, are a primer on “how to be” and how to get good things done in this world we are making.
The stories are testimonials to the rare force of energy, joy, patience, clarity and light that was Barb McInnes. They also show us how to see the world underneath the world, how to see the potential that exists just beyond what is readily visible and how to call, nudge and encourage people to their best. Barb knew that courage comes from encouragement—these stories show us how to encourage.
If you missed the opportunity to work with Barb, then this book is for you. It knits together learnings from Barb in thirty-six accessible, relatable, doable lessons.
If you knew Barb, this book is for you too. As she did in life, Barb continues to draw us together. We need that now more than ever. The challenges facing us are not simple and we desperately need the sum of our actions to add up. This book holds insights for aligning energies, for seeing the connective tissue and, most of all, for activating the “us” in everything.
Lesson 1—We build community for the future and we don’t do it alone
“Plant an Acorn” By Jackie Holzman
It is said that there are three distinctive philanthropic traditions: relief, improvement, and social reform.
This was Barbara McInnes’ mantra.
First, stop the bleeding. Then, determine the cause. Finally, prevent it from happening again.
Barb convinced the city to transfer funds in the Ottawa Foundation to launch the new Community Foundation of Ottawa-Carleton. Its logo represented this philanthropic idea; if you want a forest then plant an acorn, a tree will grow and someone else will enjoy the shade.
As a former politician, I know too often we are only thinking of the “now.” Barb reminded me that we build our community for the future and we don’t do it alone. Each individual is a building block and all are required in the construction.
Barb was a mentor. She was a role model.
Be inclusive.
Be transparent.
Give people agency.
Build collaboration.
And, always say thank you!
Our nation’s capital Ottawa, Canada and the world of philanthropy are better because of all the acorns Barb planted.
Lesson 5—Taking a leap of faith and supporting a “wild’ idea can have long-term positive outcomes
“Turning Good Ideas into Reality” By Wendy Muckle
When you are trying to do things that have never been done before, it’s usually very difficult to convince funders to take the leap of faith and support your “crazy” idea.
Barbara, and by association the Community Foundation of Ottawa, was always someone who was not afraid to invest in an idea even if it meant helping you get the knowledge needed to make it work. I started to work directly with Barb in 2001 when Ottawa Inner City Health (OICH) was starting. We were full of good ideas but no resources to make them a reality.
Most people don’t know that many of the successful innovations in harm reduction in Ottawa started with small amounts of funding from the Community Foundation supported very personally by Barbara McInnes. Barb really cared about the people who were struggling the most and she did not back off from supporting ideas to help them which were unproven and controversial. She really saw the value of doing the right thing and not necessarily what convention viewed as acceptable at the time.
Barbara was the one who fought hard for funding the two-year pilot project which generated the Managed Alcohol programs of today. From a six-person pilot project, Managed Alcohol has grown into an international best practice intervention supported from a national community of practice and research operating in almost every major city in Canada. Not a bad return on investment!
Ottawa Inner City Health’s approach to improving health literacy among the homeless is entirely due to the support of the Community Foundation and a project which Barbara was strongly invested in. When efforts to improve life expectancy among the homeless started to succeed, Inner City Health faced a new challenge of helping people learn to live well with chronic health conditions. Improving health literacy among people with very low literacy levels, high rates of cognitive impairments and a history of poor academic experiences was no simple task when all conventional approaches failed. To go to anyone but Barbara to ask for money to translate chronic disease management information into a delivery format based on the strengths of street culture would have been a very hard sell but it was an idea that captivated her imagination. It is also a program which was so successful, that it is still offered in all OICH supportive housing programs.
Whether it was harm reduction, palliative care or helping Inuit people explain things in their own voice, Barbara very much believed—not only in helping those who needed it most—but in their right to do so on their own terms and in their own way. This belief underpinned much of her work at Community Foundation and is imprinted in the corporate culture to this day.
All excerpts are drawn from Lessons in Philanthropy: The Legacy of Barb McInnes.
