Consensus-based granting with Annauma Foundation

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Today on the show, we are thrilled to welcome Danielle Gibbie, Executive Director, and Udlu Hanson, co founding member of the first community foundation in Nunavut, Annauma Community Foundation And now my works in unique ways, which we will explore with our guests today. So let's learn more about this organization, its mission and the community. It serves Danielle Udlu. Thank you for being here and welcome.

We're really interested in how this all got started. Udloriak (Udlu) Hanson: Thank you for asking. Thank you so much for having us on the show today. We're very excited to talk about Annauma, Annauma Community Foundation. And maybe I'll just start on the actual name.

You did a fantastic job in its pronunciation, but it actually, it's that, Annauma is the short form, Annaumakkaijiit is the actual name, but we recognize the need to be able to have something that Southerners can, can say and remember the root word of, uh, Annaumakkaijiit or the root word of Annauma really. is about survival, surviving, and we have taken it a step further to actually want to be able to help organizations thrive. We want people in Nunavut to thrive.

And so we were looking for a name demonstrated that ability to help people do that. So not necessarily being the organization that focuses on Survival or helping organizations thrive, but giving them the tools, the resources necessary to do it for themselves. It was a very thoughtful and deliberate process to find a name that was representative of what we wanted to do, what we envision doing, helping organizations do and people do. So we spoke with elders. We spoke with.

People within our community to ask them what they thought we should call ourselves. So, I'm, I'm always happy to talk about, uh, the origins of the name. Now, as it relates to the actual origins of the, of the organization, Nunavut only has, uh, 37 registered charities. We're, we have a very small charitable sector and they're mostly, our charitable organizations are mostly made up of churches and daycares. There aren't that many granting.

Foundations, or there's only actual two foundations and we would be the granting foundation. So there was a need, a very strong need, and it was very apparent to us that in order for us to be able to support an attorney. Charitable sense in Nunavut, we needed to find a way to bridge the North and the South. We needed a way to find ways for Southerners to help support Northern initiatives, to help support community initiatives.

There was an obvious and there is an obvious desire for Southerners to help. There just hasn't been the Real charitable mediums or mechanisms for them to do that. And we're hoping that this organization will do that, that we can help bridge that, not only the gap, but also bridge the North from the South.

I think also, I just want to touch on a little bit as to why we might have chosen it to be a community foundation, because there was, there was many different ways that we could have structured ourselves. The Community Foundations of Canada came to Nunavut asking There was a workshop and they just asked if there was any desire or any interest at creating a community foundation.

And that's, of course, when we jumped on the initiative, just the fact that there, there would be an opportunity to create an organization that would be community led. Nunavut has 25 communities and Nunavut is still very community oriented. Our communities are really only about between 65 and 80 at most, years old, meaning Inuit were still quite nomadic 60, 70 years ago, and only became to live in communities.

About 60 or 70 years ago, so we still have a very strong sense of community, still very much ingrained in our culture. If you came to Nunavut, you'd see and you'd feel it. We still have community feasts, we still have Christmas games that go on for days, 24 hours. We have communal hunts, so we're very community oriented and so a community foundation just made sense. Thank you.

That's just wonderful to hear, uh, sort of the genesis of the, the, the, the origin story behind, uh, the concept for having a community foundation, uh, in Nunavut. So Danielle, we're going to turn to you now with its approach to granting that is community led and grassroots. The foundation has a unique way of doing things with a structure that differs from other community foundations.

Can you tell us more about the consensus based granting model of the foundation and the benefits of this approach compared to traditional philanthropy models?

So our consensus based granting, we build cohorts that are working together on a common thematic area that aligned to our priorities. And these cohorts together collectively Work together to come to consensus on the various initiatives or the projects they bring forward, the funding allocations, and even how they're going to be measuring and monitoring their projects. The first cohort we did was focused on Inuit children and youth, and we had four local organizations participate.

And I naively thought that, you know, it's very likely that They will split the funding down the middle and each walk away with a grant the same size, and that's not what happened, and someone has shared this with me that I think is important to share here today, is that when Inuit are eating together at a community feast or celebration, and say you're eating a piece of fish, You don't cut that fish into equal size portions, people only take what they need.

So when they're coming together on the funding allocations for their various initiatives, we actually see organizations saying, I can scale back my project, you should have more money. We've done this before, we know this takes a lot of money, you should have this amount. So it's very based on that equity mindset of making sure that everyone has what they need. What they need to do their work successfully. Another thing is that collaborative mindset for organizations to come together.

You see this mindset shift in participants in the first couple of hours or so from thinking they're coming into this room to just apply for their organization and get what they need to realizing that as a group collectively, they're. Um, able to determine how this funding will be shaped, and we see organizations and the participants have a lot of pride and ownership in wanting to make sure that this funding allocation is going to have a maximum impact.

So it's really about shifting the power dynamics. It reduces administration for grantees rather than writing long application forms. All of this work is done verbally in person, and it's also building their own peer network. So like I said, they, the organizations collectively decide on how to work.

What they're going to monitor and report on their projects and an Alma as part of our reporting mechanisms, ask the organizations to set a date to reconvene so they can come back 6 months later, a year later, that's up to them and we create space for them to come together and share back, reflecting on their challenges, their successes, what they learned, and they're doing this. As a peer group. So really learning and building and sharing from one another.

Someone shared that they want to be able to be excited about all of the projects and share that with their own communities. So consensus will look different for different groups. And again, that's in the participants for themselves to really determine when they know that they've come to a decision. I think it's.

Also worth noting that, and even for myself as a newcomer to Nunavut, at first it seemed like this is a very new and novel approach to granting, but this is really rooted in traditional Inuit knowledge and societal values. So consensus based decision making and sharing are core values and are really reflective of Inuit culture.

So last year, Annauma launched its inaugural 10 million Caring North campaign. So what are the priorities for this campaign that will benefit local communities? Udloriak (Udlu) Hanson: The priorities for the Caring North campaign are the same as the priorities for the Annauma Community Foundation. We have five priorities. We have the Inuit children and youth. Priority, education and learning, arts and culture, community health and well being. And community identified opportunities.

These priorities were developed by speaking with community members and looking at what needs there are and really trying to provide a sense of what community needs are and where community support for community initiatives would likely be put toward. We weren't. Going to try and develop any flashy language or anything that didn't reflect the communities. They really have the priorities really needed to be to reflect what the community priorities are.

So, we're planning to ensure that the support for the priorities will be led by the communities. So, if there happens to be something that's perhaps a little more pressing. And the communities have expressed a need to direct funds towards one priority over another, then we're willing to listen. We also have, as I mentioned, the community identified opportunities where if there is some sort of emergency, some sort of, um, urgent need. that the communities have identified.

We have a priority where we can direct funds, direct support toward. I mean, there was the pandemic. We, we created this organization during the pandemic. We were all home doing this over zoom. And so it was very evident that we needed to be flexible and reflect the needs of the communities in that way. So, although five priority sounds quite. Many, I will say that Nunavut has, our social indicators are not all that great.

In terms of where they are in Canada, you know, we do have the highest rates of poverty. We're in a housing crisis, and we do have a high degree of food insecurity. So all of these are priorities, all, you know, meeting the needs of communities. They're all, they are all priorities. For sure that I think one of the, the situations that funding organizations often find themselves in is that there's always more demand for support than there are usually resources with which to provide that support.

So, Danielle, we're going to come to you now. One of the. The philanthropic trends we've observed in recent years is the rise in popularity of donor advised funds. You know, a donor advised fund is an account that a donor opens with a charity, a community foundation, or a financial institution. It allows donors to set aside funds at any time to give to non profits or charities later. By opening a donor advised fund, Donors demonstrate a commitment to supporting charitable causes in the longterm.

At Annauma as a community foundation, you're going against the trend by not having donor advised funds. Can you tell us about the rationale behind this decision?

We can't do that with donor advice funds, so we welcome donors to choose one of our priority areas if they want, but we're strategically not having donor advice funds because we, in order for us to respond and be reflective of the needs of our communities, we can't have donors telling us where to put money. And again, it goes back to that trust and trusting that our communities know the best solutions to the challenges they're facing. for listening.

What we didn't want to do is, again, trying to be as reflective as possible of the Inuit culture. You know, if you drive around our communities, you're not going to see the Bob Hanson Park or the Mary Jane Community Centre. It's not, uh, it's not typically, very typical for Inuit to be pointing out. Specific people, it's, that's not a community oriented type of thought or definitely not a means or ways of sharing.

When we created their foundation, we didn't, we really didn't have a strong sense or. Uh, need, uh, I believe to replicate Southern ways, typical Southern philanthropic ways of sharing. We definitely had a very strong sense to do good by our communities, like with our consensus based granting. If they're in the driver's seat, then, uh, All the power to them. They're going to, they can decide what is, they do decide, they should decide what's best for their communities.

They know, and having donor advised funds kind of takes that power away from them. It suggests something that we didn't think was a good fit. And every single decision we made, especially when we were creating those priorities, when we were creating more or less for the community. The sense that we want to give with Annauma community foundation, we always brought it back to the Inuit ways of sharing. What does that look like? What does it feel like? And Danielle gave an example of sharing.

I gave some examples earlier as well, but we have to do our gut check and our gut check would be, as you said, in the very beginning. Bruce, about Inuit societal values and our worldview. So we wanted to take this opportunity from the get go to ensure that we were able to incorporate Inuktitut philanthropy and our Inuit way of sharing. That looks different to most. It kind of brings it right back to its core roots of sharing.

It kind of, it brings it back to why are people sharing in the first place? Why are, why are they. Providing charitable funds, what do they want to see, what do they want to feel when, when they give, it's a sense of being able to share. So, not only did we want Inuit to experience that, our communities to experience that from perhaps a receiving end, but also from where the sharing is initiated from. That it's, it flows through right straight from donor to our community partners.

It, it needs to feel like. They have been empowered right from the get go. Thank you for that. And we're going to explore another difference, if you will, between how Analma is functioning and how other foundations operate, and that relates to endowment funds, meaning a fund that's restricted and only the interest from the fund is spent, not the principal.

You know, it sort of seems atypical for many foundations, although we are starting to see maybe a shift in this traditional way of managing and distributing funds. You know, if we think of, for example, uh, the Ivy Foundation, which decided to wind down its endowment and give all of its money over the course of five years to address urgent, immediate climate change related issues. And there's always this tension that we hear in the endowment discussion.

This idea of addressing immediate needs is certainly a valid argument. And on the other hand, an endowment can help ensure the long term sustainability of an organization. So maybe Danielle, we'll start with you. What are the main considerations for your organization as it was thinking about not having an endowment?

And so that aligns with our organization organizational goal of helping to strengthen the nonprofit and charitable sector in Nunavut. So we have community granting, sector development, and long term investments, and the idea is that those long term investments will. return to community granting and creating this continuous flow of money. So there is a focus on the immediate and now and quite a significant amount well over the 5 percent disbursement quota that foundations are required to.

But we also are looking after the long term mindset, uh, with 40 percent going to investments.

And what we did know when we created the organization is that there's a real need now. Let's hope that this is the worst that Inuit will ever be. Those social indicators that I gave earlier, poverty, housing crisis and food insecurity, just to name a few, our health indicators are all Not where we want them to be.

So to spend our time and energy right now in creating a fund that we're not to access for a number of years, or to be able to only portion off some of it in the next few years, it didn't feel genuine. It didn't feel, you know, there, there is an urgent need now. There is a need to support organizations, communities, people now. And as I mentioned earlier, it's not as though we won't, we might not consider it in the future, but we thought, let's have some early wins.

Let's demonstrate to the community how this is going to be driven by the communities and plan for the future. This again is really reflective again of how we like to think. We think that Reflects our Inuit culture, sharing now, sharing with, with those that need it. Inuititut philanthropy is embedded in Inuit principles, values, behaviors, and worldviews. So, To say that we're going to take the help and support that we're receiving and put it away right now is, you know, wouldn't be reflective.

Inuit communities and community members have always depended on one another for food security and societal strength. Um, as I mentioned earlier, we have, We're only just, uh, settling into communities in the last, uh, generation. My mother was born in an igloo, like we're still, we're still that closely related to having been traveling in camps together. And so this is a, you know, a journey we're taking together in, in a philanthropic sense.

Okay. So we're, you know, we're going to, we're going to move together and we're going to decide together when we think we need to save, when we need to spend, when, when, what we need to spend it on. Okay. And we're only as strong as our, uh, as our weakest members of the community. So we're not going to thrive until we know that everybody has the tools and resources that they need. It's that communal means of preparedness and resourcefulness that still strives or thrives today.

But we, you know, again, we're happy to have those conversations with, uh, with donors and supporters in the South to explain what this means. We understand it's going against the grain. We know that it's, It's very different for them and it's conversations, it's, it's learning from one another. It's to trust in one another that we think the communities know where these funds should go, where the support and sharing should go. Absolutely. Thank you.

So I'm going to ask a question to both of you and Udla, we'll start with you this time. How do you envision Annauma evolving over time? Udloriak (Udlu) Hanson: Uh. That's a great question. Earlier when you asked about our priorities, uh, you know, I got pretty worked up about the priorities because there's so many.

I neglected to mention the fact that one of another priority that we, we very much see and it may not be be listed as such, but something that we understand there to be a very strong need for. That's in building capacity within the charitable sector. That's in building capacity that's in providing the means and empowering those in the communities to be able to share.

So when I envision What I would love to see and now I'm a doing not only is it sharing, but it's also again, providing the tools necessary for others to be able to share. So Danielle, same question for you in terms of, you know, where you see the organization evolving,

We are, however, with our community nominated award that's open to any Charity and nonprofit based in Nunavut that is territory wide right now, but with our consensus granting cohorts, we're starting here, really learning from our community and adapting and evolving the model as we learn alongside our community and receive feedback from the experience. And I think that's.

not only will we be serving the entire territory, but recognizing that what we do in one region might look and feel a little bit different in another region, being reflective of how that community works and what their needs are. And now my IC is continuously learning and growing. So I hope to see the organization shift and evolve over time, as our communities do as well, and the non profit sector does. Challenges that they face today might look different in a few years.

And so our work and the supports that we're giving them should be reflective of that. I do, you know, as Udla was sharing about supporting the nonprofit sector and charitable sector to thrive. I think that's a really. incredible goal to have and so important because these organizations are the heartbeat of the territory. They are doing very important work around food and security, housing, poverty, social well being, language revitalization.

And these organizations, when you talk to them, everyone has, dreams and visions of what they want to achieve and become, but they don't necessarily have the tools or supports to do that. So if we can play a small role. And giving these organizations, the tools they need to thrive, our entire territory will be stronger because of it.

We knew they knew there was a need and that they were very supportive, but we just didn't get, you know, the sense of just how. It's ironic because when you ask us, what am I most optimistic about? It's as though you can flip that question on its head and, and it's, our communities are. We're providing optimism for our communities, and that, of course, is just amazing. There's so much hope. There's so much optimism from the South. We've had.

An incredible amount of optimism from the South and support from the South and we envisioned it. We wanted it just to feel it and to see it playing out provides even more optimism. We always knew there was a strong desire. From the south to bridge the north, but this, the bridge goes both ways. So for the northerners to see that the southerners are, are that optimistic to help, are that supportive and, and really do want to play a role in seeing healthy communities and thriving communities.

It just gives me goosebumps. I'm, I'm, I'm so optimistic about it, that that relationship between the north and the south is only going to continue and we'll, we'll find ways to, to continue to support one another. It's wonderful. Thank you. Danielle, same question about optimism.

And I think that, um, hopefully we can serve as a model for other organizations or for other organizations to think about the way that they're doing things and Is there a way that we can serve our community better?

That's what's really exciting for me, and also definitely the hope and optimism and abundance that we we can bring to our community here when Ulu mentioned earlier that we are the only grant making foundation in Nunavut, we wear hats as both a charitable organization and a granting organization, which isn't the norm for Nunavut, so I think our community is still getting used to the idea that we're giving out funding, but we're also a charitable organization, and so

I hope that we can continue to do that. Providing funding and supports and networks to really support these organizations to thrive.

A way that is actually rooted in culture and history and community that while the structure may in a sense notionally be the same, the operation of that can have many, many different ways of working based on, on those who are participating and those who are operating it. And it sounds so interesting. We're very much looking forward to following the success of the organization in the future. So thanks to both of you.

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