The Altona Community Foundation (ACF) received a special Christmas surprise that will add thousands of dollars to support local projects and organizations.
In a year-end announcement, they learned they would be receiving $750,000 to establish a permanent endowment fund called the Thomas Sill Fund. Grants from this fund will be administered by the ACF with the guideline to “use the annual income to the greatest benefit in assisting the community.”
ACF president Haydon Friesen says he and the board could not be more thrilled.
“This donation is undoubtedly transformative for our foundation and will allow us to grant out even more dollars to the community and surrounding area moving forward and for many years to come.”
The announcement comes in the wake of the Thomas Sill Foundation’s decision to discontinue its operations after decades of dispersing millions of dollars in grants to community foundations across the province.
The fledgling ACF received its very first donation from the Thomas Sill Foundation 30 years ago. That “one for two dollars raised” commitment to a maximum contribution of $100,000 provided the spark for the establishment of the ACF, which in the years since has grown its assets to over $2 million and invested more than $800,000 to a variety of community projects.
“You don’t have to look very far to see all the different projects that are happening within Altona and the surrounding area and the organizations the community foundation has been able to support over the last number of years, or over the last 30 years really, and the impact that those financial contributions has been able to move those projects forward or bring them to completion,” says Friesen. “It’s very exciting to see.
“We look forward to growing over the next number of years as well and increasing those granting dollars that become available on a year-to-year basis.”
Thomas Sill was a Winnipeg accountant who visited many of his firm’s offices scattered throughout southern Manitoba, growing an affinity for those communities, explained Robert Martens, a governor with the Thomas Sill Foundation and founding member of the ACF.
Most of the money being disbursed from the closure of the foundation is going to The Winnipeg Foundation into a Thomas Sill Rural Community Fund that will continue to issue grants to the nearly 60 eligible community foundations outside of the capital.
Meanwhile, the communities where Sill’s company had offices are receiving additional disbursements from the foundation’s capital assets.
Over the 36 years that the Thomas Sill Foundation operated, it granted out just over $46 million to charities, non-profits, and causes in Manitoba.
“Whenever there was a donation or a grant to an organization in Winnipeg, it was usually focused on is it something that rural Manitobans can also use?” Martens noted. “So, health facilities or public museums or those kinds of things, and everyone could benefit, but it was always keeping in mind the rural component.”
Speaking as a founding member of ACF, Martens said this latest investment is exciting to see.
“When we started, it was always, ‘Oh, we’ve got so little money and there’s so many needs in the community.’ You can only give away your income and so there was always just a little bit. As it’s grown, there was a little bit more and a little more. And now, if you take, say, a five per cent return on that, it should be maybe $35,000 extra that can go to organizations served by Altona Community Foundation. That’s just going to be outstanding.”
