Weekly News Recap: July 8, 2016

Amazing Race Canada at Sam Livingston Fish Hatchery in Calgary. Courtesy, CTV CALGARY HERALD

Inspiring

Refugees Encounter a Foreign Word: Welcome Canada. How proud am I. This story, by the New York Times, is five months in the making and it paints Canada in an incredibly positive light. In a world where xenophobia is rampant, Canadians are quietly and proudly bucking this trend. “I can’t provide refugees fast enough for all the Canadians who want to sponsor them,” John McCallum, the country’s immigration minister, said in an interview. CANADIAN STORY (6/30/16)

MACLEANS: Canada's Stories Maclean's Magazine has a birthday gift for all of us. Over a century of stories. CANADIAN STORIES (6/30/16)

News

Decidedly Jazz Danceworks asks city for $900K to cover cost overruns on new building The City of Calgary has previously contributed $5.5 million to this project. CALGARY STORY (7/7/16)

Fort Edmonton Park to be open year-round following $33.5 expansion Welcome news. Thanks Albertans! ALBERTA STORY (7/6/16)

St. Albert RCMP looking for person who dropped off jewelry at charity Tough to assign a tax receipt to this one. Interesting approach though. Two months and no one has claimed it. ALBERTA STORY (7/6/16)

De Beers moves Canadian HQ from Toronto to Calgary Welcome to Calgary. Please bring pretty things with you. CALGARY STORY (7/6/16)

Fish, music and the Calgary Tower: Behind the scenes of Amazing Race Canada's Calgary stop Studio Bell aka The National Music Centre was one of the stops recently on Amazing Race Canada. I thought it was pretty cool, thought you might too. CALGARY STORY (7/6/16)

Lethbridge-based lawyer named Chair of University of Lethbridge Board of Governors University of Lethbridge alumnus and local lawyer Kurt Schlachter is the new chair of the University’s Board of Governors. Congrats to both. ALBERTA STORY (7/4/16)

Philanthropy Spotlight: Comedy star helps raise $3 million for cancer research, Emerson supports financial stability Nice work for an event. Dana Carvey was the headliner at the Illumination Gala for the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. (7/4/16)

Thousands line up for opening day of Calgary’s new National Music Centre Finally! The big day arrived and the National Music Centre did not disappoint. 6,000 people lined up visit on opening day. CALGARY STORY (7/1/16)

Major renovations to close Edmonton's downtown library for up to three years The Stanley Milner Library, which sees over one million visitors per year, will close during renovations to save significant construction costs. The total costs of the construction and renovation are $62.5 million. ViTrēo is proud to be working with the Edmonton Public Library. ALBERTA STORY (6/30/16)

Fort McMurray Fire Aid concert hits $2M goal Nickelback, City and Colour, and Blue Rodeo all performed at this benefit concert at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton. ALBERTA STORY (6/29/16)

Life and career hacks

Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful A treasure trove of useful models to explore. Learn. Use. Teach. And, where necessary, dispute. (7/5/16)

20 documentaries every designer should watch I have seen one of these in its entirety and parts of the others. I am definitely going to try and watch all of them by the end of the summer. What a treat! Way better than binge-watching a fictionalized television series. (7/6/16)

7 Character Traits of People Who Accomplish Exceptional Things My favourite: focus. "If you want to know how to write a book, it’s quite simple. Wake up each day and write until you are finished." (6/30/16)

Are You Excited About Tomorrow? That Seneca guy, he was pretty smart. "Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life." (6/30/16)

Forget About Motivation. Focus on This Instead. "Inspiration is for amateurs--the rest of us just show up and get to work" (6/28/16)

An extreme method for breaking your bad habits "Over-compensate to compensate." Want to break a habit, get extreme. (5/17/16)

Studies, reports, findings, and stats

Philanthropy 'should not substitute' public funding, report finds Important study on why we can't let private money be the dominant force in our public institutions. (7/7/16)

Major gifts well worth the wait for fundraisers New research from Adrian Sargeant's team at the Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy in the UK suggests that being in major gifts for the long haul is essential and can lead to high levels of success for fundraisers. (7/5/16)

Arts philanthropy a winning formula for artists, wealthy Arts patronage lags other charitable donations in Canada. StatsCan's figures put arts and culture donations at 3% of Canadian giving between 2007 and 2010. CANADIAN STORY (6/30/16)

How would the ideal charity spend its income? This is a fantastic piece of stakeholder research out of the U.K. Big learning: The public are fine with a charity spending 14% of income on administration, 14% on fundraising, 14% on campaigning for change, with the bulk (58%) being spent on the mission. Thanks to Mick Mulloy for sharing this link with us. (June 2016)

How One Social Enterprise is Scaling Faster Than The Rest This is an interesting case study on how one social enterprise has scaled up fast and is being used as an example for others. Startout is social enterprise whose mission is to accelerate LGBT entrepreneurs' successes. They have 15,000 members and they expect their membership to double over the next year and triple by 2018. Thanks to Michelle Regel for sharing this story. (4/13/16)

Irreverence

The Irreverent Site "Nonprofit With Balls" Gets Real About Nonprofit Work This is a Fast Company story about this great nonprofit humour site by Vu Le. Le tackles issues like nonprofit pay and generally offers a reality check about our chosen vocation. Both this article and Le's site are worth a read. (7/5/16)

Philanthropic controversy

UC Davis chancellor withholds $200,000 scholarship donation as inquiry continues Talk about conflict of interest. Chancellor Linda B. Katehi has been on paid administrative leave from the University of California at Davis since April pending an investigation into allegations that she misused student funds, lied about contracts she approved to boost the university’s image and gave relatives she employed preferential treatment. Charming. (7/1/16)

Trends and shifts

Youth Philanthropy Is Growing, Along With the Online Spaces to Support It Inspiring. There is a new online gathering place for youth philanthropy. Its called YouthGiving.org (6/29/16)

EMBARQ: The world is a big place. And sometimes,
we need a little help getting there. This is crowdfunding on a very personal scale. Need to fly somewhere but can't afford it? Well, now you can ask your friends to help you. Leave aside that this is ultimately to Air Canada's benefit, it is an interesting approach to crowdsourcing. Thanks to Michelle Regel for sharing this story. CANADIAN STORY (June 2016)

Large gifts

Lubar entrepreneurship center receives $1 million donation Jerry Jendusa has given $1 million to the Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The gift will support an entrepreneur-in-residence program that will allow students to learn from people who have started their own companies. (7/6/16)

AUMC receives donation for pediatric cancer research and care An anonymous gift of $1.4 million has been received by the pediatric cancer research and care at Augusta University Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia. Nice! (7/6/16)

Equal Justice Initiative Announces $1 Million Donation from The Lavine Family The Equal Justice Initiative, a dynamic human rights organization that provides representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in America's legal system, announced the largest ever gift for its core criminal justice work. The $1 million gift is from the Lavine Family's Crimson Lion Foundation. The Equal Justice Initiative is based in Montgomery, Alabama. (7/5/16)

Harvard Law School's Berkman Center gets new name after $15 million donation The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is getting a $15 million donation from Michael R. Klein who received an LLM from the school. (7/5/16)

Morton farmer leaves $3M in land to small Indiana college in his estate Goshen College has received an estate gift of land from Milo Albrecht who only attended the College for three semesters 70 years ago. Mr. Albrecht never married and had no children. He had previously given the College a gift of $2 million in stock. (7/4/16)

UH plan renames basketball arena for billionaire regent The chair of the board of regents at the University of Houston, Tilman Fertitta, is expected to make $20 million commitment to this project. [UPDATE: This gift has been confirmed as per a story from July 4th] This gift is not without controversy. Earlier this month, the university settled with the family of the late Harris County Judge Roy Hofheinz about changing the name of the arena that is named after him. (7/3/16)

Advocate owners John and Dathel Georges give $1 million to United Way for poverty fight With this gift to the New Orleans United Way, John and Dathel Georges join United Way's Million Dollar Roundtable along with Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates. (7/3/16)

Kettering Cancer Center lands $1.5M donation Steve Rauch, a local businessman, made his gift after first declining to make a gift. What changed his mind was a tour of the cancer center and meeting the staff. Good reminder about how important in-person mission moments are to philanthropy. The Kettering Cancer Center is located in Dayton, Ohio. (6/30/16)

Milwaukee YMCA raises $1 million via 'venture philanthropy' This YMCA fell $1.5 million short on its annual fundraising goal in 2015. Today, they are using innovation to develop strategic funding. (6/29/16)

$10M donation — and new name — for Laurentian's School of Architecture The School will be named after donor and former CEO of Goldcorp, Inc., Robert McEwen. CANADIAN STORY (6/29/16)

Dolphins make $5 million donation to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center This is the largest single gift by a NFL team to a charity. (6/29/16)

Welcome to our recap of the week's news, articles, and information of note. ViTreo Group Inc. provides this information for the benefit of our clients, associates, staff, partners, and stakeholders. The content is collected and curated by ViTreo partner Vincent Duckworth. If you would like to submit a link for consideration, please send an email to info@vitreogroup.ca

The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by ViTreo Group Inc. of the linked web sites, or the information, products or services contained therein. ViTreo Group does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. All links are provided with the intent of meeting the mission of the ViTreo Group Inc. Please let us know about existing external links which you believe are inappropriate.

Vincent DuckworthJuly 7, 2016Refugees, Canada, New York Times, John McCallum, Maclean's Magazine, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, DJD, City of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Fort Edmonton Park, Edmonton, De Beers, Calgary Tower, Amazing Race, Lethbridge, Kurt Schlachter, Dana Carvey, Missouri, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Illumination Gala, Edmonton Public Library, Fort McMurray, Fort McMurray Fire Aid concert, Mental Models, design, Design trends, Documentaries, Character traits, Medium, Inspiration, Motivation, bad habits, Philanthropy, public funding, public institutions, Major Gifts, Adrian Sargeant, Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy, Fundraisers, Artists, Arts patronage, Immigration, CCVO, Charity, Research, LGBT, entrepreneurs, Nonprofit With Balls, Fast Company, California, Linda B. Katehi, controversy, EMBARQ, Air Canada, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship, Jerry Jendusa, Augusta University Medical Center, Augusta, Georgia, human rights, America, Lavine Family, Crimson Lion Foundation, Montgomery, Alabama, Harvard, Harvard Law School, Berkman Center, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Michael R. Klein, Goshen College, Milo Albrecht, Houston, Morton, Indiana, Harris County, Roy Hofheinz, John Georges, Dathel Georges, Million Dollar Roundtable, Bill Gates, M, Melinda Gates, Kettering Cancer Center, Dayton, Ohio, Milwaukee, Laurentian's School of Architecture, Robert McEwen, Goldcorp Inc., Miami Dolphins, NFLComment