It’s about the place – using our capital to work harder for our community
Press Release
July 16, 2025
Carol Hall, the Victoria Foundation’s Senior Director of Innovation & Impact, leads a staff team working to accelerate our impact to solve some of the biggest and most pressing challenges in our community.
Starting with the question: ‘It feels pressing, right?’ Carol recently spoke with a group of fundholders and community partners to share the Foundation’s goals and how we are responding in this moment.
Here are some of her remarks:
We are living in a time of economic, political, and ecological uncertainty that challenges us to find new approaches and ways of working together.
Zita Cobb, Founder & CEO Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies, has said that “prevailing economic models are no longer sufficient. We need a bold approach that builds upon the unique strengths within the places we live to help transform local potential into national prosperity.”
For me, this quote and Zita’s work really speaks to the moment we are in and the kind of place-based solutions that we need.
Our region and our country are facing multiple challenges that are interwoven and complex. And that means there is no one answer and no one right way to solve them. It requires us to innovate and come together in new ways to find solutions.
What gives me a lot of comfort is that there are many people in our community who believe things can be different, they can be better. Here in Greater Victoria, we have many strengths to build on to address the immediate challenges in a way that can also make us stronger in the long-term.
For nearly 90 years, Victoria Foundation has had a track record of rising to challenges to address some of our community’s most pressing needs.
Back in 1936, in the dark days of the depression, our founder, Burges Gadsden invested a $20 gift from his mother to create the Victoria Foundation. He was inspired by his work with the Sunshine Inn, which was our region’s first soup kitchen.
And in starting a community foundation, he believed in the power of trying something new, being bold, and the possibility of making our community better.
This is the story of the Victoria Foundation. We bring people together to make our community stronger for everyone.
Today, there is incredible work underway with our community partners that is making a difference to so many lives. And at the same time, it is not enough. We know we need to do more.
To do so requires the Foundation to use its capital – in all its forms – to work harder for our community. We need to explore new ways to use our granting, investing, and coordinating capital to have an even greater impact.
Our granting capital is supporting incredibly meaningful work across the region, and we continue to evolve our approach for greater impact and return.
For our investments, we are intentional in moving more of our endowment to generate direct positive social and environmental returns alongside financial returns. Our Board has committed to moving up to 15% of our investible assets to impact by 2026.
For what we call our “coordinating” capital, we are looking at ways for our relationships, reputation and convening power to work harder for the community as well – to pull?all this together and drive community-led action in the way the Victoria Foundation is so well positioned to do.
The Foundation’s Innovation & Impact team is researching models of collaboration and testing new approaches to our work in granting, investing and coordinating, and how we use these to have greater impact. As examples, we are convening capital deployers to test how we can use blended finance to secure community–owned arts space, and we are testing our role in coordinating upstream solutions to homelessness.
On the investment side, one example is a new impact investment in the Seven Generations Growth Fund. This Indigenous-led real estate fund develops housing, mixed use and industrial projects on Indigenous lands in partnership with Indigenous communities. Unlike traditional developments, the Indigenous partners share in the ownership and profits of each project, creating lasting wealth and a real say in the future of their own communities.
While the Fund is national, it is primarily focused in BC with one in five of their potential projects with Nations here on Vancouver Island.
This is one of a growing number of groups innovating and creating new models for community wealth. They also offer a way for the Foundation’s investments to align with our values and transform local potential into wellbeing.
Another example of innovation is the Sector Resilience Program, a new proactive granting program that supports nonprofits seeking investment dollars. It will support activities like research, building a case for support, financial or business modeling, market testing or legal advice, or other customized supports to better attract investment.
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