Many Brains. One Heart.

Heath Fletcher 0:02
Hey there, welcome to the many brains one heart podcast. If you're looking for some feel good stories from people who are changing the world, you've come to the right place. We've got a collection of interviews with some amazing individuals who aren't afraid to share their ups and downs on their journey towards making a difference. Sure, it takes a lot more than one brain to make things happen. But when you've got a group of passionate people working together, there is no limit to what can be accomplished. So grab a seat, sit back, and let's get to the heart of the matter.

Welcome to the Many Brains. One Heart Podcast. This is episode number four. And I have with me today, Leanne Hammond, from the Community Foundation of the North Okanagan. She's here to tell us about her organization and what she's been doing in this position for several years now. Welcome. It's good to have you here.

Leanne Hammond 0:52
Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. Yeah, of course. Now I'm doing the mental math round. How long have I been here? Oh, my God, I think it's going on seven years.

Heath Fletcher 1:01
But I've been using that role. Yeah,

Leanne Hammond 1:03
I think so. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher 1:05
It's been a while, like, I've known you for all that time. Yeah. And, yeah, so let's let's dig in. Like, I mean, I know a lot about your foundation. But let's pretend I don't know nothing about it. And because there's a lot of people out there that probably don't know a lot about it and the function and the important things that you do in this community.

Leanne Hammond 1:25
I think we are still what people call my board, especially as fond of calling us the best kept secret in the valley in the Okanagan and Community Foundation's do tend to operate a little bit under the radar. I've been trying really hard for seven years or more to kind of get the Community Foundation movement more on people's radar. But yeah, we've we've been around a long time this Community Foundation has been around for getting on almost 50 years. And yeah, it has played a real pivotal role in in the Okanagan in the charitable scene.

Heath Fletcher 1:57
Yeah, I think I saw it started in 1975. Is that when its original, original date?

Leanne Hammond 2:02
That's correct. Yeah. 1975 started by community leaders. That's the way most Community Foundation's start, it always starts with a group of interested people who see that there could be more going on in their community that want to make positive social change, they start looking around and they figure well, we could step up, we could make this happen. So in 75, there was a group of individuals in this area who looked around and thought, let's put together a community foundation to basically be a funding source for charities that are doing the really valuable and important work that goes on in our organization in our in our area. And that's been around since then the whole concept is connecting donors who care with causes that matter. And the way that works is that donations, financial and leadership and other things, but primarily financial, those dollars are what's needed for charities and nonprofit organizations to really make positive social change. And we are kind of like I call this kind of like the Bank of Charity, and we are a charity for all charities. So that's the key concept.

Heath Fletcher 3:14
I think that's probably the part that most people don't quite understand is that the fundraising that you do is funneled down, and then those grant opportunities are distributed around the community, right for those causes. Right,

Leanne Hammond 3:27
exactly. So the concept is, is that people give funds to us, we actually, for the most part, invest those funds. And we use the income that's generated from those funds to make the grants every year. So in some ways, we're a bit of a perpetual money making machine.

I do not know that actually. Yeah, very interesting.

The idea is that the endowment, so we take the funds that are given to us by those community donors, invest them. And then the idea is that the market will supply kind of this renewable source of income. Now, that's the main concept. Of course, some years it works better than others, depending on market fluctuations, depending on other things. But the concept still remains really sound. What we've done in the north Okanagan, as well as in a lot of Community Foundation's across the country, is that we also utilize a steady stream of what we call flow through dollars. So we don't just operate on endowment funds in funds that are put off to the side and invested. We think that it's very important to to be a bigger player and to step up and to support charities. So we also work with funders, donors who are willing to give money and have that actually flowed through combined with other donations and flowed through to the charitable sector to make an immediate impact. So we're here for today and we're here for tomorrow. We've got that balance going on. That is really important, I think,

Heath Fletcher 5:01
yeah, and you touched on something too. But being an it's a national organization, right. So are you able, as a larger entity able to leverage that investment potential probably?

Leanne Hammond 5:14
As a fairly large organization, each of the community foundations has a loose affiliation or a membership with community foundations of Canada, which supports us. And we have a great relationship, we have learning resources, we have connections to government, we have a lot of great resources that come through that relationship. But we are very locally driven. So we have a local board of directors that makes decisions for our area. And we are able to be nimble and flex to what we think needs to happen in our own community without being constrained. So it's a really beautiful balance. And financially, we do our own investing each organization, each community foundation does our own investing. So for those people out there who are really big on the actual financial part of things, we work with discretionary management that is able to make really good sound decisions. We're not making them around our board table, we're not, you know, kind of trying to manage things off the side of our desk. So we can make institutional buy level decisions. And so we get a great rate, far better rate than I could ever get as an individual. So we have economies of scale that make it well worth investing through the Community Foundation for sure.

Heath Fletcher 6:32
Oh, that's incredible. See, there's so many layers here. I didn't, I wasn't familiar with. Yeah, really, really interesting.

Leanne Hammond 6:38
And that's all kind of boring stuff. So I'd rather have people call me about that I don't want to waste my airtime on on all those, you know, our 60/40 split on our portfolio or any of that stuff. I'd rather talk about stuff.

Heath Fletcher 6:51
That's for another podcast that I can't host so now you've been in that position seven years. So your role is what what what do you look after? What's your or what do you tell us about what you do every day?

Leanne Hammond 7:07
Hey, so I'm the Executive Director. So that means the boss of all things, except that I'm not really interested in hierarchy. So I would I like to consider myself more the team lead. So we have a small staff only have two other people other than me, in the organization in the North Okanagan. And I really think that we're all qualified, well qualified in our areas. So but the buck does stop with me. So yeah, I'm the top of that hierarchy that is more egalitarian than anything else.

Heath Fletcher 7:37
And it's like the Leanne club in there, too. It is two Leannes and Lisa,

Leanne Hammond 7:44
that's right. We only hire people who start with the letter L. Yep, we found that really works for us.

Heath Fletcher 7:50
So fill us in on some of the obstacles and challenges that you meet. I mean, you're obviously I was gonna say you're in a very competitive landscape for funding dollars and things like that. So do you actually go after local funding and donations, right? So and Vernon is a very fund driven city. So how do you compete in that landscape?

Leanne Hammond 8:20
The first thing is that, I guess, in my own way, I just have never found competition to really work for me. So personally, I don't approach it that way. And the charitable sector is people come with their hearts to the charitable sector to give. So I have found that we are more collaborative than we are competitive, there is always more where money came from. So donors are incredibly generous. I have found that when we work really cooperatively with other organizations, other charities in our area, the money actually increases. So the more people get comfortable with the idea that we are actually, I hate to use the word a level above, but we are aside from the actual charities. We are not a service delivery organization, we are a funder, a collaborator, a convener, a connector, we like C's just as much as we like El's. So when people understand that model, then they know whether they should be giving a direct contribution to an organization that needs that money to to focus on service delivery and needs immediate help, or whether they should come to us as a partner for more of their long term bigger picture funding, right? So when the model is more clear to people, then they understand the role that we play. We also work really collaboratively with other funders. So for instance, United Way we do do joint projects with United Way all the time, I do not see them as our competitor. They're our colleague. So United Way focuses more on immediate fundraising to be able to flow funds that are really important to charities doing work on the ground. They also focus on social services, right. So they're very focused on social services, we are what we would call a 360 degree funder, which means that we fund social services. But we also fund animal welfare. We also fund arts and culture, we also fund environment, we fund a lot of things outside of the typical social service area, United Way focuses on bringing in immediate money and getting that out, we focus more on endowment, we focus on bringing in the money, holding the money, and then using it to leverage other money. And so we work we're really complementary. Yeah, first, this feels

Heath Fletcher 10:55
like, yeah, and organizations can come to you because you have a grant application process so they can come to you exactly for their specific needs to Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, I can see that. Yeah, that's really cool. We've even

Leanne Hammond 11:07
actually run some government funding programs cooperatively with United Way, where we've both been a funder, and they've taken a certain approach to it, they've handled a certain stream of it, and we've handled a different stream of it. So there's no, we make sure there's no replication, I guess a better word would be duplication of service, or duplication of funding, we make sure that we work cooperatively together, and that we find together and leverage each other's funding. So yeah, we play really, really nice in the sandbox.

Heath Fletcher 11:37
You almost supply all the toys? Yes.

Leanne Hammond 11:42
Well, I would say actually, we make sure that the sand remains and we do kind of the bigger picture sides of the sandbox, right. And that's where the difference in fundraising comes in is right, like service organizations tend to fund capital projects, they tend to be involved in more. And again, I don't want to speak for them, but they fund certain types of things. United Way funds, certain types of things. We fund different types of things. So we make sure that we all talk, constantly collaborate, leverage each other's funding, and that's really good for the community.

Heath Fletcher 12:14
We get the business nitty gritty out of there. Is there any stories you want to share or any kind of experiences you've had over the years that people would like to hear?

Leanne Hammond 12:24
One of the best stories I think that that really illustrates the power of and the respect of the Community Foundation, is that after being in the North Okanagan environment for a number of years, we were approached by a group of people who really wanted to make sure that voters heading to the polls for the municipal election had the information that they needed to make a decision about who they were going to vote for. My first response was, oh, well, typically Community Foundation's are not that involved in political types of things. But then I realized that actually, that's a real feather in our cap and to be approached to be involved in that was an honour. And that we were seen as being non partisan as being quite neutral. And what we're doing is trying to make positive social change. So that was an opportunity that we actually decided to take on in a really deep way. We produce a Vital Signs report that comes out every couple of years. And that really focuses in on the challenges that are happening in our own communities. And so we were approached to host a website that showcased all of the different folks that were running for office all throughout the Okanagan, the whole North Okanagan, and we were able to show what they felt about various different issue areas. And we were able to provide them a bit of a centralized platform to be able to share how they were going to take on things like environmental concerns, like homelessness, opioid crisis, how they were going to focus on the arts and culture, all the different issue areas that are a challenge, as well as sometimes things that are going really well in our community. How were they as a as a someone who is running for office, going to approach each of those areas. So we were delighted to be involved in that and to host that kind of central repository for that information in a neutral kind of a way. So one stop.

A nice opportunity. Yeah. Yep. Probably you're in first impression was like, Oh, we don't want to be political. Right. Right. Right. My first thought was, yeah,

we don't take sides. Wait a minute, by actually

Heath Fletcher 14:39
giving them a platform to communicate at this actually does work really well, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

Leanne Hammond 14:46
We were really pleased to be involved. And

Heath Fletcher 14:48
so did you that for the was a provincial municipal.

Leanne Hammond 14:52
Was it municipal? Municipal? Yes. So yeah, we're very Community Foundation's are very area focused. So actually, there's three different Community Foundation's in the Okanagan, and one in the Shuswap area. Okay, so the executive directors from each of those areas, we speak regularly, we work really well together. So this this area, the North Okanagan, certainly was our focus for this. Right. Maybe some of the others will take that on in the future as well.

Heath Fletcher 15:19
You've not seen anyone else do that in the foundation?

Leanne Hammond 15:21
No, we have seen some very much involved in larger centers like Toronto, Vancouver, some of the areas across the country have got involved in things like that, certainly get out and vote, supporting people to engage and to be informed. Certainly other Community Foundation's have done that. And we do see that as a part of our way of engaging community and things that matter in our area.

Heath Fletcher 15:50
How about some challenges on your, on your road? Do you bump into some obstacles along the way? And how do you deal with those?

Leanne Hammond 16:00
I would say that philanthropy itself is really evolving. My background is actually as a sociologist, so what I went to school for was, was studying social inequality, how to make positive social change, those sorts of things. So I always felt like my degree really gave me a good foundation for getting involved in the foundation world. But I haven't seen it connect as closely as it has, in the last, I would say, three to five years, all of a sudden worlds are colliding. I think that the COVID crisis really clued us into the fact that we need to harness the power of philanthropy. But we also need to be very aware that the philanthropic background that we rely on is problematic in and of itself. So what I mean by that is that philanthropy can do a lot of damage on its way to doing good, and that we have to be far more tuned into inequality and inequity that happens, who gets funded? Why do they get funded? How do we make sure that our granting is fair, and is redressing some of the challenges that have been caused by as well as reinforced, by the way that wealth is, is accumulated and distributed. So Community Foundation's across the country, and certainly us in this in the north Okanagan have been very aware of that, we really subscribe to that whole idea that do the best you can until you know better and then when you know better do better. So that's a Maya Angelou, obviously. But that is absolutely where we are. So lots of research, lots of great, very good workshops that are offered through community foundations of Canada, and lots of reading, and informing our grant decision makers about where there's been any equality in the past and trying to arm them to be able to make good decisions that are a little better informed than perhaps they were when we first started out.

Heath Fletcher 18:03
right. I mean, it's interesting, you bring up COVID, too, because, you know, my notes is like, Oh, she should have asked how COVID affected all these organizations. And part of me goes, yeah, it's an interesting subject, but also the Senate was like, we're all kind of sick of listening and talking about COVID. But, you know, you brought it up in a very organic way, and how and how COVID has actually been a catalyst for a lot of social change, and a lot of awakening and enlightening on a lot of issues that were there. But we haven't really talked a lot about them as a as a population. So it's, it's interesting that you've made that connection between COVID has been that has been that push exactly, bring those things to the surface. And now, all organizations and businesses are finally paying attention. And maybe we needed that. Yeah, I guess,

Leanne Hammond 18:53
but it certainly helped. I know, it was in very negative world event. But I do agree. And I think that it was the tipping point for business, as well as the nonprofit sector and individuals to kind of as, as you put it, wake up, right, and recognize that the world, we need to change and tweak the way that we do business, we need to also change the way that we grant. And people need to change the way that they give. So I have found our donors to be incredibly open and supportive, and more generous than they've ever been before. We brought in a lot more money than we ever have in the past. And we've also leveraged money really well in the last couple of years. In a lot of our grant cycles, we've doubled and sometimes tripled the amount of money that we are giving out to the community and that's purely because we don't shy away from any challenging discussions. And we will go after our donors and explain to them where the needs are. And they respond really, really well to those conversations.

Heath Fletcher 19:57
Do you find they're coming to you and saying, you know if I'm going to do mean to you I want my money going to this cause or this type of organization? Are you? Are they fine? Are they being a little bit more particular or selective of where they want their money going?

Leanne Hammond 20:11
Very interesting question. I think that foundations as a whole, and probably all funders that are accepting donations, started off with perhaps optimistic but flawed assumption that the donor knows best. Now that I've said that out loud, I'm probably going to get a whole bunch of calls. Oh, my God, you want the donor comes to an organization like a community foundation? Because they want guidance, right? Because they are open to asking, what are the key pressing areas. So there is, I think, a beauty in balancing those two things. Donors come to us with often, or sometimes a favorite charity, or a favorite type of carcause that has made a difference in their own life. And they absolutely should be encouraged to give back and to support those groups. On the other hand, a lot of donors come to us without having a clear idea of what they want to fund, they just know that they want to do the right thing. They want to share some of the wealth that they have been fortunate enough to receive in life, and they are open, they are totally open to listening to where we see things going off course, in our community, those donors are worth their weight in gold, because they are confused about where they should be making a difference. And that's what we do, right? We research those things. We try to pinpoint where the pain points are. We, we do our homework, and we are great people to be able to help advise and lay out the options. So that has made a huge difference in our funding. And I see that as being a sea change across the country, for donors to work collaboratively with your community foundation to be able to place the money where it's going to make the biggest impact where it's going to make a positive change.

Heath Fletcher 22:02
That's a big job. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of organizations to consider, right? Like how, you know, there's large ones or small ones. And there's everything in between? How do those organizations you on top of every organization out there? Or do how do they get your attention to say, hey, we need help? Or, you know, how do you manage that part?

Leanne Hammond 22:23
Well, we are, I think, very humble and recognize that we do not know, everybody out there, we do not know exactly what every organization is doing. But we do try to have close relationships with as many charities and nonprofit societies as possible. We have by virtue of being a funder for well over 40 years, we have run across most most groups, and we do have a pretty good idea of who's doing what, who's who in the zoo. Should have heard of you? Yes. They find us. Yeah, the beauty of being a funder, right? They find us.

Heath Fletcher 22:56
you they need to come to you and say, Hey, we're here. This is what we do, right? Yeah, we're a bit we we need money,

Leanne Hammond 23:03
We tell them all the time, we cannot tell your stories and send people to find out more about you, if we don't know you exist. And if we don't know what you're currently working on, very good.

Heath Fletcher 23:12
So many organizations that need to know that need to be known, they gotta let you know they do.

Leanne Hammond 23:16
Absolutely. And they do that usually once a year during our spring grant cycle. But we also find out about what they're doing. And as somebody who is very involved in the community, our staff, as well as our board members are out there gathering information all the time about what's going on. So I feel like we are fairly well informed. And we do get phone calls all the time from new groups, or groups that are kind of changing up how they're doing things, we try to stay abreast of all of that information as best we can. And we reach out, I do a lot of searching on the net, reading about various different groups. And I'm a bit of a news junkie. So I'm reading, reading, reading all the time. So I generally know what's going on in the community. And this smaller size of the community and the whole North Okanagan makes that a lot easier to do than in a larger center like Vancouver or Toronto, which is why they have to have a much bigger staff than we do to be able to keep on top of that sort of thing. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher 24:20
Well, it's amazing what you guys accomplished with three people actually. Yeah, I mean, a board too I mean, I'm sure they contribute quite a bit as well. They do.

Leanne Hammond 24:29
We have a great board? We have various different volunteer committees. And we're always looking for more people to be involved with us and make sure that we are being as well connected to the community as possible.

Heath Fletcher 24:43
How do you how do you guys do that? How do you keep people informed? What are your avenues? What are your ways of communicating with people I know we've worked in the past on a few things. I actually talked about vital signs that was probably one of the first things I did with you took some pictures for you for that document a couple of years.

Leanne Hammond 25:04
More than a few years ago.

Heath Fletcher 25:07
We also did a video for you actually, that was my really my first introduction to you and the organization. I watched that video actually chokes me up. Actually, every time Yeah, every time I watch it even after I mean, that was a few years ago, we did that too. But it told a really great story. And I think it would tell the story of what the foundation does across Canada. But how do you keep that message flowing? Like what's your, what's the main things you do the activities you do to keep your business?

Leanne Hammond 25:36
There's there's two parts of communication, obviously, and those are listen and talk. So I tend to talk a lot. I also try to listen and make sure that I listen more than I, that I speak. So I definitely try to get out there and be involved in community initiatives. We have a communications person that works with us, her name is Lisa. And she's done a really great job of increasing our dialogue back and forth with the local community. So we send out newsletters a few times a year, and we try to keep those so we communicate with our donors as well as the charitable sector. One of the things that people say when they first start doing a newsletter is well, what should the audience be? And my answer is always everyone. So it goes out really widely. And same with the communication coming in who should we talk to everyone. So we try to have our annual community meeting. And we invite all of the charities that we have worked with not just in the past year, but in past years. So we go back about five years, as far as at least five years, when we're putting together our invite lists. The annual community meeting happens every November, end of November. And we we kind of share with the community then what we've accomplished over the last year, what we've seen as being some of the challenges in the community. And then we have a really healthy amount of it. That's for socializing, to be able to kind of work the room, and for our staff, our board members to be able to listen to what is going on for these charities. We have a community grants reception every spring, and again, that is to share. That's where we typically give out the checks. That's very old school write checks. We now actually ones Yeah. Yeah, we do the one we do the giant checks when we're doing an individual presentation, but but when we're doing the grants, reception, we never get tired.

People still love that. They love those big checks. Yep. And we we give out the annual funding. So that's just for one part of our funding. That actually gets me into something that you asked me at the beginning of this, whether there was something I wanted to get across, and I just realized there is something really important. Okay, so our community grants reception that happens every spring, is where we give out our community grants, our smart and caring community grants, we've given out, we've really jumped from giving out about $60,000 a year up to giving out over 200,000 a year, wow, in that particular cycle, which is really exciting. And that happens every June. Now, the interesting thing is, that's a really small part of what we do. So I think the community thinks that that's how much we give out a year, about $200,000. In grants, we actually give out about $2 million every year in grant money. But a good chunk of it goes out in the fall or in the winter through donor advised funds through designated funds. So those are we L's and C's and now we're into D's designated funds and donor advised funds. So those funds are when a donor has come to us and said I really want to support my favorite three charities every year. Here's my money, invest it wisely, make sure that they get the income on this every year in perpetuity Oh interest for for the next five years or for this year, etc. Those those funds go out in generally in December, with not very much fanfare. But that's the lion's share of the money going out is through that programming. So yeah, we take the spring grant cycle at about 200,000. The rest of the money comes from those other designated and donor advised funds. And then we're up around 2 million that we're giving out. I guess those

Heath Fletcher 29:32
Those could be things like legacy funds where people have left money behind. And they want it to go to these specific charities or organizations. Exactly. So it's ongoing because you're investing. It's not just one lump sum or it's like you're taking the money, investing it, letting it grow and it's donating on that person's behalf.

Leanne Hammond 29:56
That's the quiet part of what we do. But the lion's share are what we do is working with donors to make sure that during their lifetime, if they've started a fund with us that their favorite charities are getting that money every year, a lot of people start a fund where the lion's share of the money is going to come in through their estate through a gift in a will. At that point, then the charities that they may or may be supported throughout their lifetime, are still being supported year over year over a year, long after they're gone. What a great thing to be able to do. Yeah, it is really fulfilling work. I love meeting with donors and talking to them about which charities they want to support. That's my favorite part of the work.

Heath Fletcher 30:39
And that's probably as diverse as the people where their interests lie where their passion goes.

Leanne Hammond 30:47
That's the beauty about being what what I mentioned 360 degree funder is that there's always someone who's interested in animal welfare or the environment or making a difference in and trying to mitigate climate change. There's always somebody who's interested in the arts and culture, and who recognizes the importance of art, to our mental health and to, you know, what we offer as community, there's always somebody who's interested in supporting various groups that do food security work, making sure that people are fed. There's always somebody, there's always somebody who's willing to step up and fund that work. And my job is to find them.

Heath Fletcher 31:24
Wow. That's cool. No wonder you love your job,

Leanne Hammond 31:29
I have the best job. I think in town.

Heath Fletcher 31:32
You always have a smile on your face. It's like it's like you don't look burdened, or overloaded. Or it's like you just are always sort of like bright and cheerful and ready to talk. And I like that about you.

Leanne Hammond 31:44
Yeah, the Community Foundation work is basically how can we help? Yeah, how can we help?

Heath Fletcher 31:51
Amazing. Awesome. Yeah, we talked about all the things I wanted to chat about, I think we talked about, you know, you've had so many victories, and you even through your challenges, they didn't even come across as a huge obstacles, because you've seemed to have solutions for most of them. We talked about, you know, you know, the competition, which doesn't really exist for you, because you don't recognize a competition, which I love that. And yeah, and I, you know, it's coming to the point where we kind of want a little bit know a little bit more about Leanne here, and not so much about the Executive Director, but the human things like what inspires you to get up in the morning and go do your job? I mean, you've mentioned quite a few of those things. But there may be some other things we haven't talked about. So let's learn about more about you. Are you from Vernon, did you? Are you an implant? What happened? How did you get here?

Leanne Hammond 32:42
I was actually born in Burnaby. But I was adopted. So I was in Kelowna, within two weeks of being born, so boom, so I would say, I hesitate to say I was born in the Okanagan, because that would be a lie. But okay, I've been here my whole life, right. So I grew up in the Okanagan, I grew up in Kelowna, then went off to Vancouver for school. So at that point, I could do a little bit of schooling at Okanagan College, which was fantastic. But at that point, they weren't. They weren't a degree granting organization. So when I went off to school, I could do a couple years at Okanagan College, and then transfer to UBC, which was only in the Vancouver area at that time. So went off to the big city, the things that I really loved about living in a big city were the openness of people's minds, the exposure to different ideas, ways of looking at things, all of the different opportunities that a big city offers. So at that point, you know, you're young, you're in your 20's and you're just absolutely intoxicated by the big city experience.

Heath Fletcher 33:55
You're a sponge. Absolutely don't forget the food.

Leanne Hammond 33:59
And I am a foodie. So yeah, it was pretty nice, pretty nice. But then, you know, reality sinks in I did a Bachelor Degree as well as a bet Master's Degree. I did my masters in Sociology at UBC in Vancouver, and then I started thinking about putting my talents to use and where am I going to get a job? So I came back to the Okanagan, happily to take on a job with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Okanagan. Okay, we went from one organization that served one specific area to being the Central Okanagan, Big Brothers Big Sisters to being Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Okanagan. So we were Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton and Salmon Arm. And so that's where my whole kind of I think my appetite for expansion and taking on more and trying to find a more efficient, effective ways to do things was born. So loved that was there for about 10 years, the transition to the foundation is a good story. Being involved in a charity that was actively searching for funding led me to the whole community foundation thing. As a funder, I wrote grant applications to the Community Foundation's to be able to seek funding for our program, which led me to wait a minute, that's a really cool place to work, I would really like to be more big picture oriented, I would like to be involved in a in an organization that actually makes a broader difference in the community. So I got wooed away to be involved in the fundraising, and being involved in an organization that was actually supplying the resources to the charitable sector. So that's where I made my kind of change over into that world.

Heath Fletcher 35:49
Right. Interesting. You said something about fundraising, too. I don't know. Did we touch on that? Like, what do you guys actually do for fundraising?

Leanne Hammond 35:57
Okay, interesting question. Because when I started working in the charitable sector, I was more of kind of the geek that knows all of the stats and knows all of the, the background and the theoretical readings. And I said, I'm really good. I'm equipped on that side of where I'm not equipped as fundraising. And they said, First job that you need to do is make sure that you really focus in on the fundraising.

Heath Fletcher 36:19
So there was a big challenge. Yeah, right out of the gate.

Leanne Hammond 36:23
So, you know, back when I started 2025 years ago, you learned fundraising by reading books, by learning school of hard knocks, leaning on your colleagues, and there was not formal, as many formal fundraising kind of educational experiences or training. So my ability to connect with people and my lack of shyness around asking people for money, I guess.

Heath Fletcher 36:50
You can't be shy.

Leanne Hammond 36:53
So that's kind of where I lead it led me to being relatively successful in fundraising. Yeah. So I really subscribe to the belief that the best way to fundraise is to listen people into giving. So it's not asking questions about or going hard after money that you want. It's listening to where the donors interest lies, and then connecting them up with an opportunity that we know about in the community. And that works well. For me, it works well for me, right?

Heath Fletcher 37:26
I don't really recall, you don't do fundraising events or things like that. So it's a it's a different approach. It's more indirect approach.

Leanne Hammond 37:35
We don't want to be in competition with the charities that are actually out there having to hit the pavement. And you have to do that they do they have to do that all the time. So we don't want to be a competitor out there doing that. So we tend to work more with in-traffic, so donors that reach out to us who have heard about us, and who want to find a way to maybe marry up their, their local giving, as well as looking to the future and making a bigger imprint so well.

Heath Fletcher 38:04
It's not just money in money out. It's money in money grow money out.

Leanne Hammond 38:08
that's a really good way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. And when we kind of we kind of look at our staff positions that way too. Right. So I'm money in. Oh, one Yeah. L one, L two is Leanne Edwards? She's money while it's under our roof. Okay, so she's the finance person. And she's the one that manages and make sure that she's on top of where all the money is at any given time. And then Lisa is communications and has been pulled into granting in a lot of ways too. So So I would say that she's L three Yeah, L three she's kind of money out and in telling our stories.

Heath Fletcher 38:44
Yeah, like your org structure. Yeah. And it's coming clear now. Yeah, it's very simple.

Leanne Hammond 38:50
I hope to be able to hire a specific money out person right as soon as I can to really get on top of our granting programs instead of us all kind of posting out there already know I need the money. Oh, that person so if anybody wants to give me money to hire that person, I'm all over it.

Heath Fletcher 39:07
Well, there's this place called Community Futures.

Leanne Hammond 39:11
Yeah, exactly. The other cfCF The other CFNO, definitely. I will get in touch with them.

Heath Fletcher 39:22
That's funny. Okay, so you came to you got Vernon now you're in Vernon and here you are. So when you're not Leanne at the foundation, what do you like to do? What do you do here? What's your favorite places? Where do eat, what's your, what's your activity?

Leanne Hammond 39:37
Oh, I have two favorite activities. One is definitely eating and so I would say I love all the ethnic restaurants so I prefer things that can't cook at home. So anything that's Asian inspired, I love it. I'm totally into sushi. So I love going to the various different places that offer sushi. I love the fact that in Vernon and the North Okanagan, there's a lot of places that do more fusion so they take They kind of the idea of, of ethnic cuisine and then they just put their own stamp on it. Yeah. morph it Exactly. So there's that. The rest of the time. I basically like to have my butt in the water. So I float. I said, who I say who needs a boat? All I need is a floaty and tie up to a buoy and I'm happy. So, Kal Lake is my absolute favorite place to be. Yeah, that's my go to what's your favorite Kal beach? I like Cousin's Bay. Yeah, yeah. That's absolutely my favorite place to be. And we take a picnic, and we eat on the floaties or on a boat or on the beach. And yeah, Kal Lake is just absolutely incredible. It's a real gem. Who's we? My partner. So my partner Terry and I, we also love riding the Rail Trail. That's another career thing. I know, I keep steering back to my job. But we helped with the fundraising. We help with managing the money for the Rail Trail. So I get to enjoy the Rail Trail. We love riding the Rail T rail walking the Rail Trail, I would say Yeah, absolutely. Such a gem, such a gem. So yes, I have one cat and I'm allergic to him. But he adopted us. He basically hung out on our patio for eight months until I let him in. Lincoln is my cat who sleeps on me. Keeps my nose irritated at all times. Did he come with that name? No. My son picked that because he was Lincoln. Yeah. It's actually from Lincoln Park. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay, a little bit of a metal head to be perfectly honest. So yeah. So the cat and then my son and my I have a son and a daughter and my daughter has a dog named OG which is Japanese for grandpa old man. He's got really cranky eyebrows. So OG is our family dog and he's just absolutely wonderful. love him to death. So not original gangster. Yeah, but my son's into rap. So yeah. Well, yeah, so we've got we've got Lincoln Park and then we've got kind of yeah, this old gangster Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's

Heath Fletcher 42:12
Old gangster old Gangster. Yes It's a combo. Yeah. No, I like it. Any secret locations that you've discovered that no one knows about?

Leanne Hammond 42:26
It's hard to find those in the Okanagan. I mean, we're very popular now. So it's changing. But I I always say that I want to get a trailer to haul behind my bike to be able to, to float. On the Rail Trail. There's so many beautiful Yeah, nooks and crannies where the lake comes in. And it's just absolutely gorgeous. I'm ambitious.

Heath Fletcher 42:51
One of those like kid trailers where you just load.

Leanne Hammond 42:54
Load up the gear, with the floaty gear.

Heath Fletcher 42:57
Lincoln wouldn't come with you know,

Leanne Hammond 42:59
Lincoln when OG might but no, my kids are now 23 and 21. So they're kind of off doing their own life. OG is with my daughter and lives with her now. So I can I'm pretty free. My partner and I can just head off and do our own thing every weekend. Life is good.

Heath Fletcher 43:17
I'm all I'm really here. I'm a couple years behind you. But you're empty nesters.

Leanne Hammond 43:22
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. My son still lives at home. But he's gone 90% of the time, you know, at that age at that age. No. In fact, I stopped cooking a couple years ago. I look after the house. He feeds me.

Heath Fletcher 43:38
Well, thanks for being here today. I really enjoyed this chat. And is there anything you want to wrap up with anything we didn't cover? I think I have I know so much more about the foundation and how it operates. I love the money in money, grow money out money, flow, money and money, grow money flow. You better go Yeah. I love that. And thanks for sharing all your stories. And just great to have you in the community. And thanks for being on the show.

Leanne Hammond 44:07
It's my pleasure. Absolutely love being a part of this. Thanks.

Heath Fletcher 44:12
Awesome.Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.