Bruce Nicol, president of the Wesley M. Nicol Foundation, has been a generous supporter of the Community Ministries for some time and a participant at fundraising events, but this year he stepped up even further with an offer to match donations dollar for dollar.
“It’s just a really effective way to leverage donations. It’s worked with other charities,” he said, in an interview with Crosstalk.
He added that the foundation, started by his father, has done most of its granting anonymously, but Nicol he also finds there is more impact in a case like this when the donor is identified.
“I run a charitable foundation. It’s my job to go and do the due diligence on the charities and see how effective they are and how responsible they are with the funds, so I can say to another donor, I’ve done the homework, you don’t have to do the homework. This is a charity that works.”
Nicol said he was aware of the community ministries as an Anglican church-goer, but when he began running his father’s foundation he “had to do his homework,” and began going out and meeting and exploring charities that he thought fit into the foundation’s mandate very well. That included meeting with the Rev. Dr. Peter John Hobbs, director general of the Community Ministries and visiting some of the agencies. “I was just so impressed with the work the ministries do. It is such frontline work.”
The foundation was created by his father, Wesley M. Nicol. Bruce Nicol says that as his father neared the end of his life, he told his son that one of the things he wanted to do was to support, as he termed it at the time, “the disadvantaged” in Ottawa.” The term disadvantaged may be archaic now, Nicol acknowledges, but said his father might have been said to have grown up somewhat disadvantaged himself in the Vanier area of the city during the Depression before his successful business career. “He certainly felt himself fortunate. He worked hard, sure, but … he never really forgot his origins and always had time for people who were struggling,” said Nicol.
St. John, Antrim — Deanery of the Southwest