Making Barrie a Strong and Resilient Place to Live Work and Enjoy by Building Permanent Legacies
Our Executive Director
SARAH INGRAM
Sarah joined the Barrie Community Foundation as Executive Director in February 2020. After a lengthy career in the local philanthropic sector, Barrie Community Foundation was a wonderful place for her to use her skills to benefit Barrie and area. Her focus was to foster connections and be a vocal advocate in the local donor and charitable network – to strengthen philanthropy’s impact by bringing both together for the benefit of our community.
‘My history with Barrie Community Foundation has a long memory. I was Chair of the Barrie Public Library Board in 2006 when some of the original funds were created in support of the Library. It’s wonderful to come full circle to take this role with Barrie Community Foundation.’
Sarah lives in Barrie with her husband, two boys, and their dog.
Our Foundation
The Barrie Community Foundation is a member of the Community Foundations of Canada. We are a part of the Canadian movement for community vitality, by helping the community to invest in building strong and resilient places to live, work, and enjoy.
The Barrie Community Foundation is a public foundation that builds and manages endowment funds to support charitable activities in Barrie and area. A donation, large or small, will make a difference, now and forever.
Our Vision
To help create a better community for us all, today – tomorrow – forever.
Our Mission
To enhance the quality of our lives by enabling all of us, individual and corporate citizens, to give back to our community by building permanent legacies.
Our Role
- Provide a vehicle for donors to make and direct their charitable donations in perpetuity
- Match donors’ charitable interests with the needs of the community
- Provide donors with a flexible range of giving and disbursement options
- Build and manage permanent capital funds
- Use the earnings of the capital funds to support a wide range of community needs.
What We Do
- We provide a means of keeping charitable donations within the community
- We are not in competition with other charitable organizations; we support them
- We create an endowment fund from which only the earnings are disbursed every year
- The endowments we manage for donors allow them to provide continuous gifts
Helping Charities Grow
The Barrie Community Foundation exists to support other charities whose work helps make Barrie and area a better place to live.
Charitable organizations may establish permanently endowed funds to provide a source of annual income for operations or programs. These funds are held and invested by the Foundation and grants are made to the organizations on an annual basis. Your charity’s funds, when pooled with those of other organizations and individual donors enable the entire fund to generate more income at less cost.
Why Use the Barrie Community Foundation, Rather Than Doing it Yourself?
Organizations recognize the skill, expertise and resource requirement to manage a permanent endowment. Since Barrie Community Foundation is in the full-time business of building a permanent endowment for the community, it has, or will have, the necessary resources in place. These include:
- An investment policy that restricts investments to those which are prudent and fiscally safe.
- Recent amendments to the Trustee Act (Ontario) have presented substantial change in law with respect to trustees’ authority to invest trust assets and the trustees’ fiduciary responsibilities. More and more boards recognize the significance of these obligations and are turning to their local Community Foundation as an alternative. The ability to establish a fund with the Community Foundation and achieve a greater return on investment over time due to the diversification and size of the portfolio has impressed many boards.
- Both boards and staff of charities are relieved to focus solely on building and strengthening their core business and to let the Barrie Community Foundation administer their endowment.
- Cost efficiencies are achieved by having all funds at the Barrie Community Foundation share in the cost of an investment counsel, custodian, lawyers, auditors, staff expertise and general overhead.
- Each year, income earned on your organization’s fund is available to be used by your charity as it determines or is reinvested in the capital.
- The Foundation has the technical expertise and the facility to accept gifts in a timely, cost effective manner on behalf of the agency, e.g. transfer of shares etc.
- Because the fund is held as a fund of the Barrie Community Foundation , it will be publicized in the Barrie Community Foundation materials and could attract new donors.
