Moffats donate $100M for kids

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2001 (8882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Moffats said thank you to Winnipeg yesterday with an unprecedented $100-million donation to help underprivileged children.

Saying they wanted to give back to the community, the family behind Moffat Communications established a fund that will perpetually help children overcome bad breaks in life.

“Our family has always been distressed by the statistic that so many children live below the poverty line,” Randy Moffat said, after having his picture taken with much of his family, including month-old grandson Tristan. “Our interest was in turning around the lives of others who haven’t had the good fortune and privilege my family has enjoyed.”

The donation, to be administered by the Winnipeg Foundation, is the largest ever made to a community foundation in Canada. It’s one of the largest single donations ever made to a philanthropic organization in Canada, including universities and hospitals.

And the giving may not stop.

“I don’t see this as an end,” Moffat said of the gift. “We haven’t talked about this as the only thing we would do.”

The amount drew gasps from the crowd gathered to hear yesterday morning’s announcement.

“Take out your thesaurus and pull out all the superlatives,” Premier Gary Doer said afterwards.

To put it in perspective, the chairman of the Winnipeg Foundation, Chief Justice Richard Scott, said the $100 million equals all the money contributed to the foundation since it began 80 years ago and the total of all the grants given out during that time.

“Its scale is hard to comprehend,” he said.

The money will create the Moffat Family Fund, which the Winnipeg Foundation will administer. By 2004, it will hand out $6.5 million a year to organizations and programs that support the fund’s goal of making a lasting difference by advancing the social, physical and intellectual well-being of children and their families.

“I think it’s amazing,” said Sister Bernadette O’Reilly, co-director of Rossbrook House, which often receives grants from the Winnipeg Foundation. “The children have limitless possibilities. The only thing that limits us is our resources.

“I think this grant allows all our organizations in the inner city to dream a little bit. I think it’s wonderful we can dream and encourage the kids to dream.”

Eighty per cent of the annual amount, or about $5.2 million, will stay in Winnipeg. The rest will be dispersed in other communities where the Moffat Communications radio and television empire did business, including Thompson, The Pas, Flin Flon, Dryden, Fort Frances, Hamilton, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Prince Albert and Moose Jaw.

Moffat said the gift was also from those who worked for Moffat Communications during its 51 years in business.

“Their hard work made this possible,” he said.

The Moffat family will have a hand in deciding who gets the money. They want to direct it to innovative and longer-term projects.

“A lot of institutions come to us with exciting new concepts and ideas,” Scott said.

Moffat said his family began discussing what good they could do after the sale of the family business netted them more than $700 million last winter. They sold Moffat Communications, which included Videon, CKY and WTN, to Shaw Communications.

“After the sale, we talked about it right away,” Moffat’s son Craig said. “It was very clear we wanted to give something back, a meaningful amount of money back.

“Our company was part of the community for 50 years. We wanted to start something else that could be part of the community for another 50 years.”

The fund is set up to run in perpetuity.

The Moffat family includes Randy Moffat, his partner Laurie Stovel, son Craig Moffat and his two children Jack, 8, and Tessa, 5, daughter Christine Moffat and partner Larry Smythe and their month-old son Tristan, and daughter Pamela Moffat and partner Shaheen Shojania and their seven-month-old son Evan. As well, Randy Moffat’s sister, Donna Moffat, was involved in the decision. Most of the family was there yesterday.

The family went to the Winnipeg Foundation in April to begin discussions on how their goal could be achieved. Randy Moffat said they chose to work through the Winnipeg Foundation because of its reputation.

“We chose the Winnipeg Foundation because of its recognized expertise in management and thoughtful allocation process,” he said. Two additional people will be hired by the foundation to deal with the fund.

In 1921, William Alloway, founder of the Bank of Alloway and Champion and one of Winnipeg’s first millionaires, established the foundation with $100,000.

Doer said the Moffat money means “results for thousands of kids and families for years to come — a lot of people today and a lot of people tomorrow.”

“This puts rocket fuel into the system,” Mayor Glen Murray said of the donation.

kim.guttormson@freepress.mb.ca