Finding the nurturer's perfect niche

Father's influence lays the path

Kitchissippi Times
Thursday, July 19, 2007

Page 1

By Anne Duggan

Photo by Bruce Deachman

Posted with permission from the Kitchissippi Times.

For Barbara McInnes, chief executive officer of the Community Foundation of Ottawa (CFO), the  boundaries between volunteer and paid positions and between professional and family relationships blur just enough to create nirvana.

“Once I felt the freedom to have a career, I never thought that a volunteer position would lead to my perfect  job,” the Piccadilly Avenue resident explains.

Ms. McInnes is a nurturer of home, garden, family and her community. In her bloom-studded backyard, she passionately explains the foundation’s role in maintaining the health of her city. “The CFO,” she says, “attracts and manages charitable gifts for the benefit of the community – anything that enhances the quality of life.”

The foundation currently has $96 million in investments, and the resulting earnings are annually distributed to the community in the form of grants.

Last year, it dispersed a total of $5 million through 715 grants intended to improve all aspects of life in Ottawa. “It’s that whole gambit of things that make a healthy, vibrant community. Our’s is the seed money – the risk capital for something to test itself out. Then once it’s tried, they can go to Trillium and then their grant will be much bigger.”

Ms. McInnes’ mission and that of the CFO began in early 1980s, when her late father, also a Kitchissippi resident and newly installed executive director at the United Way, made a pioneering decision. “A cheque came across his desk and he wondered what to do with it. He said it was a very special kind of gift – the last one (a bequest) this donor will ever make. ‘We should reinvest it,’ he decided. By the time he left the United Way, the fund amounted to $500,000. At that point, it was turned into a community foundation,” she remembers.

After graduating from Carleton with a degree in philosophy (she liked the way the discipline taught her to think), she went on to earn all of the credits necessary for an MA in philosophy. She ended her education before writing her thesis because, “I wanted to broaden my education rather than narrowing my focus.” Over the years, she raised two children with husband Glenn and worked as a publisher’s representative for university and medical textbooks because she could control her hours and continue to fulfill family and community commitments. “It was a great job because my territory was Carleton, the University of Ottawa and Algonquin. It also allowed for volunteering with Politics and the Pen, Ottawa School of Art and the United Way.”

According to Ms. McInnes, the CFO’s usefulness will increase in the future because of the huge infrastructural financial burden facing the City of Ottawa. “It’s everything. It’s the cost of services that we’ve come to expect. It’s the type of problem that doesn’t lend itself to easy solutions. We can’t expect city councilors to solve this. We all need to make these tough decisions.”

The pleasures of Ms. McInnes’ ideal job is augmented by passionate colleagues and a compelling mission. But there’s also the weight of duty.

“The toughest thing about my job is our increasingly complex society. I worry about some of the issues. I feel a sense of responsibility.”