The Legacy of Collaboration

In the late 90’s my husband, Dan, and I were founders of a Community Foundation on San Juan Island, WA. With seed funding from a generous donor with a long view, and guidance from the Seattle Community Foundation, we established the foundation in part because in a community of 8,000 citizens, we had 80 nonprofits—1 for every 100 residents. There was a lot of redundancy, with multiple nonprofits serving overlapping needs and all competing for limited funds. The effect was to make the island tribal, rather than collective. We started the foundation to strive to look at the island as a whole and to use our resources to meet all our needs. 

Then we took another step. To encourage nonprofit collaboration, we announced that grant requests submitted by organizations in partnership would get preferential consideration. Very quickly the University of Washington Oceanic Labs and the Elementary School came together and requested funding to build a saltwater aquarium for the school lobby, which would be stocked with live specimens and allow the scientists to come to the school to teach these young students about ocean life. The benefits of working together began to take hold and soon we had more collaborative grants, as well as nonprofit mergers and partnerships island wide.

In 2001, Dan and I moved to Austin, but a few years later we went back to the island for a visit and attended the Community Foundation’s ‘Breakfast of Champions’, an annual event. Invitees were the grant funders and recipients from the previous year and stories were shared about all that had been accomplished. It was clear that collaboration and unity had taken root and the whole island was represented in that room. In closing, the Foundation Chair made a surprise announcement. A single, childless and reclusive donor had left as his legacy an endowment fund that would make it possible for island high school graduates to go on to college, debt free. 

On our last visit to the island, we took a tour of the new Peace Hospital, a much needed addition to island life. It had been built with a successful capital campaign by the Foundation, coupled with a bond election. Taking it further, every artist on the island had donated a piece of original work to the hospital. The grounds had gardens with hand-crafted benches. There were fountains, inside and out. And each patient room had a piece of original art on the wall. We stood in the lobby art gallery in tears, overcome by the realization that we had been part of the very first steps that led to this wonderful place. Our beloved island was a more collaborative, and now safer, place to live. And this was, in a small part, our legacy.