Hotel Philanthropia

Tucked in against the Red Deer River, cradled by the soft, sloping sides of the river’s winding valley and surrounded by the spires of pine trees, the Mountain Aire Lodge strikes the visitor to this remote location, 55 kilometres southwest of Sundre, as an outdoor enthusiast’s secret haven. These days the lodge is more than a wilderness resort, though. It has become an experiment in social entrepreneurship where success or failure is measured on multiple bottom lines. Last spring Calgary’s Mustard Seed Street Ministry (known simply as the Seed) acquired the property with a vision: to make it a place where Alberta’s urban underclass can escape the mean streets and acquire the skills to make it on their own.

Not surprisingly, the initiative struck a chord with corporate supporters big and small.

For small business owner Shane Nolan, it was identification with a problem that prompted him to donate to the Mountain Aire Lodge project. “I know what it’s like to do work manually without the aid of electric tools,” he says. Nolan, who owns YardWorx, a yard maintenance and landscaping business, had volunteered at the Seed drop-in centre in Calgary previously and through that contact had became aware of the charity’s purchase of the lodge and the initiative it represented.

“I was looking at the Mountain Aire Lodge website and browsing through their wish list and thought, hey, I’ve got something I can give.”

He donated a 60-gallon compressor for running nail guns and other impact tools used to build 10 single-room housing units to accommodate the new staff from the inner city. Donations such as Nolan’s and the sense of being able to contribute behind it are a big part of how organizations like the Seed are able to provide the services they do.

The Seed, a church-affiliated, not-for-profit organization operating a shelter for homeless people and several support programs designed to progressively assist those wishing to get off the streets, has operated in Calgary since 1984. It runs in a way corporate donors can relate to, striving for measurable results and financial self-sufficiency, governed by a board of directors and even publishing an annual report. Staffers and volunteers refer to the people who benefit from its services as “guests.” For the year ended on March 31, 2006, the Seed took in $7.7 million in donations and other revenue and declared a surplus of just over $1 million. It also reported that it had provided its guests with 457,335 meals, emergency beds for 1,756 individuals, supported housing for 360 individuals, 1,865 food hampers, 592 pairs of work boots and $649,387 worth of clothing and personal items.

But in May of last year the Seed did something that had long been a dream of its founder and executive director, Pat Nixon. Using money raised mainly through private donations, it purchased the Mountain Aire Lodge and associated businesses. Nixon’s son Jason, 26, had discovered on the Internet that the lodge was being put up for sale. Nixon gathered members of the Seed’s board to tour the site and began negotiations. The property, then held by an owner-operator from Calgary, was listed for $1.3 million but the charity managed to get it for $1 million.

The plan was to use the lodge as the next step in a series of services and programs offered by the Seed to former street people. Residents of its downtown shelter would now have an opportunity to get away from the city, earn a modest wage ($1,000 to $1,600 a month plus room and board) and gain, or relearn, skills that would make them more employable.

“In Calgary we run an education program, an employment program,” says Nixon. “But one of the issues that we have is the environment of the city is sometimes very negative for some of our folks who are doing so well.” Nixon felt that if he could just remove these “guests” from the city’s temptations and trapdoors, they would progress much more quickly.

Under the banner the Community of Change Project, the lodge became a focus of the Seed’s future. The 12-hectare property came with a restaurant, gas station, log-cutting operations, motel and campground, along with management contracts for five provincial campgrounds in the area. Most of the facilities came in need of upgrades and repairs, but from the perspective of the organization’s broader vision it all seemed tailor-made for providing the social interaction needed to build up weak self-esteems as well as offer opportunities to learn marketable skills.

“I’ve always talked about this need to get people out of the city environment. It worked for me and I believed it would work for others,” says Nixon.

At the age of 12, Nixon had been kicked out of his home in the British Columbia interior. He was placed on a bus to Calgary after he was discovered passed out on a park bench outside of Kamloops. He survived the streets of the Alberta city by panhandling and it was this way, at the age of 15, he met four volunteers from the First Baptist Church’s youth ministry, the Burning Bush Coffeehouse, walking along the Plus 15 walkway between Palliser Square and the Glenbow Museum.

Instead of money, Nixon was offered food and shelter. He accepted both but was soon back on the streets after he abused the offered hospitality. By the time he was 16 he was arrested for attempted armed robbery. A lenient judge put him back on the street under a probation order, which he breached soon after. Nixon was arrested again under charges of breaking and entering and automobile theft.

This time he was sent to jail, first in the Calgary Correctional Centre, known as Spy Hill, then later at a minimum-security prison in Nordegg. At the time he was unaware of how this experience would shape his life. The experience of work in the bush – cleaning campgrounds, clearing brush – and participating in adventure training such as backpacking and whitewater rafting turned his life around and formed the basis from which the idea of the Mountain Aire Lodge purchase would surface years later.

“I was a pretty rough-around-the-edges kid who learned how to work consistently,” Nixon recalls. The strict routine provided his life with structure, something he would later use to assist others in climbing out of the street life. “I learned how to get up in the morning, eat three meals a day, and how to live in a social environment. I believe I went in there very much a boy and came out being more of an adult.”

After his release in November 1978, Nixon returned to the Burning Bush and those who had tried to help him before. That decision put him back on a path that resulted in the transformation of the coffee house into a multi-level service organization that would eventually become the Seed.

Along the way, Nixon and his team networked with the business community, building relationships with over 3,000 businesses and 600 churches which not only provide funding but volunteers. Layers of programming offer different levels of participation making it easy for individuals as well as large corporations to choose how and when they wish to participate. Wish lists are mailed out in monthly newsletters or updated on the website.

“Pat spent a lot of time in the early years doing that sort of thing. We still do,” says Del Bannerman, the Seed’s development officer. Word of mouth has been the organization’s chief marketing tool.

“Our volunteer base has been growing for years because of the fact that we do so much public education in the city, and we have our meal groups,” Bannerman says. By that, she means groups of 12 to 15 volunteers that help serve meals at the Centre Street location each day. “So you get people down here every day from businesses, churches or community clubs and the word is going to spread.”

As part of its outreach to businesses and other donors, the Seed maintains an open-door policy and actively encourages visitors to check out its operations, including the Mountain Aire Lodge, which is being run by Jason Nixon and his wife, Tiffany. “We encourage people when the weather gets better to take a drive out there to see what’s going on, or call us,” says Bannerman. She adds that plans are in the works to organize a group tour of the facilities. “If we get a bunch of people we’ll take them all out and give them a meal and show them what’s going on and have one of us or Pat share the story of why this is such a great thing.”

At the same time as the Seed has been able to broaden the culture of giving among companies and the general population, the notion of corporate social responsibility has matured. “People are taking their responsibility perhaps more intentionally than they ever did [before],” Bannerman says. Instead of one-off donations, corporations increasingly prefer to give so much per year for three or more years, in such a way that it’s built into their budgets. That suits the Seed just fine. But companies, especially small businesses with tight margins, are finding other ways to contribute than with a cheque, too.

oth Margaret Hubarewich and her daughter Jessica Fearey had volunteered previously at the Seed through the companies they worked for prior to opening their own business, a children’s party service called Annabell’s Attic. Now in their second year as entrepreneurs, they plan on building their own culture of giving. During the month of December they gathered warm clothing and other items from clients for distribution fromthe Seed’s downtown location. They also made a cash donation.

“This is the first year that Annabell’s Attic has participated with the Seed but the way I see it this is the first year of many years,” says Hubarewich.

At the other end of the corporate spectrum, the Seed’s supporters also include oilpatch giants Suncor Energy, EnCana Corporation, TransCanada Corp. and BP Canada. Coral Hulse, senior communications adviser with Suncor, says involvement in the community in which employees live is important. “We have so many employees that give and volunteer in their communities. There’s a lot of pride in our community grant program.”

Suncor Energy is a member of the philanthropic coalition Imagine Canada and has set aside 1% of its average domestic pre-tax profits for charitable initiatives such as matching grants for employee donations to eligible charities.

Rod Garossino, community investment adviser for EnCana Corporation, says his company also uses the Imagine Canada formula for its community investment budget.

“EnCana’s matching gift program is designed to support the philanthropic activity of our employees.” Through an employee charitable foundation, EnCana Cares, the oil and gas company supports the personal giving choices of employees. The program “provides a dollar-for-dollar match of their contributions to charitable organizations up to $25,000 per participant per year,” says Garossino.

Over the past two years, he says, EnCana has contributed more than $300,000 to the Seed through this employee program. Such support is greatly needed by organizations such as the Seed.

“Eighty per cent of our income needs to come through the door between November and December,” says Nixon in an all-too-brief interlude from managing the Seed’s various initiatives during the run-up to Christmas. “We are attempting to start a 300-bed crisis housing unit at The Brick and at the same time maintain a winter shelter for 200-plus men at the Stampede grounds.”

On December 7, the fifth annual Seed Shine-a-thon, broadcast on 88.9 Shine FM, raised a much-needed $451,824, in large part thanks to a $100,000 challenge from retired oilman Fran Lafaivre to see matching donations from the petroleum industry.

Support from businesses allow the Seed to provide the services people living on the streets need to survive, and when they are ready, to become contributing members of the community, rather than dependents or marginalized. The process is not an easy or a short one and this is one of the hardest concepts to get across to potential donors who are unfamiliar with some of the reasons behind the issue of homelessness.

“Some people don’t understand,” says Nixon, who became a member of the Order of Canada in 2005. “They come into a street environment and they go, ‘Why aren’t all these people working? How many hundreds of people have you got around this place? How come they’re not all working?’”

Nixon says that when he invites the complainers to actually point out whom they would pick from the crowds to work in their business the truth becomes obvious. “There’s this concept that everybody you see has your own ability and skill. We measure people by ourselves. We’re not measuring them by their circumstances.” When people have been through major addictions or abuse, and are down that hole so far, he says, it becomes difficult to climb out.

“What the Seed does through a series of progressive programs is provide people with those foot holds to get back up there again.” The Mountain Aire Lodge is just another foothold, a way to bridge that employability gap between the street and the for-profit economy.

“We know people are going to fail here. We know people are going to stumble here. We’re willing to build something where they safely take those risks. At the end of the day when they make a mistake we’re not going to say, ‘Get out of here, you bum!’ We’re going to say, ‘What’s it going to take [for you] to stand back up again?’”

Nixon believes the majority of the people on the street can indeed stand back up and the Seed’s programs have been created to provide the assistance they need.

And according to Nixon, the Community of Change project has so far met its objectives on the financial balance sheet as well. “Since we took ownership in May we have not had to subsidize any operations,” he says. “The income generated through the businesses has covered the cost of running the businesses, including all staff salaries.”

The support and patronage of outside businesses has no doubt helped. Oil and gas companies working in the area, for example, represent an important customer base for the lodge’s operations. Flint Energy contracted with the lodge to help chain up its trucks as they head into the area’s steep, often snow-covered roads. Meanwhile Suncor made the lodge a radio-phone pick-up point for its crews, in return providing Mountain Aire with radios for its own use. Factoring in tourist traffic in the summer and hunters in the fall, the revamped lodge is now as busy as it can reasonably deal with.

On a tour of the property, Bannerman describes how the employment program can contribute to a former street person’s healing process, but the sentiment could just as easily apply to those who offer to help: “They may come and go but they realize that they’ve been part of something bigger than themselves.”

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