Another year has come and gone, and many Canadians – prompted by the prevailing spirit of goodwill, and maybe a wheedling letter from their favourite charity – have made the year-end donations that lend support to others and their own sense of moral well-being.
It’s the right thing to do, after all, something Sylvia Bosa learned early on from her father, Robert Bosa, who would post pictures of the children he sponsored through Plan Canada on his office wall. The photos were a reminder that not everyone had it so good in the world, and while the poster kids of today experience hardships visible in the stream of news feeds on our walls of social media, the gap between the haves and have-nots remains.
“There are some really horrible things going on out there,” Bosa said. “Giving back makes me feel like I’m making a change so those things don’t seem so far out of reach that you can’t do anything about it.”
Bosa has applied the lessons learned at home to the family’s development business, overseeing the work of the Bosa Properties and BlueSky Properties charitable foundations, which receive $1,000 from every unit sold by the development firms of the same names headed by her brothers Colin and Dale. (Both companies are subsidiaries of their father’s company, Bosa Ventures Inc.)
The foundations, established in 2012, formalized the company’s practice of ad hoc philanthropy, channelling the family’s desire to give for maximum effect in the community.
“We were always giving back; this just gives us a focus area and allows us to give back in a way that we’ll actually see measurable changes and impact and we can actually track what’s going on,” Bosa explained.
The foundations have collected more than $660,000 in the past three years, establishing a pool of money that allows Bosa to focus not on how much to give, but on where to give.
Often, the local school district is a first point of contact, not only because the family feels that helping children is the best way to make a fundamental difference in the future, but also because schools typically witness how private problems play out in the education of a community’s youngest members.
“It could be literacy – our kids are not ready in Grade 1, so we need literacy,” Bosa said.
“Or it could be we are seeing an epidemic of anxiety and mental illness with children, and what do we do about that?”
To solve the issues, Bosa works with community organizations to determine the needs of an area.
“When you go into a community you want to have an asset map – what does the community have to offer, what are the services, and what are the strengths that we can draw upon before we just write the cheque?” she said. “Sometimes people will come to us and ask for a cheque, and then once we pair them with an organization that offers a service, the amount they need decreases.”
“It’s a lot of reading and research just to understand the directions to take,” she said. “I do a lot of site visits as well because it gives me a handle on what people are doing.”
The research supports programs including Clubhouse 36 in Surrey, an initiative of the local school district that introduces disadvantaged kids to new adventures, as well as school breakfast and lunch programs. Can You Dig It, an initiative of the PosAbilities employment service that aims to reduce social isolation through community gardening, broadens its impact by supplying fresh produce to Quest Food Exchange in Surrey.
Born in 1972, Bosa didn’t originally see a long-term place for herself in the family company. She worked in the family’s accounts payable department as a teenager but studied home economics at the University of British Columbia, majoring in textiles and design, and entered the fashion business.
A marriage was followed by two children; she stayed home to care for them and began volunteering in their schools, in roles ranging from assisting in the classroom to sitting on gala committees. Connecting with people and learning how organizations worked appealed to her, and she began wondering whether Bosa Ventures – in which she remains a shareholder – could extend its charitable range.
Bosa returned to the family company at the age of 40 to oversee the two foundations (her compensation is through Bosa Ventures, ensuring that foundation funds flow almost exclusively to community initiatives).
Her background prepared her surprisingly well for the role.
“There was a lot of sociology in the background [to textiles and design],” she said. “And what I do now is really understanding the sociology of a community, really understanding the systems.”
Bosa takes lifelong inspiration from her aunt, who spent six decades caring for others as a member of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family religious order.
“She was a role model to most of our family,” she said. “She was the female embodiment of her brothers. … She ran the convent like a business … [and] as a child I admired her independence and sense of joy. She worked with others by helping them find a sense of purpose and always being respectful and treating others with dignity.”
John Bromley, founder and CEO of Chimp Technology Inc. in Vancouver, met Bosa last summer and was impressed at her grasp of the charitable sector. She was keen to experiment, using Chimp’s donation management platform to give purchasers in a Bosa condo development a say where foundation funds went.
“Oftentimes when I deal with larger organizations, you get into a pattern where people love to talk about new ideas; they love to talk about innovation and being cool and entrepreneurial, but no one ever is,” he said. “I found that to be the complete opposite with Sylvia. … She committed to something, and did it.”
And she intends to keep doing it, building the foundations into resources for others.
“The giving back will not stop,” she said. “It’s part of the culture of our family, which is part of the culture of the company.”
