Victoria Foundation Response to COVID-19

Posted on March 17, 2020 in General

March 17, 2020

With the declaration of a COVID-19 pandemic, the Victoria Foundation would like to assure our donors, grantees and other partners that we are committed to doing our best to provide ongoing support and services during this difficult time. We care deeply about our community and take the evolving and global nature of the coronavirus very seriously.

We are closely monitoring the advice of Canada’s Public Health Services, the BC Ministry of Health, and Island Health to understand the developing situation and share this information with our staff.

How we are helping support our community

We understand that we have a leadership role in the community, and that our continued ability to do our work is important to those that we serve. We have taken steps to mitigate the risk of business interruption, ensuring technology and other solutions are in place to enable us to work with little to no disruption to service.

Effective Wednesday, March 18, our office will be closed to the public, although our staff will continue to work remotely. Since there is no vaccine for COVID-19, social distancing by avoiding gatherings of people is important. That said, collaboration is an essential part of the Victoria Foundation’s culture, and our employees are leveraging technology as an alternative to meeting in-person.

How we are supporting our Grantee Partners

We recognize the current situation is challenging for our grantees as they are often on the front line in our community, serving critical needs, often to those most vulnerable.

To assist organizations in this time, we have put the following measures in place:

  • To ensure that the most vulnerable in our community are not more severely impacted, grant payments will continue, even if reports are delayed. We encourage grant recipients to continue to submit reports where possible, but will work with those that are unable to, including extending deadlines as appropriate.
  • We recognize that the activities of some grantee organizations may be disrupted and are supporting alternatives where conditions do not allow for planned grant activities or events to happen as scheduled.
  • We are expanding our direct deposit functionality to as many grantees as possible to expedite grant disbursements and avoid possible delays.
  • We are encouraging everyone in our community to consider supporting those in need at this time and continuing to assist our fundholders in making grants to support the causes that are important to them.

Victoria Foundation Events

We have taken steps to postpone or cancel near-term gatherings and curtail our participation in external events for the foreseeable time. Further out, we will be assessing additional planned events and communicating with those involved as the situation develops.

More information

We want to thank everyone who is doing what they can to help with this unprecedented situation, especially our healthcare workers and others serving those in need. Over the coming weeks, it is important that we all look out for one another and do our best to support ourselves, our partners and our community.

We will look to determine if there is additional support we can provide and communicate further as the situation warrants. For more information from the Victoria Foundation on this evolving situation, please monitor our website, www.victoriafoundation.ca, for further postings or news releases. For any other enquiries, please contact us via email whenever possible (contact list here) or call us at 250.381.5532.