Management Advisory Service, a Toronto-based charity that helps other Canadian charities with executive support services including advice on fundraising.The Canadian Press
The Donor David Ferguson
The gift: Co-founding Management Advisory Service
The reason: To help charities run better
In the early 1990s, David Ferguson and a group of other executives had been doing volunteer work with a charity called Canadian Executive Service Organization when they decided to try something new.
CESO organized executives to volunteer with small businesses and agencies around the world, but Mr. Ferguson, an investment manager, found that there were too many volunteers with not enough to do.
So together with a handful of others he launched Management Advisory Service, a Toronto-based charity that helps other Canadian charities with executive support services such as advice on fundraising, governance, strategic planning and human resources.
Today, MAS has almost 60 volunteer consultants, and last year they worked with nearly 200 organizations, large and small. Their funding comes partly from donations from their clients, if they can afford it. Some contributed less than $12 while others offered $10,000.
Mr. Ferguson died a few years ago and the organization is now led by three co-directors. "We run out of a church basement," said co-director Christine Govern, a retired CIBC vice-president who has been with MAS for 15 years.
"It's been really interesting," Ms. Govern said. "You get into neighbourhoods and you meet people that you would never meet in the normal course of your life. You just meet people trying to do really interesting things."
Paul Waldie