Shevchenko Foundation offers its expertise to other groups (12/16/01)

Shevchenko Foundation offers its expertise to other groups

Ukrainian News

WINNIPEG - The Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko is offering other Ukrainian foundations a chance to share in its expertise in fund management in order to get greater returns on their investments.

Speaking on October 5 at the 20th Congress of Ukrainian Canadians in Winnipeg, Andrew Hladyshevsky, president of the Shevchenko Foundation, said that under the Managed Fund program, funds are pooled with foundation resources for the purposes of investment. This gives organizations with limited resources the opportunity to invest at a fraction of the cost and realize a greater return that would otherwise have been possible.

"Does your foundation or organization have a building fund managed by a volunteer?" he queried.

"Are your foundation monies under amateur or professional management? Are you getting a high return for you money or are you losing interest because you don't have the time or the expertise to get preferred rates?"

"Let the Shevchenko Foundation help you manage your community funds to earn a higher return through its investment management team," he said.

Mr. Hladyshevsky added that an organization can enter into a legal contract with the Shevchenko Foundation ensuring that only that organization will receive the revenue from the fund and it may withdraw its funds at any time.

Mr. Hladyshevsky later told Ukrainian News that the Ukrainian community has a wealth of funds in many foundations, "however, many of those foundations are not professionally managed.

The purpose of the program is to allow other Ukrainian foundations to have access to the kind of professional management advice that the Shevchenko Foundation has had over the past eight years.

Mr. Hladyshevsky also said the community should increase its endowments to increase its influence with various levels of government. "I have had one-on-one communication with both federal and provincial ministers who have pointed out that, despite the size of the Ukrainian community, its ability to influence government has been largely diminished by its inability to get its message across," he explained.

He said that those same ministers pointed out that other communities that have lobbied have done it on a systematic basis and have pointed out that those communities have endowments that have allowed them to put forward their cultural and political agendas at a higher level. The question often arises whether this is because the community does not want to support itself in order to raise its profile on a national basis.

Thus, the way to increase or restore our community's clout is to use endowments and foundations "to put forward the Canadian presence within our community and to show that Canada without Ukrainians doesn't exist," Mr. Hladyshevsky stated.

Some examples of how endowment money could be used is to send every parliamentarian on the federal and provincial levels copies of the videos "Harvest of Despair" and "Freedom had a Price," the book "Searching for Place" and other information packages, Mr. Hladyshevsky said.

The reports on pages 8 and 9 about the Ukrainian Canadian Congress are reprinted with permission from Ukrainian News, an Edmonton-based newspaper serving the Ukrainian Canadian community.

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