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Vancouver Foundation becomes the first Canadian community foundation to join the Open Licensing movement

May 7, 2015

Vancouver Foundation today announced that, beginning in 2017, it will adopt an open licensing policy for projects funded through its community granting programs. The Foundation’s goal is to advance transparency and accessibility of materials to drive greater innovation and creativity in British Columbia and beyond.

May 7, 2015

Vancouver Foundation becomes the first Canadian community foundation to join the Open Licensing movement.

VANCOUVER, BC – Vancouver Foundation today announced that, beginning in 2017, it will adopt an open licensing policy for projects funded through its community granting programs. The Foundation’s goal is to advance transparency and accessibility of materials to drive greater innovation and creativity in British Columbia and beyond.
The Open Licencing Policy will require grantees to apply a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0) to projects and research funded through community advised grant programs. This policy will enable grant recipients to retain copyright over materials while, at the same time, allowing others to use and build upon the positive work created by these Vancouver Foundation grants.
Vancouver Foundation will also apply this policy to its own intellectual property, including publications and reports.
“Vancouver Foundation is excited to join a growing international movement among foundations to increase access to a wide range of content funded to create public benefits,” said Vancouver Foundation President and CEO, Kevin McCort. “We do this not only to share the products of our own community investments, but to encourage and support other foundations who want to join us.”
Throughout 2016, Vancouver Foundation will develop a framework and guidelines for the new open licensing initiative. Once complete, Creative Commons Licences will be applied to all materials produced as a direct result of community advised grant programs, including research reports, photographs, videos, data sets and learning materials. Vancouver Foundation will also apply this policy to its own intellectual property, including publications and reports.
“We believe that Community has the answers, and that adopting Creative Commons open licences will create new opportunities to access and share our collective knowledge, expertise and resources to make meaningful and lasting improvements in our communities.”
Vancouver Foundation is hopeful that the knowledge and resources it develops as a result of adopting its open licensing policy can help other foundations implement their own open licensing policy strategies.
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“With their adoption of an Open Policy, Vancouver Foundation is at the vanguard of a fundamental shift in how grantmakers build and share community knowledge,” says Ian Bird, President of Community Foundations of Canada. “Our work in catalyzing the Community Knowledge Exchange (www.ckx.org) has shown us that these fundamental shifts take courage and leadership. In that respect, we congratulate Vancouver Foundation, and look forward to working with Creative Commons, community foundations and the broader philanthropic community to promote the adoption of open policies across the Canadian philanthropic sector.”
“Creative Commons licences give everyone, from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, free way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work,” says Ryan Merkley, CEO Creative Commons.  “Vancouver Foundation joins several leading philanthropic grant making organizations who have adopted Creative Commons licensing policies for the outputs of their charitable giving, unlocking billions in resources for everything from research to digital education materials, and data.”
About Vancouver Foundation:
With over 1,600 funds and total assets of $985 million, Vancouver Foundation is Canada’s largest community foundation. In 2014, Vancouver Foundation and its donors made more than 4,900 grants, totaling approximately $57 million to registered charities across Canada. Since it was founded in 1943, Vancouver Foundation, in partnership with its donors, has distributed more than $1 billion to thousands of community projects and programs. Grant recipients range from social services to medical research groups, to organizations devoted to arts and culture, the environment, education, children and families, youth, and animal welfare.
About Community Foundations of Canada:
Community Foundations of Canada is the national network for Canada’s 191 community foundations, which help Canadians invest in building strong and resilient places to live, work, and play. To find out more visit www.communityfoundations.caAbout the Community Knowledge Exchange (CKX)
CKX is a platform for collective social change. It seeks to catalyze and curate fundamental shifts in how individuals, institutions and communities build and share community knowledge in the pursuit of social change.
About Creative Commons:
Creative Commons is a globally-focused non-profit organization dedicated to making it easier for people to share their creative works, and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Creative Commons provides free licenses and other legal tools to give individuals and organizations a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative work, ensure proper attribution, and allow others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works. There are nearly one billion licensed works, hosted on some of the most popular content platforms in the world, and over nine million individual websites.
Contacts:
Rebeccah Mullen
T. 604.688.2204
Jay Walsh
Creative Commons
Lee Rose
Director, Community Knowledge and CKX Sherpa
T. 613.262.3932

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