In his office on rue Berri, the director of Duty, Brian Myles, has a few artifacts that hold pieces of history. He shows off an old metal seal. “Here is the most distant trace that indicates that philanthropy has always been part of our history,” says Mr. Myles, who disclosed with poorly concealed joy last week the new status of the Duty of qualified donee. “This seal of the Friends of the Foundation Duty dates back to 1916, six years after our founding. We have always had a foot in this tradition of philanthropy, at all times. But now we can say we have both feet in it. »
We have just announced that the Canada Revenue Agency has agreed to grant us Registered Journalism Organization (RJO) status, which will now allow us to issue receipts for tax purposes to our donors, whoever they are. be. Obtaining this new status completes nearly four years of relentless efforts, which led to a change in the company’s structure, so that it could comply with the criteria of the program established by the federal government in 2018. -2019.
For the chairman of the board of directors of Duty,Me André Ryan, associate lawyer at BCF, this “journey full of challenges and pitfalls” is closely linked to the company’s desire to safeguard its finances. “We do this first and foremost to maintain what we have achieved and to ensure that we do not lose anything that makes up our identity: continuing to develop, to innovate, while preserving our original content and our independence. »
All professionals and actors of the Duty who took part in the OJE adventure speak of it as quite an adventure, because it was literally necessary to change the structure of the company to respect the criteria set by the Revenue Agency. The National firm supported The duty as a federal government lobbyist, strategic advisor and public relations officer. “Throughout this mandate, beyond the need to convince our interlocutors, we also had to popularize what was The duty, its operation, its mandate,” explains Sabrina Duguay, vice-president of the Montreal office of National, who notably played the role of strategic advisor to Brian Myles. “For Brian and I, it was clear quite early in the process that we had to grant interviews, take a position in the public space, popularize and refocus the message. »
Marc Desmarais, vice-president at National and a recognized lobbyist in Ottawa, focused on the behind-the-scenes negotiations. “The first meetings took place in 2019, and the idea was to introduce The duty in the federal government by working with civil servants, but also politicians. »
The BCF Business Lawyers firm was tasked with imagining the legal and entrepreneurial structure that could meet the requirements of the federal program. “The criteria were quite simple after all,” relates Me Marc-André Godard, lawyer at BCF who, with his colleague Alex Côté-Thivierge and the team of Duty, had the creative genius to transform the media’s ownership structure. “First of all, the organization’s only activities had to be journalistic. And then the organization had to be unable to distribute its profits to its shareholders. »
The duty was designed so that shareholders could, in theory, receive dividends. They all willingly agreed to become lenders instead, thus forgoing any profit. “Brian and André took out their pilgrim’s staff to convince the shareholders,” says Me Godard. “It took about five and a quarter minutes to convince them to become lenders and waive the dividend clause,” reports Brian Myles. For them, it was obvious. This is what I call the commitment of heart and reason to the Duty. »
For the director, this new status will move our media from a transactional relationship with its donors to a relational link. “Our first fundraising campaigns of the modern era were focused on specific needs, specific issues. Today, we are able to imagine philanthropy as a long-term and recurring income, a bit like subscriptions, two incomes that will evolve hand in hand. […] We will have to listen and listen to what donors are ready to do, and evolve with them towards a new future, always respecting editorial and editorial independence. We will have to open up an intersection between our concerns and those of donors. »
André Ryan and Brian Myles both talk about protecting the independence of Duty as an essential ingredient of this new paradigm in which we are embarking. They cite as an example the fabulous adventure that our editorial staff enjoyed with the Transat– International Journalism Fund.The duty and which enabled several reporters to produce 500 reports in five years from their visits to nations on five continents. “Even before the idea of an OJE qualification, Transat, thanks to the initiative of its founding president, Jean-Marc Eustache, had donated $100,000 per year for five years to Duty so that we do international journalism, without conditions, not even that of traveling on the Transat routes, no right to review the countries we visit or the themes we cover, with total editorial independence. I see plenty of projects of this type for our future, and that’s what I call a change towards relationships with our community,” says Mr. Myles.
If the status of qualified donee will allow a return on investment for all those who wish to demonstrate their attachment to the Duty in the form of a donation, it is part of an imposing modernization of the structures begun in 2017 and of which the chairman of the board and the director are particularly proud. “We recapitalized,” says André Ryan. We privatized. We rewrote the trust. And we finally obtained OJE status. We gave to Duty the bases and foundations to keep it alive for a long time, in continuity with what had been done before. […] All because we can’t just stay who we are. We are condemned to constantly evolve and change. And that takes resources. With this status, we will be able to accomplish this without distorting ourselves. »