The Mission Statement is ''to harness the gifts of energy, ideas, time, and money to make meaningful and lasting impacts in communities.''
Vancouver Foundation was founded in 1943[1] by Alice MacKay who had saved $1,000 from her secretarial job and wanted to help homeless women trapped in a cycle of poverty.
[3] While it is named after Vancouver, the mandate of the organization is broader, with about 70 percent of grant amounts received within the Lower Mainland region with the remainder in other parts of the province of British Columbia.
[4] 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.
[1] By 2017, the foundation's grant recipients will be required to release their work under Creative Commons licence, which permits anyone to use the product freely without copyright limitations.