Message from the Chair

Though circumstances in 2009 challenged us, Vantage Point emerged in a strong position to advance our mission in 2010 and beyond.  As with the voluntary sector generally, we experienced significant decreases to our donation and sponsorship revenue this year.  With regret, we mitigated these losses by reducing staff and other expenses.  However, the organization managed to offset decreased sponsorship revenue with increases in revenue earned from delivering our programs and services.  Rather than reduce spending in those latter areas, we increased the investment in our ability to inspire and build leadership in the voluntary sector.  We now stand poised to significantly expand our ability to reach and inspire more people and organizations to mindfully engage passionate citizens.

At the end of 2009, despite incurring an operational deficit which the Board expressly authorized, we maintain a strong balance sheet with sufficient cash reserves to fund our expansion.  We continue to develop and deploy innovative products and services, and have more offerings in our development pipeline.  Most importantly, we retain a core of paid and unpaid team members who stand ready to advance our mission.

The community owes a great deal of thanks to these people who make Vantage Point's mission real. Our Executive Director, Colleen Kelly, transformed financial adversity into opportunities through her inspiration, tenacity, and creativity.  We owe our unique operational strategy to our senior leadership team, including Maria, Virginia, Shirley, and Amanda.  Our operational team: Lynda, Annastasia, Afton,  Sarah-Jane, Marife, Alvin, Allan and Olga executed our strategy brilliantly.  Our all-star paid team has modeled the best of volunteer engagement, mission alignment, customer service, and innovation - the traits that have made Vantage Point the success that it is, and will be. The community also thanks the hundreds of volunteers who have played the myriad of roles within the organizations.

I am incredibly excited about the organization's future.  We will focus our most important strategic capabilities: our people engagement model, curriculum, reputation, and technology to ignite the voluntary sector.  Each of these requires significant financial and human investment in order to benefit from their use at increasing scale and volume levels.  However, to support this strategy, we must serve markets outside Vancouver.  With this realization, we changed our name in November 2009.

Our new name represents the realization of the organization's evolution -- one that began almost a decade ago.  We are confident that Vantage Point has the relevant ideas, the sustainable model, and the right team to realize our mission and vision.  We invite all of our supporters, whether they support us with their reputation, money, or talent, to join us at Vantage Point.

Chilwin Cheng
Board Chair