Risk & Business Magazine Cooke Insurance Group Fall 2015 | Page 19

What is Altruvest and how did you get involved?
Another one of the life planning processes I suggest
is making a list of everything you would want to do
before you pass on. There is also a subsection to that of
making a list of things that you want to look back on in
your life and see that you’ve accomplished as you lie on
your deathbed. The question would be, “If I were to lie
on my deathbed, I’m going to look back and see…”
A goal of mine that I set out many years ago was to create
a charitable foundation that would help make the world
a better place through breaking the cycles of poverty for
many generations to come. That’s all types of poverty.
When I sold my first business in 1992 with the goal of
creating enough time and money to start this charitable
foundation, the burning question became how do we help
charities become better at giving more effectively, more
efficiently, or just more in the aggregate. In asking that
question and working through the courses that I did with
the leaders from the charitable sector, I came to understand
and learn that charities really have a lot to offer business
leaders and business leaders have a lot to offer charities.
The idea of Altruvest was to build a bridge between the
charitable sector and the business sector such that the
business leaders can provide support, help, and resources
to the charitable sector, and the charitable sector can help
provide purpose and direction for contributions in the
charitable arena to help make the world a better place.

Altruvest was born to focus on the potential of building that
bridge between charities and businesses. The programs that
Altruvest runs are focused on where we see the most leverage
in that area which is helping improve board governance
and improve the potential of business leaders and other
professional leaders to contribute to charities through
providing the time, treasure, and talent at the board level,
and to help board governance become more effective so
that charitable leaders have the support of their board in
being able to support their organization into giving more.
Altruvest matches business and professional leaders
onto the boards and charities they’re passionate about
and helps charities find leaders for their boards that can
bring skill sets like marketing, finance, and strategic
planning onto their boards and helps run training
sessions to orient board members so they understand
how they can better contribute to charity.
We have placed thousands of board members onto the
boards of charities at Altruvest through the board match
programs and those leaders have helped contribute
millions of additional dollars to the charitable sector
and the charities they’re passionate about.

Rob Follows is a Founding Partner of STS Capital, a merger and
acquisition, equity investment firm. Mr. Follows serves as the
Chairman of Altruvest Charitable Services, which he founded
in Toronto in 1994 to support performance improvement for
charities. He serves as a Member of Advisory Board at Arcus
Group Inc. Mr. Follows was awarded Canada’s Top 40 Under 40
award in 1999. Mr. Follows is recognized as a leading authority on
corporate philanthropy.

RISK & BUSINESS MAGAZINETM FALL 2015

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