David Foster: ‘I have no shame when it comes to my charities’, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

MICHAEL POSNER
From Friday's Globe and Mail

One day in 1985, composer/producer David Foster got a call from his mother in Victoria, asking him if he could find time to visit Rachel, a four-year-old Canadian girl at the UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles awaiting a liver transplant. When he arrived, he asked her, “What do you want, more than anything in the world?”

“To see my sister,” she said.

Mr. Foster promptly paid $60 to fly the older sister from Victoria, and witnessed the reunion. He was so moved by the experience that, virtually on the spot, he decided to create a charitable foundation that would help other B.C. families cope with the tsunami of travel and other non-medical expenses that typically accompany organ-transplant operations. Since then, the David Foster Foundation has extended its mandate to assist Canadians across the country, raising millions of dollars to support more than 500 families.

The Globe’s Michael Posner caught up with Mr. Foster in Toronto, where he was preparing for his foundation’s sold-out fundraising gala Friday, featuring The Canadian Tenors, Lionel Richie, Charice, Peter Cetera, 10-year-old Jackie Evancho – 2010 America’s Got Talent runner-up – as well as Muhammad Ali and Warren Buffett.

What do these fundraising events gross the foundation?

The first year we did it, we netted $105,000. Our highest [net] was $3.5-million, in Niagara Falls. But it takes a lot of money to run this organization. Although we are super lean and mean. It’s all volunteer, except for two paid employees.

And your mandate is strictly Canadian?

When we started, it was strictly local – Victoria, Vancouver and the lower Mainland of B.C. Then I took Michael Bublé to six cities in the interior and we went province-wide. And then four years ago, we did an event in Halifax and went national. And I’m just back from Singapore and one family donated to the foundation and wants to get something going there. And I thought, ‘Why not the world? What’s really stopping me?’

How soon might you do that?

Well, I’m not getting any younger, so it won’t be that long.

All of this from that one telephone call from your mother?

Yes. I was a late bloomer when I figured out that you have to help. I was 33. But when I saw that little girl, I started connecting the dots. Because what often happens is that the family disintegrates – all the attention goes to the sickly child, understandably, but the siblings get left behind. They have to support two households instead of one, for weeks, months, years, sometimes. It breaks the family down in every way – morally, financially, emotionally.

How much does the average family receive?

We’re helping 80 families at the moment. We’ve spent as little as $500 and as much as $500,000, because if a child is having a heart or lung transplant, they can be in the hospital for six months or longer, waiting. And then there’s post-op checkups. We take care of the families until the child turns 19.

You must be deluged with requests.

We’re stretched to the limit. We have great social workers in Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver who funnel potential recipients to us. They do most of the heavy lifting. And so amid this terrible catastrophic news, the illness, how can they afford another apartment, another car, at least we can offer some good news. We also like to spread the word about saving lives through organ donation. There’s so many adults and kids in need of organs and, while 80 per cent of the people say they favour organ donation, only 14 per cent take the trouble to make arrangements.

Is there a needs test for the foundation’s financial aid?

I like to say, if you’re not a millionaire, we’re going to help you. The average family has about $8,000 in the bank. So think how fast you can burn through 10 or 20 or 30 grand. So there is a financial application, but it’s very clean and very fast. We can make a decision in 10 minutes.

And you’ve raised funds with softball and tennis tournaments, and now concerts?

We did three softball events, but getting 30 celebrities to Victoria for a weekend was a lot, and I found myself, whenever I met a famous person, the only thing I had in mind was getting them to the softball tournament, which is really shallow. So we went to concerts. Julio Iglesias, Lionel Richie, Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Kenny G, Céline Dion, Bryan Adams. I’ve begged, and I mean begged. I have no shame when it comes to my charities.