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Faculty of Graduate Studies

Vincent E. Tom

  • BA (Simon Fraser University, 2012)

Notice of the Final Oral Examination for the Degree of Master of Arts

Topic

Leveraging Local Wisdom: The Role of Community Knowledge in the Strategic Direction of BC鈥檚 Community Foundations

School of Public Administration

Date & location

  • Wednesday, May 20, 2026

  • 11:00 A.M.

  • Virtual Defence

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

  • Dr. Susanne Thiessen, School of Public Administration, 糖心视频 (Supervisor)

  • Dr. Jill Anne Chouinard, School of Public Administration, 糖心视频 (Member) 

External Examiner

  • Dr. Crystal Tremblay, Department of Geography, 糖心视频 

Chair of Oral Examination

  • Dr. Amy Verdun, Department of Political Science, 糖心视频 

Abstract

Community foundations (CFs) in British Columbia are uniquely positioned as place-based philanthropic institutions whose mandates depend on their ability to understand and act on community knowledge (CK). Yet how senior CF leaders conceptualize CK, access it, and mobilize it through organizational decision-making structures remains under-researched in the Canadian philanthropic literature. Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology, this study conducted ten semi-structured interviews with senior leaders across established BCCFs to examine how CK informs strategic direction and decision making. The analysis of these interviews produced five categories describing CK’s movement through the CK: cultivating informal access, managing multiple knowledge systems, navigating board dynamics, asserting strategic agency, and returning knowledge through reciprocity. Bringing together these categories supports an emerging theory, the Stewardship of Relational Knowledge, which articulates CK mobilization as a cyclical, non-linear process of stewardship conditioned by institutional power. The study concludes that a CF’s legitimacy as a community actor is not granted by its endowment size or grant programs but earned through its stewardship of the knowledge entrusted to it by the community. 

Keywords: community knowledge mobilization; community foundations; community philanthropy; philanthropic decision-making; philanthropic institutions; British Columbia

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