Helping to identify and address community needs, Victoria’s Vital Signs was launched in 2006 as a way to help the Victoria Foundation facilitate philanthropy in our community. It’s doing that and more!

Since its launch, Vital Signs has helped us to identify community needs, support our donors’ wishes and fundamentally change the way we do business. It has impacted the Foundation and the community in ways we never anticipated – locally, nationally and internationally.

Internationally, Victoria was host to the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network last year, where 12 community foundations from across North America and Europe came together to explore how to use indicator programs such as Vital Signs to provide leadership in their countries and communities.

Nationally, we are one of 15 cities that are publishing Vital Signs reports this year. For a complete set of this or previous year’s reports, visit Community Foundations of Canada (link to www.vitalsignscanada.ca).

Locally, partnerships such as the one that resulted in the wellness insert in this year’s report are a direct result of our work with a network of organizations that are collecting and/or reporting indicator data such as what’s in Vital Signs.

As a result of this same network, we are partnering with eight organizations in Greater Victoria to conduct a well-being survey that will result in a Happiness Index. “What’s that”, you say? It’s a series of measurements that will come together to define our overall wellbeing and satisfaction with life. We’re piloting it with a view to developing it for use by other communities in BC and across Canada.

More and more people look forward to this report card on our community and want more of the information it provides. This year’s report is particularly exciting because of the new Census data. We’re also really pleased with a new addition – Trends to Watch (link to Trends to Watch page). We’ve added this section because people asked us to show what’s changed from year-to-year.

We hope you find Victoria’s Vital Signs as useful as we do. As always, our sincere thanks to all who have contributed to it in both small and large ways.

Sandra Richardson         Chuck Burkett
Executive Director/CEO    Chair, Board of Directors