Extraordinary Gifts

By: Loren Hagerty, Executive Director
Occasionally, leading a charity, an extraordinary gift offer comes along. Sometimes the offer is real, and sometimes it’s fake. Some years ago, a man we’d never met before named “Troy” showed up at our office and proclaimed he would be donating $1,000,000. We didn’t know if he was for real, but we smiled and showed appropriate excitement in case he was. He also showed interest in purchasing a donated boat from us, and eventually asked if he could sail away on it and wire us the money later because his funds were tied up in an investment. We told him about our “no cash, no splash” policy, he promptly left, and we never saw him again.

But then, some extraordinary offers turn out to be real. This past Spring, our Development Manager, David Eggert, received an email from someone offering to donate a boathouse. The boathouse was huge—150’ X 60’, a steel framed building on a concrete dock, built for a mega-yacht. It had been for sale for a couple of years already. Our Board of Directors was understandably nervous. The market for boathouses can be volatile and the cost of ownership can be high (in this case, $5000/month just for moorage, utilities, and insurance—and that’s without maintenance costs). We might well get stuck with it for a long while and have it draining our bank accounts.

Turning the Tide

We continued to investigate our options and came back to the Board a month later with a more promising pitch. We’d seek to line up a purchaser before we accepted the boathouse. The Board agreed, but what are the odds of finding a buyer right away when the boathouse had already been on the market for so long? David wasn’t daunted; he made some phone calls. The boathouse owner kindly connected him with a broker in Seattle who said he had a client that had just purchased a mega-yacht from Florida and needed moorage in our area. That broker called the Captain’s cell phone and reached him at sea. The Captain was interested.

Sailing into the Sunset Long story short, in early July, I signed a Deed of Gift to accept the donation of an unusually large boathouse, and then immediately signed a Transfer of Ownership to sell the boathouse to new owners. That five-second transaction (and three months of work in total) brought SALTS a net benefit of about $450K. That same day, the donor was out on his yacht and altered course to meet up with David and our schooners off Hornby Island for a sunset celebration dinner on deck with our crews and trainees—a marvellous end to an exciting adventure in philanthropy.

Where are we Now?

We had an extraordinarily strong financial year due to the boathouse donation and boat donations/sales, a $150K grant from the Stronger Together fund, and over $200K in other cash donations. This allows us to take some big steps forward towards our vision to build another tall ship and ensure the safe and sustainable operation of three ships to provide life changing mentorship programs for young people both coastally and offshore. Our Board has authorized a mid-life refit of Pacific Swift that will cost over $350K, including all new decks, an electrical overhaul, and hull repairs (wale and rub rail repair or replacement). We’ve added over $600K to our new schooner fund this year, and we’ll end 2018 with about $2.75 million in cash in the new schooner bank accounts—which should cover about half the project cost based on our most recent estimates. We have millions left to raise but we’re in a healthy place to move forward with both a Swift refit and new schooner construction (our application for the latter is actively being reviewed by Transport Canada). It was very fitting that our donors chose the Christmas carol “I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In” for our Christmas music video. There are indeed three ships—and countless transformed lives—in SALTS’ future, thanks to extraordinary gifts both great and small. Keep the momentum going at www.salts.ca/donate!