Corporate Social Responsibility
The Museum’s primary mandate is to educate the public and students on the role of minerals in our everyday life and mining — its past, present and future.
Our exhibits and programming work together to tell a complete community and mining story touching on many relevant topics, with content linked together to present insight on community history, sustainable mining, mineralogy, geology and exploration, environmental impacts and remediation.
Community Benefit through Philanthropy
A key value for the Museum is to be striving to remove social and academic barriers so that we can be accessible as possible for all communities. Through policy and operational frameworks we have put into place initiatives that support community benefit through action and involvement with like-minded local and provincial organizations. This is an ongoing process and is under constant review and we would welcome ideas that help us reach our goal of being actively responsive to community need. An important aspect of supporting community benefit is recognizing that the Museum may be financially prohibitive to some segments of the population and while we cannot become free for the public, there are ways we can improve opportunity for those in need.
Some examples of initiatives providing community benefit and financial support include:
- Free access to local Britannia Beach residents, with the intent of strengthening the sense of neighbourliness with our immediate neighbours
- Each year the Museum offers hundreds of BC schools and non-profit organizations Family Memberships for their fundraising event. Annually the Museum donates upwards of $5,000 for these worthy events and organizations
- The Museum gratefully accepts restricted donations from Corporations so that either travel subsidies can be offered to schools to help offset the cost of travel or full sponsorship of school bookings This initiative helps ensure more schools can attend our valuable educational programs. A current partner in this initiative is the Greater Vancouver Mining Women’s Association
- The Museum contributes to the Squamish Food Bank through its relationship with Regional Recycling. This is a program we are proud to be part of as we value and support the Squamish community and its residents
- Family passes that can be checked out (like a book) from the local Squamish Library and Whistler libraries.
Sustainability
We aim to extend our commitment to responsible workplace practices to better serve our employees and visitors as well as promote a healthy environment and workplace. In 2015 the Museum initiated The Green Team. This committee comprised of a cross section of our employees has the mandate to influence the Museum’s organizational culture around improving and minimizing our green impact. The committee can make recommendations for grants for large projects and has a small budget for projects they wish to see. The following are some examples of what has been achieved:
- Completed professional environmental and Climate Smart training creating solid foundation for action
- Installation of 6 kw solar array and conversion of propane gold panning water heater to on demand hydro
- Received almost $40,000 in grant funding towards green initiatives
- Implemented composting for staff and school lunch organics.
Donation Requests
To request a charity a donation for a fundraiser to benefit a school or a non-profit organization, please send an email detailing the initiative to bookings@bcmm.ca.