Our Company History
The Goldie Company Story – Continuing a Tradition of Excellence
Innovation, Experience, Results.
After more than 40 years, The Goldie Company’s success still reflects these principles on which founder, Gordon L. Goldie, built his impeccable reputation.
Gordon started out on another path before finding his true calling. Montreal born, Goldie moved with his family to Toronto when he was two years old. Immediately after graduating high school, he joined the Toronto Star as a copy boy. Several years later, he teamed up with his brother, Doug, and a colleague of Doug’s to buy the Geraldton Times-Star, where Gordon spent five years as both reporter and editor.
After selling his share of the business, he returned to Toronto where he met George Brakeley Jr., who first introduced Gordon to fundraising. He worked with Brakeley for more than 10 years before striking out on his own to launch Gordon L. Goldie Company Ltd.
In a 1980 Toronto Star interview, Gordon said that a fundraiser “requires a certain amount of presence, which takes time to acquire.” Acquire he did. Over the years, he led some of the biggest fundraising campaigns of his day—first mainly with clients in the Toronto area, then, as the company expanded, throughout Canada.
His method differed from the customary practice of directly approaching corporations or individuals for campaign donations. Instead, Gordon pioneered the idea of undertaking a feasibility, or planning study, in advance of a campaign and then recruiting well-connected, senior executives to make calls on their industry peers to ask for contributions. This, then radical, approach met with great success and is now the accepted standard in capital campaign fundraising practice.
Since 1965, The Goldie Company has helped hospitals, universities, colleges, churches, cultural, environmental, social service and other community organizations raise funds for thousands of undertakings—from major construction projects for large institutions to renovations for beloved, small-town buildings and annual funding campaigns for social programming.
In the early 1990s, Gordon decided the moment had come to take a little time for himself and his family. Never one to do things by halves, he bought a house in Kelowna and retired to British Columbia, selling the company to two of his senior consultants, David Chambers and Thomas Roe.
In 1996, George Stanois joined the firm as managing director and partner and assumed sole ownership
in 2005.
Like Gordon before him, George made a brief foray into other work before entering the world of fundraising. He had graduated from the University of Toronto with an interest in urban planning and set out in his chosen field. “I chose urban planning hoping to travel, explore, meet new people and leave my mark on the world,” he said. But, through a twist of fate, he accepted a position with a fundraising company and knew immediately that this was where he belonged.
“Fundraising has given me so much. I’ve travelled across Canada from St. John’s to Vancouver and everywhere in between, and throughout the US and beyond. I’ve met great people along the way and have been privileged to help many individuals and organizations reach their goals,” he says.
In particular, George credits Kevin Allen of Community Counselling Service for mentoring him during his early years in the profession, calling Kevin a “fantastic fundraiser.”
In 1990, George demonstrated his commitment to the fundraising profession by becoming one of a handful of Canadians at the time to earn the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) designation.
Today, The Goldie Company has offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, and is a founding member of Skystone International, an alliance of like-minded fundraising consultancies with offices across Canada and the United States.
For George and his team, it’s the people with whom they work who make the difference—the clients and the volunteers in organizations large and small. Today, in an often-impersonal world, it is the “people first” attitude that distinguishes The Goldie Company, making it one of the leading fundraising consulting firms in Canada.
