Highlights from the Network

The tremendous amount of work and learning that has gone into the past year by community foundations is inspiring. Our network continues to respond to how the world and community has shifted—by rethinking long-held assumptions and doing things differently. Here are just a few examples showcasing the tenacity of the network.

Shuswap Community Foundation in British Columbia has started important work to ensure an inclusive path forward. The team is considering who is missing from their board and their relationships. One first step they are taking is refreshing their board nominations process. 

Waterloo Region Community Foundation’s Racial Equity Fund put ideas into action by supporting those most impacted by the ongoing and systemic racial disparities that exist in communities and shifting what traditional program creation looks like. The program’s funding application, guidelines, and reviews were created and led by a committee of volunteer community members who self-identify as Indigenous, Black or as a person of colour. 

The Community Foundation of Prince Edward Island is taking learnings from Vital Signs and Communities for Gender Equality – and exploring how to change their grant application forms and processes to be more inclusive of gender-based projects. 

The Red Deer & District Community Foundation received the 2022 Grantmaker of the Year award from the Grant Professionals Association. It’s an acknowledgement of their innovative participatory grantmaking process to bring people together and shift decision making into communities.  During the Fund for Gender Equality Grant, applicants were included in the decision-making process, enabling grantees to come together to share insights, passionately pitch their projects, collaborate in their decision-making, and build relationships. 

The Clayoquot Biosphere Trust transformed what traditional grantmaking looks like in their Vital Grants Program last year by recognizing the time and resources that are taken from applicants as they apply for funding. After learning from their community, they made the decision to provide compensation to applicants of the program. 

The Fondation franco-albertaine continues to advocate for language equity to ensure both official languages are available to applicants and grantees in Alberta.

Supporting community through programs

Community foundations across the network are stepping up to spark change locally. It is because of this local leadership and creative problem-solving that we have had opportunities to collaborate with partners on so many different granting programs this past year. 

In the past few years, we’ve had over 170 community foundations participate in programs like Vital Signs, Kia Communities in Motion, the Investment Readiness Program, Communities for Gender Equality, the Healthy Communities Initiative and the Community Services Recovery Fund. 

Through all these programs, just in the past year, community foundations have funded over 2,000 projects across the country. These projects are transforming public spaces into community gardens for medicinal herbs. They are providing volunteer doulas for those giving birth in Cape Breton. They are supporting Black-led and Black-serving affordable housing projects in Surrey, British Columbia. There are literally thousands of examples that show the impact of community foundations working in partnership on these programs.