The clock is ticking for community groups who hope to qualify for District of Squamish funds. The application period for 2017 Community Enhancement Grants ends Saturday, Oct. 1.
The application process has changed a bit this year.
“There’s a lot more emphasis on collaboration,” said Christine Mathews, director of financial services with the district.
It is hoped community groups will be able to show in their application that they are working with other groups in the community “to be able to leverage and do more,” she explained.
Mayor Patricia Heintzman said the ultimate goal of the changes is to make the process clearer.
“And discourage types of applications that simply wouldn’t qualify. We wanted to be clear about what the expectation was in terms of grants that council would consider or not,” she said. “It is meant to be a clearer process and a little more philosophically driven rather than randomly driven.”
Group representatives now need to have met with district staff before the applications are submitted, Mathews said. By April, groups that received funding must now submit information to “celebrate what they did with the funds and how they helped the community and to provide some financial stewardship over how the funds have been used.”
The Squamish Non Profit Network – an umbrella organization made up of representatives from various non-profits in the corridor – was consulted about the changes to the grant application process.
“It’s great to see the District of Squamish incorporating collaboration into the Community Grants program as a guiding principle,” said the Network’s Carol Coffey.
“Communities are stronger when people and groups come together for community-generated action. Another positive change is that the policy allows for multi-year grants. This is significant because it actually allows non-profit organizations to undertake more long-term planning. When grants are restricted to one year time-frames in which groups have to both plan projects or programs and generate outcomes, charities become limited in what they can accomplish and it can be difficult to measure impact in a short time frame.”
Council has committed to make decisions on the grants before Dec. 31. Letters advising groups of their grant status will be issued in March, Mathews said.
Community Enhancement Grants are considered as part of the annual municipal budget process.
The funds will be released before April 1, according to Mathews.
