We have brought the two programs together for two reasons: to make our grant administration process more efficient, and hopefully to make things a little easier for those eligible organizations that have applied to each program separately in the past.

That means if you have traditionally applied to the City and the Foundation for the same activity, you can now combine those requests. For those organizations who have applied to the City and the Foundation for different activities, we will consider multiple applications from one organization. And for those organizations who have applied for in-kind services from the City as part of their Municipal grants request, we’ve included a section in our Foundation grants application to address your needs.

We know that changes to a process can be challenging at first, and we’re here to help. Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns during the application process.

We’ve found that applications for special events have a unique and specialized set of evaluation criteria that would be difficult to incorporate into our existing Foundation grant process. That’s why we’ve decided to retain a separate process for the City’s Special Events funding.

Requests for in-kind support will now be included as part of your application’s total financial request. The process now looks like this: 

• Applicants will verify the costs of in-kind requests through the City. They will include and itemize the amount(s) required to pay for those requests in their application budget. 
• If successful with their application, the applicant will pay the City directly for the in-kind support using the funds granted for that purpose. 

Most applications we receive are an appropriate “fit,” but some are not. Writing a grant application can take significant time and effort, and we want to help organizations use their limited capacity for grant writing as effectively as possible.

The letter of interest step allows staff to evaluate a request to ensue its eligibility and provide feedback. It also allows staff to ask questions of applicants and make suggestions to strengthen their application. It’s a low risk tool to test the suitability of a request before taking the time and resources to put together a full application.

You are welcome to apply annually to the Foundation grant program. Projects that continue to meet demonstrated needs and contribute to positive community impacts may be supported a number of years in a row. However, we caution against considering us as a guaranteed source of funding for your work.

We recognize the value of sustained financial support for an organization and its work in creating the kinds of positive community impacts we seek. We also know that limited money, high demand for our grants, and the emergence of new and critical community needs can impact on how we disburse our funds in any given year.

As part of their ongoing development, we encourage organizations to invest in creating a diversified fundraising strategy. In fact, we can consider a Foundation grant to support this development work!

We offer grants to charities and non-profits for activities taking place in the South Okanagan Similkameen region. This includes projects in communities within the boundaries of the RDOS, and the lands of the snpink’tn, Osoyoos, Upper Similkameen and Lower Similkameen Indian Bands.

This means you can apply if you are an organization based outside of our service area, and are seeking funding for work that takes place in our region.

If you are unsure of your eligibility based on this criteria, please contact us before applying.

Yes.Please reach out to us before you start the application process to discuss your plans for submission of more than one request to the program.

Faith-based organizations are welcome to apply for projects that provide direct support or benefit to the wider community. We will not consider grants for projects specifically intended to promote a specific faith or faith-based perspective. 

Grant recommendations are made by a community-based, volunteer Grants Evaluation Committee. Smaller, community-specific committees may also contribute to the process by reviewing applications from their community/area and providing the Grants Evaluation Committee with their non-binding recommendations.

Applications are initially reviewed by Community Foundation staff to ensure they are complete, and include enough information to allow the Grants Evaluation Committee to make informed decisions.  Staff also contribute additional context to supplement the application, including a history of past grants and the organization’s ongoing relationship with the Foundation, that may assist the Committee in making its recommendations. 

Committee members first review and rate the applications independently. They rank the applications on merit using several key criteria that remain confidential.  This means that a seniors’ project will be ranked in direct comparison to a heritage project, for example. The individual rankings are combined by staff to create an aggregate ranking of all applications. 

The Committee then meets to discuss the specifics of who will be recommended for grants, and for how much. An initial discussion of the aggregate rankings takes place, which sometimes results in an application moving up or down the rankings list. Following that discussion, the Committee begins making its funding recommendations. This process generally moves from the top of the rankings list downward until all available funding is allocated. 

As the Committee recommends a grant amount for an applicant, staff immediately confirm which endowment fund is available to grant for their application.  Because most endowment funds have some criteria attached to them, it is possible funds will not be available to grant to a specific project, even if it ranks very high on the list.  For example, if the top three projects happen to be for youth, we may run out of “youth-specific” funds after we award #1 and #2.  In that case, the third high quality youth grant request could potentially not receive funding. 

Foundation staff take the Grant Evaluation Committee’s funding recommendations to the Community Impact Committee of the Foundation’s Board for final review and ratification.  

We have more than 100 endowment funds, and each one has the opportunity to assign grant criteria to its money. Some of our endowment funds restrict granting based on geography (only Penticton, for example) and/or a field of interest (only animal welfare). These criteria are chosen by the donors, and impact the Community Foundation’s fund allocation process.

The Foundation will accept application requests for most types of expenses.  In fact, it’s easier to consider what we won’t fund, as you will see in the following question.

A list of eligible requests is found in our Funding Guidelines. Two areas to highlight: we will consider funding for operating expenses, and we will consider multi-year requests.

If you have an idea for a project program or activity that you’re unsure would be eligible, contact us.

• Establishing or adding to endowment funds
• Establishing or adding to operating reserves 
• Establishing or adding to a capital campaign 
• Sponsoring a fundraising event 
• Projects that have a primary purpose of promoting political or religious activities or beliefs

If you haven’t submitted your report for a previous year’s grant, please contact grants@cfso.net before proceeding through the application process. Your application will be eligible for funding if the report is in before the application deadline, or you have made prior arrangements (because the project for which previous funding was received is not yet complete, for example).

Grant awards are generally approved at a meeting of the Community Impact Committee following the Grants Committee’s decision-making process. Grants will be payable starting in February, assuming the project is ready to receive the funds. 

We do not release money until the grantee confirms they are ready to use the money.  For example, if your project begins in March and you won’t be spending money on it until June, you will be eligible to receive the money in June. It’s important to note that you will not receive the money until you formally request the funds.

We don’t have a set minimum or maximum value for funding through the Foundation grant program. Traditionally, the majority of our grants fall in the $3,000 to $15,000 range. Multi-year operating grants are typically $15,000 per year.

We will consider larger funding requests, but please note that the value of our annual discretionary granting pool, which can fluctuate from year to year, greatly impacts the sizes of grants we are able to provide.

The total amount of funds available for granting is determined annually, and just prior to the application evaluation process. About 1/2 of our annual granting is predetermined by donors.

For the remainder, please keep in mind that the Foundation doesn’t usually have full discretion with its grant decisions.  As mentioned above, most of our funds have some criteria that we must honour when selecting recipients.  For example, the Smith Family Fund may have $10,000 available for granting, but if Mr. & Mrs. Smith have specified animal welfare projects as their area of interest, then we can only grant to groups that fit that criteria.