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.

City of Penticton Municipal grant funding is disbursed as part of the larger pool of funds that make up the Foundation grant program. This makes our grant administration process more efficient, and hopefully make things a little easier for those eligible organizations that have applied to each program separately in the past.

If you have traditionally applied to the City of Penticton and the Foundation for the same activity, you can now combine those requests. 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.

If you have historically applied to the City of Penticton and the Community Foundation for separate activities: Please contact us before completing your applications. We’d like to work with you to see if we can combine your needs into one request.

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

To learn more about the Community Foundation’s partnership with the City of Penticton, click here.

Each year, we receive far more Foundation grant applications than there is available funding to support. This means we are unable to accept more than one request per applying organization, except for those organizations who have traditionally applied to the City of Penticton and the Community Foundation for separate needs and are unable to combine them into one 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.

If you haven’t submitted your report for a previous year’s grant, please contact kevinronaghan@cfso.net before proceeding through the application process.

Your application will be eligible for funding if the report is made 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).

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. 

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 their findings resulting from the ranking process. Foundation staff use the outcomes of that discussion to inform a set of initial grant recommendations. These initial recommendations and accompanying rationale are brought back to the Committee for their review and agreement.

Foundation staff then present the agreed-upon funding recommendations to the Foundation Board’s Community Impact Committee for final review and approval.  

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 
• Projects that have a primary purpose of promoting political or religious activities or beliefs

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 $5,000 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.

Grant awards are generally approved at a meeting of the Community Impact Committee following the Evaluation Committee’s recommendation 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.