The Cortes Island Community Foundation is helping to review Grant-in Applications again. As in the past, the Strathcona Regional District Board will be dispersing a pool of approximately $25,000 to Cortes Island Social Profits. The average grant award is in the range of $1000 – $5000 and will be dispersed by end of 2024. This year’s Grant-in-Aid funding will prioritize projects supporting Arts, Culture or Environment. Any non-profits or charitable societies who wish to participate sust send their  applications in by midnight on Monday, October 21.  

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, Executive Director of the Community Foundation explained, “We  are working to assist Regional Director Mark Vonesch and the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) with reviewing the grant and aid applications for this year. Most of the nonprofits on Cortes are quite familiar with the fact that we have a bit of our tax money that comes back to us for assisting community groups on the island.”

A volunteer jury of community members goes through the applications and makes a recommendation on who should receive funding, and how much.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “The parameters of both who is eligible and the kinds of things eligible are set by the Regional District.  The SRD does not allow organizations that are getting funding from other other tax districts or other text funds from the island , for instance,  the Fire hall,  Manson’s Hall, the Whaletown Community Club Hall (Gorge Hall). None of them are allowed to apply through these funds.  The Regional District doesn’t want to see organizations that are funded through higher levels of government applying through these particular grants either. They also don’t like to see operating grants come through these.”

Cortes Currents: So no one can apply for core funding.  

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “We would highly encourage that people do not apply for core funding. I just wanted to say  right now,  when I go to work with other community foundations,  this is where community foundations are going. We believe in core funding absolutely 100%. If there was only one thing that I could do as a community foundation, it would be core funding. It’s the most important kind of funding. The restrictions  and extra burdens that are put on organizations that are working so hard, the endless rat race of applying for grants and  trying to come up with new projects when you can’t even pay your existing staff, I think is really unfortunate.”

“These funds are largely  project related funds this year. We have determined  that we’re going to be looking at projects that prioritize arts, culture and environment.”

“We chose that area of emphasis because we looked at all the funds that we’ve been able to  help adjudicate through our community granting process over the last couple years. They include over $440,000 that we’ve helped adjudicate through federal grants, the most recent of those grants were for the Prosperity Fund and the prosperity fund prioritized projects. This is also the third round of Grants in Aid that we’ve helped with.”   

‘We said, ‘Whoa, there was not a lot of emphasis on our arts, culture and environment in any of those rounds.’ So that’s the priority.”

“However, one of the things that Grant-in-Aid always aims to do is to also be available for the more emergent or emergency needs for organizations. So we’re still encouraging organizations that may not fit perfectly within the arts culture environment, or maybe don’t have projects that are perfect within the arts environment culture angle, that they still would apply if they have a particularly urgent need.”

“We have a very small fund at the community foundation that is specifically for urgent needs.  Like, ‘oh, no, we’re gonna have to shut down operations while we wait for this grant that we know is going to come  in a month’ or ‘ if we just had a thousand dollars now to spend on this really important repair, et cetera, we wouldn’t have to close down our, building or operations for the next 2 months.’ That kind of thing. We’ve got a small fund we’ve advocated really hard to be able to set aside from private donors over the last couple of years.”

Cortes Currents: Tell us more about this year’s Grant-in-Aid process

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “What we really want to make sure is that the people who apply for this money are successful. Mark, takes it to the board of the Regional District to ask for  approval. It  does not come from us. It comes from the board and the money comes from the Regional District.”  

“The parameters that they have put on this money are that they don’t want this money for core operating funds.”  

Cortes Currents: What, do you have to be to receive a grant?  

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “You have to have a non profit society or charitable society status, or a partnership with someone who is a non profit. There are a couple of exceptions such as the PAC, which is a parent advisory committee at the school that works within school districts and larger groups with nonprofit or charitable status, but by and large these funds are for nonprofits and charities.” 

“To be eligible, organizations  not just have to have some sort of status that is recognized by the Regional District they also need to be in good standing.  By ‘good standing,’ I mean that they  need to be in good standing with the government, obviously, and they need to be good in good standing with the community foundation. So if they received a grant aid or another grant,  they need to have done the proper reporting and let us know that they’ve done that.”

“If you’re like, oh, no. I think that I never reported on that grant that I got last time through the grant and aid, don’t worry. It’s not too late. We will take your report at the same time that we’ll take your new application.  The idea is that there not be big barriers and that report process  is very simple. There is a report on our website that you can just fill out there. Our favorite form of reporting is that you actually that you report on Tideline to the community, or that you call up Roy and  do a news article on what you’ve done. Copy and paste that into something and send it off to us.

This is community money. We’re just making sure that people are using it to the greatest impact and doing more or less what they say, or some better improved thing than what they said they were going to do. What you’re doing is letting the community know what’s happening .

I would just say that the grant and aid applications, we’ve gone back to using the PDF grant and aid applications that the Regional District likes to have.  It’s not as easy to fill out as the online version we used to do, but it is a  very simple application where they basically leave room for one tiny paragraph about what you’re going to be doing.  This application shouldn’t take anyone more than an hour and we have Andrea from our staff who’s there to help anybody both brainstorm an application, but also to fill out an application if that’s the kind of help that would be necessary. 

 The deadline is super fast.  My apologies to the community about how fast this is. We really mean end of the day, midnight, October 21st, then we’re turning around the decision making  super quickly.  We’ll be doing a. Turbo boosted community jury process and taking our recommendations to Mark Vonesch so that he can take them to the Regional District for the end of October, which means that people should be able to have their funds,  should all go well,  at that board meeting by the end of the year.

Links of Interest:

• Click here to apply for a Grant-in-Aid
• Click here to submit a Grant-in-Aid Report
• The Cortes Island Community Foundation website
• Articles about, or mentioning, the Community Foundation

Top image credit: A helping hand – photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash

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