Starting in July 2018, Vancouver Foundation (VF) is enhancing the way it responds to community needs by evolving its current Field of Interest Grants to two new grant programs.
(1) Participatory Action Research Grants
Will support research that is co-led by community members and researchers to learn more about the root causes of pressing issues impacting the health of communities. The research must be a collaboration between community organizations and institutions with access to an ethics board, such as universities. There will be two different grant types available under Participatory Action Research Grants, depending upon the stage of your project.
- Convene: short-term grants to help teams develop a participatory research project plan that can be submitted to funding organizations.
- Investigate: multi-year grants to help teams answer a research question, analyze their findings, and share knowledge in a way that supports the community to take action in the future.
(2) Systems Change Grants
Will support projects that take action to address the root causes of pressing issues by influencing the behaviours of populations, organizations, and institutions. There will be three different grant types available, depending upon the stage of your project.
- Develop: short-term grants to help teams generate ideas and a project plan for systems change that can be submitted to funders.
- Test: multi-year grants to help project teams test their influence on systems, and learn what works.
- Scale: multi-year grants to help project teams extend the influence of an existing systems change project to a different scale within the system.
Applications for Systems Change Grants will still be accepted from any of VF’s previous fields of interest, and from any other charitable purpose as well.
Improving Support for Grant Applicants
Over the coming months VF will make several improvements to support grant applicants. New grant programs will provide clearer guidelines, more staff support, fewer documents to review, more predictable grant cycles, and a new online application process.
In the meantime, all current grantees will continue to receive funding according to their existing agreements.
What Happens Next
Throughout the spring VF will provide further details on its website, host community workshops, and answer questions on the new grant programs.
VF will add more information to its website in May, and be open for applications in July 2018. VF will also publish updates regarding the new grant programs, as new information becomes available.
