Community Grants Program

 

Grants Portal

2025 Vital Grant Stream application portal is now closed

The Vital Grant Stream aims to strengthen the non-profit sector and support the long-term resilience of our local community by providing eligible organizations with flexible, general operating funding. This program is guided by trust-based philanthropic principles to enhance essential and meaningful work across the region.

The program prioritizes organizations that:

  • Are led by or serve equity-deserving groups;
  • Are locally based and operating within the capital region;
  • Demonstrate strong financial need.

Applications for the 2025 Vital Grant Stream for requests up to $30,000 were accepted from February 4 to March 11, 2025. Thank you to those who applied. Recipients will be announced in July 2025.

To learn more about last year’s recipients, view the 2024 Vital Grant Stream recipients here. To receive up-to-date information about our Community Grants Program and other funding opportunities, please sign up for our mailing list here.

 

Application Guidelines Application Questions Qualified & Non-Qualified Donees

Important Program Dates

 

We're here to support you

If you have questions specific to your organization and what you want to apply for, please schedule a time to talk to a member of the grants team. Organizations serving equity-deserving groups, new grant writers, new applicants to the Community Grants Program, or applicants who have technology or language barriers are encouraged to reach out via email or phone to book a consultation with the grants team. Please indicate that you are hoping to book a time to speak to someone on the grants team to discuss in-depth questions.

Email 250-381-5532

2024 Collaboration Stream Grant Recipients

A record amount of funding is being distributed through the Collaboration Stream of the Victoria Foundation’s Community Grants Program. $721,318 is supporting 17 non-profit and charitable collaborations in the capital region. This funding will help meet the growing need for resources in the philanthropic sector and will help organizations work together to address solutions to the complex challenges facing the region. 

The Victoria Foundation works closely with generous donors in our community to provide funding for the program. The funding is made up of discretionary endowed funds, the Foundation’s Community Action Funds, and $270,000 in one-time funding by the Government of British Columbia through the Community Prosperity Fund, an investment totaling $25 million for the province’s non-profit sector. 

The 2024 Collaboration Grant Stream is supporting two grant sub-streams reflecting the evolving ways community organizations are looking to work together to address collective goals: 

  1. Collaborative Practice Innovation grants were developed in response to the growing number of collaboratives that are focused on strengthening sector and organizational effectiveness through strategic collaboration.  
  2. Collaborating for Systems Change grants continue to focus on efforts to disrupt the status quo and shift the conditions that hold a complex community problem in place by addressing underlying root causes. 

Grant recipients were chosen with an emphasis on an equitable distribution across the region’s geography and equity-deserving populations, while prioritizing organizations working on key Vital Signs issue areas. 

Press Release 2024 Distribution List Convening Collaborations

Community Grants Program

The Victoria Foundation seeks to create a sense of belonging that inspires philanthropy, essential partnerships, and collaboration, and makes a lasting contribution to our community. Our vision is to create a vibrant, caring community for all. We are working to achieve this vision by inspiring giving, thoughtfully caring for the assets entrusted to us, and investing in people, ideas and activities that strengthen our community.

The Victoria Foundation is broad in scope and provides supports across the non-profit sector including the arts, environment, food security, housing/ homelessness, health, youth engagement and more. The annual Community Grants Program supports registered charities and other qualified donees whose work benefits community wellbeing and/or the environment within the Capital Region.

In addition to this broad-based approach, we prioritize support of organizations addressing pressing needs as identified by the community, informed by sector reports, and through results of Victoria’s annual Vital Signs Report. 

Funding Sources & Application Assessment

  • How is the Community Grants Program funded?

    The Community Grants Program distributes grants to qualified recipients using funding from the following sources:

    • Discretionary Funds: Victoria Foundation holds endowed funds established by donors who have given our board and staff discretion to allocate funding across a broad range of community wellbeing issues. We choose to distribute this funding to local organizations through the Community Grants Program. The investment of these endowed funds and the annual distribution rate that is applied to the market value of the funds each year determines how much funding we have available to allocate through the program.
    • Donor Advised Funds: Donor Advised Funds are established by donors who want to remain an active participant in annual granting. Sometimes they choose to support organizations which apply to the Community Grants Program. Applications are not proactively shared with donors, but if a donor comes forward with a particular interest in an organization or cause area, and it connects to an organization that has applied to the Community Grants Program, staff will let the donor know. The donor will then have the opportunity to make a donor advised grant recommendation to support that application.
    • Community Action Funds: Community Action Funds are non-endowed funds which allow donors to give confidently to areas of greatest need within cause areas that matter to them. From January 1 to May 23, 2025, all gifts made to the Community Action Funds will be allocated to approved Community Grants Program applications.
  • How are applications assessed?

    The Victoria Foundation’s review process is comprehensive, and we seek input from a variety of sources. We intentionally include people with an array of perspectives and diverse experiences as part of setting our grant priorities and during the review process. We will seek input from a wide variety of sources for the 2025 grant cycle, including:

    • Community Engagement Committee: The Foundation’s Committee of the Board provides oversight, guidance and additional community knowledge.
    • Subject Matter Experts: We will seek input from individuals who can provide additional context and regional information to help support the review process.
    • Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs Report: An annual community check-up that measures the vitality of our region, identifies concerns and supports action on issues that are critical to our quality of life.
    • Other community engagement, regional reports and surveys: Staff continuously engage with community groups to understand emerging needs and opportunities, and to hear additional input and feedback. For example, through the 2024 State of the Sector report.

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