City formalizes recreation grant application process

Chestermere City Council approved the Recreation Grant Funding Policy at the March 20 meeting.
The new policy creates the processes and guidelines for future grant funding applications from community recreation organizations in the future.
“Recreation is a priority and we can’t do it alone so policies like this and having funding available…allows the city to collaborate with all the local non-profit rec groups and that’s really important,” said Chestermere Parks and Recreation Manager Kathy Russell.
Prior to this policy, the city had and informal process that was followed.
“This formalizes requests that come…to the city,” said Russell.
The goal of the new policy is to create a consistent and transparent process for not for profit recreation groups in Chestermere to follow when applying for grants from the city.
There are four grant categories defined in the Recreation Grant Funding Policy: Community Grants, Strategic Opportunity Grants, Major Operating Grants and Agreements, and Major Capital Grants.
Community grants are meant to facilitate local sports and recreation activities in Chestermere.
“The intention is to support small grassroots recreation requests,” said Russell.
These grants will be for the purchase of small pieces of equipment and seed funding to start new programs.
The second category of grants is new to the city. Strategic Opportunity Grants will be used to fund either an organizations transformation to a new phase of growth or strategic direction, or to leverage a unique and time sensitive opportunity that will strengthen the organization in the community.
For these grants, the city will match the funds already raised by the organization for the project.
Although this type of grant is in the policy, it is not yet in the budget meaning that applications for this grant will not be open until after the next budgeting process.
Major Operating Grants and Agreements are grants or multi-year agreements that focus on the long-term resiliency of local organizations.
“It’s to support what I would call our core non-profit recreation organizations that deliver services that the city might otherwise do,” said Russell.
Finally, Major Capital Grants are for supporting the establishment and expansion of needed recreation infrastructure in the city.
Non-profit groups will apply for these grants in one of two ways; either the contestable grants process or the discretionary grants process.
Contestable grants will use an application competition process to disperse the grant funds.
“That would be a public process where the city would advertise the grant opportunity and the criteria,” she said, “and then the applicants would submit proposals.”
Russell said that depending on the type of grant, different approval process would apply.
This would be the main process for the distribution of recreation grants by the city.
Discretionary Grants will be for urgent and unique circumstances and will be dispersed on the discretion of city council with the decision made in an open and public forum.
These new guidelines should allow for easier and more open ways for the city to support recreation in Chestermere.
“It’s really to make sure that grant funding is consistent and transparent to support future recreation opportunities in Chestermere,” said Russell.
She said that these changes support the city’s broader strategy for recreation projects to happen in a collaborative way.