Cortes Island's 2023 Microgrants for Neighbours Program

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Thirteen projects applied to Cortes Island’s MicroGrants for Neighbours Program this year and received a total of $6,000 in funding. 

“This was the first year we ran it in partnership with Neighborhood Small Grants, which is actually  part of the Vancouver Foundation,” explained Isabella McKnight, Executive Administrator of the Cortes Island Community Foundation, which runs the local microgrants program.”'  

"I believe that having this seed money and the ability to then rent a space, or buy supplies, or hire facilitators really helped to kickstart these events. Without even just a couple hundred dollars to pay for somebody's time to run these events, I don't think all of them would have happened. I'm really hoping that after seeing the success of the programs and the events that ran this year, we'll have even more applications next year.”

“We're hoping to do more fundraising for the 'Microgrants for Neighbors’ as well because as little as $50 could run an entire project. It's about getting money into the hands of people who are doing important things in our community. People can apply from anywhere from $50 to $500.  It's non taxable and it's for running a cool project. So if somebody needed $50 to buy some pencils and some paper, and then wanted to do an outside poetry class, they could do that."