As Dave Harvey retires from his co-leadership position at Park People, he reflects on the incredible journey since founding the organization in 2011.
Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks?
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Fundraising is a great way to build the capacity of your community park group. Below are some key provincial and municipal grants that could help fund your next awesome park project.
Offers bus grants, awards and funds for legacy and environmental stewardship programs that nurture nature and connect people to nature in Metro Vancouver’s Regional Parks. Learn more
Invests in community groups and environmental organizations that support conservation efforts and address environmental risks of the port-related activity. Learn more
Supports lighter living initiatives that encourage communities to live lighter and gain more of what matters – more time for ourselves and for connecting with others and our natural world, quality long-lasting goods, affordable lives, service to our communities, health, security and wellbeing. Learn more
Provides support for community groups to build community and neighbourhood connections while enhancing parks or other public spaces. Learn more
Offers Metro Vancouver seniors training and support to organize fun park activities, fostering social connections and physical activity among elders in their local parks and green spaces. Learn more
Offers grants to not-for-profit organizations throughout BC., to support their delivery of ongoing programs and services that meet the needs of their communities. Learn more
Provides $2500 grants to support creatives bring their ideas to life and enhance Downtown Vancouver’s public spaces. Proposals can include anything including art installations, fitness classes, dance performances, educational experiences, beautification projects, and craft markets. Learn more
Helps residents of any age, experience, or background take part in building a community. Learn more
Supports communities as they take multi-sectoral action to explore, learn, and innovate, enhancing community cohesion and sense of belonging. Learn more
Funds opportunities to support local organizations, programs, and initiatives in our neighbouring communities that enrich the lives of the people who live and work there. Learn more
Allocates funds to local non-profits, in collaboration with community volunteers across different sectors. Learn more
Supports emerging artists across all artistic and cultural disciplines living in the City of Vancouver who have an interest in building their careers and working with young people in an arts or culture-based capacity. Learn more
Provides a list of organizations that gift funding to a project and/or individual related to arts and culture. There are several different levels of public funding available to artists and arts, culture and heritage organizations, as well as a wide range of private funding avenues. Learn more
Aims to celebrate, elevate, and support the range of creative people, projects, and organizations who contribute to Vancouver’s diverse creative stories. Learn more
Provides grants to arts and culture organizations for projects that benefit residents of the region. They can be applied to the many steps in the process including creation, production, dissemination, and audience development. Learn more
Makes grants for cultural, educational and charitable purposes within the Province of British Columbia. Learn more
Welcomes applications for grant funding from community-led organizations that are dedicated to helping people in Vancouver’s inner city improve their lives. They fund innovative solutions to issues such as homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, poverty, food security and access to nutritious food, mental and physical health challenges, addiction and more. Learn more
Offers grants for community projects that help build healthy, engaged, accessible, and sustainable communities across the City of Vancouver. They support essentially organizations that serve the needs of children or vulnerable communities. Learn more
Supports non-profit organizations working to advance sustainable, equitable, and socially just land use and real estate practices in British Columbia. Learn more
Community Foundations invest in local initiatives that help to make Canadian communities better places to live, work and play.
Click here to find your local Foundation.
You can also find National Grants and Funding options here.
You may know Park People from one of our microgrant programs, such as the TD Park People Grants. Through these programs, we provide small amounts of funding to community groups and NGOs to organize activities and events in their local parks.
That all sounds great – but why do we do this? Why are events in parks important? How do grants fit into Park People’s larger goals for creating change in city parks? This post explores these questions and shines a light on some of the tensions and challenges of providing microgrants.
City parks have unrealized potential to promote human wellbeing, biodiversity and climate resilience. Too many people living in Canadian cities cannot easily access high-quality green spaces with amenities and activities that enrich their lives. Neighbourhoods such as my own (in the ward of Davenport in Toronto) are very vulnerable to the increasing heat waves we face because of a lack of trees and green space. The parks that we do have are precious, but they are not neutral spaces. For many reasons, they do not feel safe or promote a sense of belonging for everyone.
One of Park People’s early tenets was that when communities get involved, parks get better. Communities are full of people with energy, ideas, and talents. They understand the opportunities to improve their local parks and the challenges specific to their community. With the right resources, their work can be much more sustainable and responsive than an initiative led by an outside group like Park People. So, our guiding question is: How do we support community leaders in realizing the potential of their local parks?
Our network’s community groups have varied goals, from growing food to promoting biodiversity and supporting mental health. Regardless of their focus area, park events are a great way to build strategic support and awareness for their initiatives. They are joyful and fun, providing an enticing entry point for engaging city staff, fellow community members and local politicians to talk about a vision for the park or the wider community.
Events also have a lot of inherent value, even when they don’t tie into a bigger plan. Our research and program evaluations show that park events build a sense of social connection and belonging, making people feel happier and less isolated. In 2024, these social ties are critical to addressing the pandemic’s mental and physical health repercussions and preparing us to support each other through the ongoing climate crisis challenges, such as urban heat waves and floods.
The diversity of events that groups organize is inspiring. They range from programming to support families with neurodiverse children in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park to hands-on mushroom-growing workshops in Ville de Deux-Montagnes outside Montreal. These events tell us the rich story of what is happening in Canadian city parks so that we can make the case for more resources and support from governments and other stakeholders.
Through microgrants, we can fund groups too small or new to have non-profit status. Although the amounts are small, they help offset the costs of volunteering, especially in lower-income communities. By keeping our application processes simple and removing traditional fundraising barriers (such as the need for non-profit status), people can spend their limited time bringing their ideas to life, trying out new things, and cultivating other support like help from their local city councillor. And at a systems level, we are doing our part in a small way to try to redistribute resources and power within the parks sector.
Offering grants also encourages groups to get in touch with us. Once we are in touch, we can offer other types of support, such as training workshops, coaching, and peer connections. We learn so much about what’s happening and what folks need and dream of doing through applications and conversations. In 2023, we offered phone call applications for smaller grant amounts. There was a groundswell of new groups that stepped forward.
In our annual survey, park groups tell us that their number one need is more funding. Microgrants are a way for us to respond to this need. They also help us build group capacity and relationships to set grantees up to access larger funding in the future.
Park People has been providing microgrants or small honoraria in some form since 2014. We have learned a lot over the years and are still learning.
We are inspired by trust-based philanthropy, which ‘seeks to transform the relationships between philanthropic organizations and non-profits by identifying systemic inequalities and addressing inherent power imbalances,’ as Jennifer Brennan and Shereen Munshi define the term in this article on Indigenous philanthropy. Even though we are a very small-scale funder relative to others, the key principles of identifying systemic inequalities and inherent power imbalances in your ways of working are very relevant. That is why we are continually reflecting and working on:
Providing funding creates an unequal power dynamic between Park People and the groups in our network. This can make it more challenging for groups to provide us with honest feedback on our programs. We do our best to mitigate this by keeping our granting process separate from our evaluation activities, but that introduces another challenge.
Groups that are very engaged in our other program activities, such as our network gatherings, training workshops, conferences and other events, can be particularly disappointed when they don’t receive a microgrant from us. It doesn’t feel great when you have put a lot into engaging with Park People to receive a no on your grant application.
How can providing funding be part of a reciprocal and not transactional relationship? We are excited about exploring more participatory approaches to granting that centre decision-making in the hands of community members, which could allow us to navigate this tension better.
Park People supports community park groups and NGOs following a tiered support model. Microgrants are intended to help groups get started or get established in their community, but in some cases, groups evolve to a stage where $1500 or $2000 is too small to be worth applying for. This is a success story, but it means that the microgrants Park People has available to offer do not match the needs of many groups.
We do our best to connect these groups to larger funding opportunities through fundraising workshops, tailored sessions to support groups in applying for specific grants like TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, and our funding web page which features links to dozens of grants. These activities are well-attended and valued by participants and are consistent with our goal to build the capacity of groups rather than engage in local parks ourselves. But they are more complex than providing a microgrant. ‘Success’ becomes harder to define and talk about.
As Park People’s network grows and as parks became more central to people’s lives during the pandemic, the number of people applying for grants has increased significantly. This means we are saying no to more people every year. There is an ongoing tension between wanting to encourage many people to get engaged in parks and not wanting to waste people’s time participating in grant application processes where their odds of success are low.
We are currently reflecting on the pros and cons of trying to expand the availability of our microgrants versus building up other types of support for the groups in our network. There is probably no perfect answer. In the short term, we are finding creative ways to meet this demand. For example, some of our recent and planned changes to our microgrants include:
2021-2023:
2024:
In the longer term, Park People does not envision a permanent role for ourselves in funding park groups. We believe that larger institutions like municipalities should review how decision-making and power-sharing work in their parks and public spaces. They have the resources to provide more systematic and continuous support for community-led initiatives. Ultimately, we dream of the groups in our network being able to spend more time enriching their communities and parks, and less time fundraising. Systemic changes, such as reforming park permitting processes or dedicating staff to community engagement on an ongoing basis, are critical.
Returning to our guiding question – how do we support community leaders in realizing their local parks’ potential to enhance well-being and resilience? Microgrants that fund events and activities in those parks are one tool in our support toolbox for community leaders. As you have read in this post, they are not the be-all and end-all of support for community leaders, and they don’t meet the needs of every group.
Engage and learn with us
Are you a non-profit that provides microgrants or has in the past? What did you learn? Are you a community member who has accessed or tried to access Park People’s grants? Tell us your thoughts on microgrants – the good, the bad, and what Park People can do to improve.
Further reading
Fundraising is a great way to build the capacity of your community park group. Below are some key provincial and municipal grants that could help fund your next awesome park project in Ontario.
City of Toronto Neighbourhood Climate Action Grant (Toronto): Supports resident-led and community group climate action projects at the neighbourhood-level. Learn more
City of Toronto PollinateTO Grant (Toronto): Funds pollinator habitat creation projects that educate and engage the community. Learn more
Park People Toronto Microgrants (Toronto): Supports community groups to host an environmentally focused event to connect, celebrate nature, build collective capacity and champion Toronto’s ravines, parks, and green spaces. Learn more on our Sparking Change and InTO the ravines page
City of Toronto Indigenous Climate Action Grant: Funds Indigenous-led projects that help to address the climate crisis and improve resilience. Learn more
Ontario Community Environment Fund (Ontario): Supports community-based activities like shoreline cleanups, habitat restoration and tree planting. Learn more
Landscape Ontario Chapter Bursary Program (Ontario): Support multiple small-scale projects that benefit various communities and neighbourhoods in the region. Learn more
City of Toronto Local Leadership Grant (Toronto): Funds resident-led groups helping inspire neighbourhoods and advance key themes in the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy. Learn more
City of Toronto Community Crisis Response Fund (Toronto): Offers financial assistance for projects that address a specific community crisis and contribute to community healing. Learn more
City of Toronto Identify ‘N Impact Grants Grants (Toronto): Funds grassroots youth-led groups working to advance the City’s Toronto Youth Equity Strategy. Learn more
Ontario Community Changemakers (Ontario): Helps young Ontario residents to spark new ideas and invigorate change in their local communities.Learn more
The Ontario Trillium Foundation (Ontario): Helps many types of organizations and communities deliver programs and services with direct community benefit for the people of Ontario. Learn more
Kiwanis Club of Toronto Foundation (Toronto): Provides an Arts and Culture Grant and a Mentorship and Leadership Grant to organizations to support their work with children and youth in the community. Learn more
Evergreen Community Spotlight: Supports innovative and community-centred programs and activities to animate Evergreen Brick Works. Learn more
City of Toronto Arts & Culture Grants (Toronto): Supports community-based organizations that contribute significantly to community capacity, equitable access, well-being, diversity, civic participation and civic cohesion, through art and cultural events. Learn more
City of Toronto Indigenous Arts & Culture Partnerships Fund (Toronto): Provides funding for community groups that create new opportunities and visibility for Indigenous-led arts and culture. Learn more
Toronto Arts Council Animating Toronto Parks (Toronto): Provides funding to professional artists, organizations and artists collectives to create and present free arts programming in selected Toronto parks located outside of the downtown core. Learn more
ArtReach Youth Programming (Toronto): Supports community-based arts programming by and for youth (13-29) artists from equity-deserving communities. Learn more