The Prince Rupert Economic Development Corporation (or PREDC) will be offering two free workshops to provide non-profit groups with information on the annual Community Enhancement Grant. The duo of workshops will provide partakers with all the generals of the grant process, while providing tips and suggestions on the writing aspect of the application and giving people a venue for any questions they may have about the grant program.
“There are quite a few people that rely on grant writing throughout the year to fund various non-profits, so I think anytime you have a chance to increase your skills and ability in any field it’s worth while to do that, especially when it’s a free service being offered,” said Derek Baker, Economic Development Officer for the City of Prince Rupert.
The interactive workshop sessions will be taking place at City Hall in Council Chambers on Friday, August 24 and again a week later on Friday, August 31, with both sessions taking place from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.
But wait; didn’t the City of Prince Rupert say they weren’t going to be accepting any new grant applications for 2013 back in April?
In fact, not only did council say that they weren’t going to be accepting new Community Enhancement Grant submissions, they also decided that they wouldn’t be increasing the amount of any of the requests, with many grant application amounts being cut in size.
“The idea essentially was to use the Community Enhancement Grant to do some basic grant writing best practice training. So the value for people attending would be more than the Community Enhancement Grant, it would be for all grant writing. We’re using the Community Enhancement Grant as a scenario to learn these basic grant writing techniques,” explained Baker.
“Grants are very transferable, so it’s more along the lines of using this as a means to teach best practices in grant writing.”
Baker admits that this could potentially mean more applications to the City for the Community Enhancement Grant, but it could also mean many applications that have been on the fringe of being funded could potentially become better applications for the City to consider.
Anyone interested in attending the workshop is asked to confirm their interest to Blair Mirau at 250-627-0913 no later than August 23 and August 30.