Infrastructure

Minor Infrastructure Funding

Round 2 Funding for Fiscal Year 2020-2022 opens May 7!

The National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) is pleased to announce that applications for Round 2 of the Minor Infrastructure Funding will open on May 7, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. (EDT)! The NAFC has been awarded a total of $2.4 million from Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) to distribute funding to Friendship Centres for minor infrastructure projects.

APPLICATION FORM: NAFC Minor Infrastructure Distribution Funding - Application Form [PDF - 72.2 KB]

For any questions or to submit your application, please send an email to Shady Hafez at shafez@nafc.ca. 

*NOTE* - Friendship Centres located in Alberta, Saskatchewan or Quebec, must submit their applications directly to their Provincial/Territorial Association (PTA).

Funding streams
Funding categories
Application process
Application review and allocation
Background and future funding opportunities

Funding streams

The NAFC will accept applications within the three following funding streams:

• Small scale: 0-$50,000
• Medium scale: $50,000-$100,000
• Large scale*: $100,000 – $250,000

Please note: The NAFC will accept applications from projects that are over $250,000, however they will need to be considered in line with other prioritized requests.

Funding categories

The NAFC will accept applications in the two following categories for this funding round:

• Urgent requests (6 months): Minor infrastructure projects (under $1 million dollars) that need to be completed within the next six months in order to prevent any disruption to Friendship Centre programming and services.
• Essential requests (7-12 months): Minor infrastructure projects (under $1 million dollars) that focus on community need, accessibility, creating greener Friendship Centres, or improving energy efficiency. Considerations will also be made for Friendship Centres that need to renovate space to accommodate new COVID-19 restrictions or ensure increased health and safety in a Friendship Centre.

Application process

Provincial/Territorial Associations and Friendship Centres will be provided with an application form to submit their infrastructure needs in line with the above-mentioned parameters.

Applications will open on: May 7^th, 2021 at noon and will remain open until all funds have been exhausted.

The application form will include: main contact person, brief description of the infrastructure request, total cost of the project and selection of funding stream and category.

Please send completed applications to Shady Hafez at shafez@nafc.ca with the exception of Friendship Centres located in Alberta, Saskatchewan or Quebec, must submit their application directly to their PTA.

Application review and allocation

The NAFC will review applications in house and will consult with PTAs on the prioritizing of the funded projects. With regards to allocations, the NAFC will not pursue an equal allocation and instead will work with PTAs to ensure an equitable distribution of funds based on regional/community needs and urgency.

To fairly distribute funding amongst our Membership, the NAFC has created a centralized application process, whereby Friendship Centres can complete an application with their infrastructure requests based on the parameters set in this framework. The NAFC will review all applications and award funding at their discretion, in order to ensure that there is a balance of regional projects.

Background and future funding opportunities

In Round 1, which was distributed in fiscal year 2019-2020, ISC awarded the NAFC $2.3 million in infrastructure. To determine FC infrastructure needs, the NAFC gathered funding requests from FCs, which totaled roughly $10.6 million–resulting in a lack of funding for roughly $8.3 million. The NAFC is aware that the funds awarded in Round 2 will similarly not meet all of our FCs infrastructure needs.

The NAFC is engaged on the next three to four years of infrastructure funds being rolled out by ISC for both minor capital projects (projects under $1 million) and major capital projects (projects over $1 million). In preparation for this, the NAFC will look to FCs and PTAs to support information collection on current and future infrastructure needs.

In addition to our work with ISC, the NAFC is also pursuing additional infrastructure opportunities to either leverage the funds we have or to ensure other and larger pockets of funds are available to FCs. This work is on-going, and the NAFC will provide updates as they are available.