Community Arts Organizations Operating Grant Program

Melissa Tuplin: All right. We’ll give it another couple of minutes and then I’ll jump in.

All right. Well, I want to honour everyone’s time on what looks like a beautiful evening. So we’ll get started and folks can continue to join us as we move along into the presentation.

So good afternoon, everyone. I’m really excited to welcome you to the online information session for the Community Arts Organizations Operating Grant. My name is Melissa Tuplin, and I’m the Director of Community Investment and Impact, and I am joined today by members of the Community Investment team here at Calgary Arts Development. So you will have seen as you joined that we are recording this information session today, and the recording will be published online, so please feel free to turn your camera off and please ensure that your microphone is muted for the presentation.

The question and answer section of our information sessions are always edited out and are not published as part of the recording. So because we are not sharing the questions and answers, we’re going to hold all questions until the end to make it easier for us to edit the recording. But do feel free to capture your questions in the chat as they come up and the team will either respond directly or help me address them at the end of the session.

I do want you to know that I am reading directly off a script today to ensure that our interpretation and the transcription process for the video recording is clear and easier.

So today we will speak to information that has already been shared in the program guidelines and provide context about changes to the operating grant program for 2026, and we’ll first focus specifically on giving instructions and advice on how to build your application. We’re not going to touch deeply on every section of the guidelines today, so whether you have joined us here live or are now watching the recording, please take time to read through those documents in full before applying. And of course, reach out early if you have questions or need any support and a member of our team will go ahead and paste the link to those guidelines in the chat for you to grab.

So, while I am pleased to be presenting this information for you today, your contacts going forward for your application to this program will be members of our Community Investment team. If you have questions about the program itself, eligibility or feedback on your application, please contact the Community Investment Specialists, Perpetual Atife and Areum Kim. If you have any technical questions about the online grant portal, your account, or any other technical matters, please contact our Community Investment Systems Lead, Van, or our Community Investment Assistant, Gladys. Myself and Community Investment Manager Alan Rosales are also working closely on this program and will be in attendance at assessment and during funding decision making. And of course, the team will lead me in on application questions and concerns as needed. We’ll be happy, of course, to support you through this process and simply ask that you reach out as early as possible.

If you have not received an operating grant from us before and are a new applicant, please note that you do have an additional step to go through before getting access to the full application, so beginning the process as early as possible is really critical.

Before we proceed any further, I want to take this time to acknowledge the land on which we have gathered here, albeit virtually, to host this information session, and on which we continue to do our work. We acknowledge that the land we gather on, Mohkinsstsis, is the ancestral territory of the Siksikaitsitapi — the Blackfoot people — comprising the Siksika, Kainai and Piikani Nations, as well as Treaty 7 signatories, the Tsuut’ina Nation and the Îyârhe Nakoda Bearspaw, Chiniki and Goodstoney First Nations. Today this land is home to the Otipemisiwak Métis Government Districts 5 and 6 as well as many First Nations and Inuit from across Turtle Island.

And in the context of our funding programs, we really believe in sharing these land acknowledgments and sitting in these land acknowledgments in recognition that there has been art, music and dance and storytelling on this land since time immemorial. And it’s in the spirit of this land and the people that we do our work and continue that tradition of storytelling and gathering and art and music. So I invite you to reflect on your own relationship with the land and reconciliation as you consider your applications to this program.

Additionally, as a public funder, we have a responsibility to ensure equitable access to public funding as we envision a city where all artists have the freedom, agency and platform to share and amplify their stories, art, cultures and experiences. A city where Calgarians of all backgrounds can access, create and participate in art as part of their everyday lives.

We are dedicated to addressing and working to eliminate institutional inequity in our programs, policies and practices. My colleagues and I are accountable to ensuring that the lines of communication are welcoming, clear and open, and that our application and assessment processes are fair and deeply considerate. While we have been continuing to expand and improve our processes and policies around equity, accessibility and accommodation, we still have a long way to go.

We aim to continue building relationships and learning from our communities, particularly those most directly affected, about the specific challenges that exist in granting and working to create more equitable systems for everyone.

So the definitions on the screen are taken from our Strategic Framework agreement, Ákáakomatapoap, and what we use to define and guide equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in our own work.

This Strategic Framework is the foundation on which the updated operating grant program was designed, and you are all individual contributors to aspects of the strategy as applicants and grantees. I’m going to refer to the framework and these definitions as we go through the program information, and I believe a member of the team has shared a link to the framework in the chat as well.

So we understand that our programs and processes create barriers to access for many artists and organizations who want to apply. In recognition of these barriers, our Applicant Support & Accessibility Policy is available for those who may need support from program staff or financial assistance to access support, from someone outside of Calgary Arts Development. So this could include support for any part of the granting process, whether that be understanding our programs and who is eligible, and deciding if you want to apply or not, creating and submitting a grant application, or a support after receiving a grant, such as, excuse me, such as understanding your grant agreement, sharing project updates or submitting a final report.

So some examples of accommodations are: translation of written materials into other languages, transcription of verbal meetings or audio and video recordings into a written document, and language interpretation for phone or video of meetings. We also can accept video and audio applications. So this means that if you would prefer to answer application questions verbally, you can submit an audio or video recording of yourself, and our staff can help you record your responses using an online platform.

We can also provide assistance for general grant writing advice. We’ll work one on one with applicants and develop accommodations through conversation and check ins. Our team can assist you over the phone, in person or online, and help is available for applicants even if they choose not to apply for the program. If you need help or have questions about accessibility and the supports available, please contact any member of our team.

We can also provide information about other community resources for established, emerging, newcomer, refugee or immigrant artists.

So we have been undergoing a review and analysis of our operating grant program for many years, analyzing historical data, reviewing community feedback from applicants, grantees and assessors, and undertaking research about what other funders do. Some of you in the room here may have participated in one of our data interactive sessions or our focus groups. So we heard clearly that operating grants continue to be a critical source of revenue for arts organizations, and that increasing financial precarity and unpredictable markets are pressurizing the nonprofit sector.

We heard that the voluntary sector is facing challenges recruiting and retaining volunteers and staff. We heard that growing awareness and focus on reconciliation, equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility is welcomed and valued by our community but are sometimes accompanied by a lack of clarity from funders about what is expected of organizations and how it impacts their funding and their work.

We know that having the same amount of application and reporting requirements for all organizations, regardless of size and grant amount, does not take into account unique factors like organizational structure and capacity. And we also know that the types of challenges and pressures that organizations face, as well as their goals and aspirations, vary based on their organizational structure, mandate and total scale, and that historical access to funding amounts often depended more on when an organization happened to enter the program, and how much money was available at the time, than their impact in community.

The changes to this program are in response to what we have heard and are an opportunity for us to more meaningfully assess organizations based on their mandate and purpose, set criteria and requirements that are relevant and appropriate to organizations contexts, and create more capacity for our own staff to provide applicant support.

So, as you’ve seen, the most significant change that we’ve made is to formally split the program into separate programs for community arts organizations and for professional arts organizations. Historically, the program has been assessed through program streams of similar disciplines and then similar budget sizes, but splitting the program entirely allows us to both develop guidelines, criteria and reporting requirements that are unique to each and run them on offset timelines and alternate years.

We currently fund almost 200 organizations, which is no longer possible to assess in a single cycle within our current staffing levels. And before I go any further, I want to state really clearly that there is no hierarchy or value difference between this program for community arts organizations and the program for professional arts organizations. Each program, including the length of the cycle, is designed with the intention to receive and assess application material within the needs and the context of the organizations in each program.

Additionally, while the starting budget for each program will be the total of the current grant amount within it, we do not currently have a target maximum budget or per cent share between the two programs. I will speak to more how the funding decisions will be made later in the session.

The general characteristics that we looked at when defining what a community arts organization is for the purpose of this program, may apply to you in full or only partially, so please know that I am speaking in averages here.

The Operating Grant for Community Arts Organizations will be committed on a two-year cycle for funding years 2026 and 2027, and the Professional Arts Organizations Program will be committed on a four-year cycle for 2027 to 2030. The decision to push assessment of the program for professional arts organizations to the fall of ’26 is because Calgary Arts Development’s own four-year City of Calgary budget will not be confirmed until late 2026, and we felt it most appropriate to align those cycles directly.

The Community Arts Organizations Operating Grant is on a two-year cycle for a couple of reasons. The first is that we know that the administrative effort of completing grant application and reporting requirements can be burdensome for any nonprofit organization, and even more so for organizations that may not have many or any dedicated paid staff to undertake the work, which is a characteristic of many community organizations.

We are working to decrease application and reporting requirements for community arts organizations, and a two-year cycle allows us to decrease requirements in both reports and applications since check-ins through assessment will be more frequent. A two-year cycle means the organizations will only be expected to speak about their plans and aspirations looking ahead on a shorter term and can make funding requests and see changes to their grant amounts every two years instead of every four.

The four-year cycle for professional arts organizations will come with higher levels of application reporting and data collection requirements, and because many, but not all, are planning out operational and programming activity on longer terms.

The other major change is the introduction of standing assessment committees for the programs. We are excited about this opportunity to begin introducing assessors to your organizations, as they will spend time developing a deep understanding of your work, with the same assessors reviewing your applications and reports in overlapping terms, ensuring that their historical context and knowledge will be retained.

Assessors will be expected to experience your work so that their knowledge of your organization is not just conceptual from reading your application and reviewing a few minutes of support materials. Assessment committees are always made up of community members and arts professionals, but it is not possible for us to recruit a small committee that already knows every organization in a stream, so the standing committee allows us to begin to build and retain awareness of the organizations that we fund, helping staff better monitor impact.

For current grantees in the operating grant program, you were invited to apply to the program in the online grant platform on September 9th, so you would have received an email from a member of the community investment team with instructions on how to access it.

If you do not see the application in Open Opportunities, please reach out to us as we may be waiting on a response from you to confirm which program you intend to apply to. For new applicants or organizations who did not receive an operating grant from us in 2025, you’ll need to submit a Letter of Intent by October 1st. You can find this by opening the online grant platform and selecting the Letter of Intent from Open Opportunities.

New applicants must be screened by our program staff through this process, as it is how we will determine if you are eligible for our grant programs and if your organization fits best in the Community Arts Organizations Program or the New Applicants — Professional Arts Organizations One-Year Program. So the sooner you submit the Letter of Intent, the sooner you will receive access to the application form, as we are reviewing them as they come in now.

The full application deadline is October 22nd. You’ll be notified of the results by mid-December, just before the winter break, and funds will be released beginning in February 2026, as that is when we receive our funds from the City of Calgary.

Our definition for community arts organizations for the purpose of this operating grant program is based on organizational purpose and mandate. We know that many organizations have multifaceted mandates that may touch aspects of both the community and professional arts organizations definitions, so we’re looking for what you would consider your primary purpose. This is really important as it will determine the context and focus of how assessors will be considering your organization’s work.

Community Arts Organizations are considered by Calgary Arts Development to be non-profit organizations who create access for community participation in the arts, including the creation, production or presentation of artistic work by youth, amateur or non-professional artists, service support or education for youth, amateur or non-professionals, and/or a focus on the local social or recreational aspects of art and community. And the local social and recreational aspects, particularly when it comes to social, this could be considered in a variety of ways. Social could refer to socializing or the recreational kind of gathering of community around art, it could also refer to organizations whose mandates are around socially engaged art, or creating a certain type of social dialogue around a certain community. So there are a variety of ways to consider what that looks like, and of course, our team is available to talk about that in the context of your mandate.

I also want to be clear again that being considered a community arts organization in this program does not mean that your organization does not operate professionally. It doesn’t mean that your organization does not produce professional calibre works, or pay artists or staff. You could do all of those things and still fit best in the community arts organizations stream. The focus is on why: Why do you do your work and who do you intend to serve as your primary goal here?

I also spoke a lot about organizational capacity for granting processes earlier in this presentation. We also have an exception case policy for this program, and we’ll consider professional organizations with a mandate to support professional artists in this Community Arts Organizations Program if their operations are similar to volunteer-run organizations, to help lessen that administrative burden. So I need to clarify that the section of the guidelines that talks about this mentions that professional arts organizations may be considered for the community arts organizations operating grants if their revenues are under $300,000.

That is not a revenue cap for this program. There will be organizations of many budget sizes in this program. This is just a consideration around size and scale that will allow us to have a conversation with organizations on a case-by-case basis.

In addition to the mandate eligibility, all organizations applying for operating funding from Calgary Arts Development must meet our full eligibility requirements. So this slide contains a shortened list than what is in the guidelines, so I recommend reviewing the guidelines in full, but I do want to point out a couple of changes that have been made. Organizations already receiving funding as an operating grant client will have already received notice of their eligibility by email.

We have added a minimum years of operation requirement of two or more years, so you do not have to have been registered as a non-profit for the entirety of those two years, but you do need to have been operating like a non-profit for that time. So if you have only recently incorporated or registered as a non-profit organization, please reach out to program staff to discuss. We will likely still have you submit a Letter of Intent, but there may be some specific discussions that we need to have about the type of information that you’ll have to provide for us to assess your eligibility.

Additionally, we have also added a requirement for 50 per cent of your organization’s board members to be living in Alberta. And again, if you do not currently meet this requirement, please reach out to a program staff member to discuss, and we’ll chat about what your plan is to begin to meet that requirement in the future.

This slide contains a shortened list of ineligible organizations. Once again, current grantees will have received notice of their eligibility by email. And if you are a new applicant and have questions about this list of ineligible organizations, please reach out to us to discuss.

The operating grant program provides virtually unrestricted operating funds on an annual basis. We allocate funding on a calendar funding year, but you may use them in any fiscal year according to your own revenue recognition practices. There is a list of ineligible activities and expenses in the program guidelines. You will also be held to funding conditions that are laid out in an investment agreement, which outlines how public funding cannot be used for illegal or fraudulent activities, acts of hate and political advocacy, amongst other things.

I mentioned the standing committees earlier. The full Assessor Terms of Reference are published on our site, and I do recommend you review them. Committees will be confirmed in overlapping terms to ensure that there is a mix of new perspective and assessors who have discussed your organization before in each application cycle. Obviously, this first term will be the beginning of the cycle, and these assessors will then spend the next two to three years, after reviewing your application, experiencing your work. They may also be asked to review your reporting material. They’ll participate in fair notice policy flag review and will assess your application for the next cycle beginning in 2028.

The introduction of the standing committee is also with the hope that we can continue to streamline application requirements. When members of a standing committee have developed a deep understanding of the organizations, we are hoping that we’ll be able to pull back on the amount of contact setting information that you’ll have to provide in writing. Again, as this is a work in progress, we will be evaluating the committee structure over the next two years to inform application design for the next cycle.

If you are interested in becoming an assessor, there will be information at the end of the presentation about how to nominate yourself.

Assessors will review each application and score it on their own and then meet as a committee to discuss each application with staff. Staff will take the assessors’ scores, recommendations and comments and make the final funding decision, which will include our own considerations, including how organizations align with their peer organizations and other contextual information about the makeup of the portfolio and arts ecosystem.

While assessors’ primary source for their consideration is the content of your application material, you do need to be aware that any publicly available information about your organization, such as web content or information on your social media accounts, as well as their own experiences of your work, is all valid information that can be brought into the assessment room, so it will benefit your application to direct their attention to support material or information that exists on your website or social accounts, as that can provide valuable information and context.

As I’ve said, if you are a current grantee, you will have received an email with instructions for how to access the application and platform last week. If you did not receive an email from us and cannot see this application in the Open Opportunities section, please reach out. I’m not going to go through every single point in the application checklist, so please review the guidelines for all of the application requirements and reach out to program staff with questions.

In this next section, I am going to speak in detail about how the program criteria line up with the application checklist and give some guidance on how to respond.

So again, if you are a new applicant, you will find the Letter of Intent in the Open Opportunities section. This will ask you a few short questions about your organizational mandate and size of operations, which we will use to determine if you are eligible, and if you are eligible, whether you will apply to the Community Arts Organizations Program or the New Applicant — Professional Arts Organizations One-Year Program. We are now working to turn these letters of intent around and notify you within a couple of business days so we can give you access to the application as soon as possible. Letters of Intent submitted on the deadline of October 1st will be reviewed by October 3rd, and as the deadline for the full application is October 22nd, the earlier you submit this, the better.

The eight program criteria that you will be scored on have been generally aligned to the four directions of our Strategic Framework, but we do not expect your own strategy or priorities to directly align with CADA’s. We are taking this opportunity to be more clear about how we see the individual contributions of each of our grantees, helping us move our strategy and vision for a creative, connected Calgary forward.

Each of the criteria statements line up directly with a section of the application to be clear about where you will put the information that will be scored. With that said, assessors will also be asked to consider your application holistically to ensure that you do not need to repeat yourself in multiple sections if there are aspects of your work that respond to multiple criteria statements.

Assessors will score each statement on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. Staff assign those statements numerical scores behind the scenes to come up with a total maximum a score of 100 per cent, and the reason that we do this is because we have found over the years that the agree to disagree statements are much more effective and helpful for assessors to articulate their reasoning and their case for their score, rather than using that numerical scale.

You’ve also heard me talk about how we are working to decrease application and reporting requirements for community arts organizations. For those of you who have written our operating grant applications in the past, eight sections probably seems like more work, not less. In the past, our criteria sections have essentially been really big buckets of artistic impact, community impact and organizational governance, so our goal here is to give you the opportunity to speak much more specifically and succinctly to specific questions where you can see a direct tie to your scoring, rather than write longer essay style responses to large, vague criteria and guessing essentially at what you’re supposed to include in each of the sections. So please feel free to write in point form, if that’s more comfortable for you, give clear, specific answers. We have not added minimum or maximum word counts to each section, as we want to give you as much or as little room as you need to respond to the questions, but we’re really, really encouraging folks to not feel like you need to write full, long paragraph-style essays in response to each of the eight criteria.

So the first set of criteria statements are about how your organization contributes to an inclusive and diverse arts ecosystem in Calgary. In our four strategic directions, this is how your organization contributes to purpose. These statements and the accompanying application questions are about how your organization’s individual contribution helps create a healthy arts ecosystem and shares leadership for creating an inclusive and diverse arts sector.

When we talk about a diverse arts ecosystem in Calgary, we do not mean that every organization must serve everyone. The diversity of the ecosystem is because each organization advances their own mandate and serves their own community, and that diverse and inclusive ecosystem is the sum of its parts. It’s CADA’s responsibility to ensure that, as a whole, our funding portfolio is representing and serving all Calgarians, and that we are encouraging the organizations we fund to consider how their own work contributes to that.

Diverse and inclusive ecosystems require accessible and equitable practices in the sector, which means considering how you are addressing the barriers to access that exist for the people who you work with and serve.

The first written section of the application generally aligns with the first criteria statement, the organization clearly describes and understands its role in the arts ecosystem, including those it considers artistic peers. This section asks you to speak about the role you play in the ecosystem, how your artistic mandate contributes to the sector, and who your artistic peers are. There is a question later on in the application where you can speak in more detail about your programming. So here we recommend focusing your response really just on your overall artistic mandate and purpose.

When we think about ecosystems, we think about interconnectedness and how the system works together, which is why we’re asking about artistic peers, your peers, maybe other organizations who work locally, nationally or internationally. This isn’t about pitting organizations against each other, and we are not asking you to make a case for why you are better than other organizations. We are looking for organizations to understand how they work alongside their peers in the sector, to create a solid and sustainable ecosystem.

So perhaps you work with a specific community or focus on a specific artistic genre. Perhaps your organization is a feeder organization for another part of the sector. Be specific about how your work contributes to Calgary. Again, we do not expect or want organizations to be everything to everyone.

This section generally aligns with the second criteria statement. The organization clearly describes and understands the barriers for audiences, participants, staff or volunteers to access its work, and its plan to address and remove those barriers. So, in answering this question, I would recommend that you refer again to the definitions of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility that I shared at the beginning of this session from our Strategic Framework.

In our grant programs, centring equity in the arts sector means actively working to address the barriers to access that prevent people from feeling welcome, included in or participating in your work. How do you consider accessibility and inclusion when you design your programs? Are you working to uncover barriers that you might not be aware of yet? So this is a section that we recommend being very, very specific. This is not a test. We are not asking you to list every single systemic or historic barrier that could possibly ever exist for your organization. We want you to share two or three specific examples that you are actively working on. So maybe you’ve developed a venue accessibility policy. Maybe you provide language interpretation at your events. Perhaps you’ve realized that there is a cultural barrier that makes it hard for some people to feel like they can attend your work, and you want to address that.

The second set of criteria statements are about how your organization improves the quality of life for the people that you work with. In our four strategic directions, this is how your organization contributes to people. In our framework, people means nurturing the capacity of arts organizations and artists to flourish in the city. So for the organizations that we fund, this means that grantees are ensuring that they are working with people in safe, equitable and respectful ways.

So once again, this is an area to be specific. The list of examples of policies, practices or protocols is not a list of requirements that your organization must have, but having some protocols and policies in place does speak to your organizational governance and how your organization seeks to be in relationship with the people you work with. These don’t need to be formal parts of your board manual. These could be informal practices or ways of being that are embedded in your work. How do you apply these practices and stay accountable to them? Give two or three specific examples.

If you are able to, the support materials are a great place to share links or copies of the documents that you mentioned. We are not looking for you to describe in detail every aspect of your health and safety manual. If you have support material that you can just direct assessors’ attention to, this will save you some duplication of effort.

This question aligns with criteria statement four. The compensation strategy for any paid staff and artists, or its volunteer structure, is appropriate to the organization’s context. A core distinction between the program for community arts organizations and the program for professional arts organizations is that professional arts organizations will be required to pay professional artist fees according to their appropriate industry standard or fee schedule. This does not mean that community arts organizations are off the hook for paying artists. We will always advocate for artists and staff to be paid a living wage, this is part of the quality of life that we are seeking for arts professionals in Calgary. Not making the provision of professional artist fees a requirement in this program for community arts organizations is in the understanding that there is a strong sector of voluntary organizations and types of arts programming that may not have paid staff or artists, and when working with non-professionals, amateurs or youth, artist payments may not be relevant.

So your compensation structure will be assessed according to your mandate, context and total financial picture. So for example, if you are an organization that is entirely volunteer-run that presents concerts by professional artists, we’ll look at your board and committee structure and we’ll look at the artist fees you’re paying the professionals that you’re hiring. You can also feel free to speak to your aspirations and challenges when it comes to compensation in this section.

This third set of criteria statements are about how your organization creates opportunities for Calgarians to connect, participate, create and relate to the arts. In our four strategic directions, this is how your organization contributes to community. In this section, you will speak specifically about the arts programming you present and share with Calgarians and the communities of artists, participants and audiences you serve, as well as your impact on those communities.

So similar to the first section where you spoke about the role you play in the arts ecosystem, focus here specifically on your unique contributions. Because this application is for the 2026 and 2027 funding years, focus on your upcoming programming plans, as the programming form and support material that you’ll submit can demonstrate your past programming.

This question is where you’ll address both the fifth and sixth criteria statement. We did not separate those criteria into two questions because what is the programming, who is it for and how will it impact them are really deeply linked. So you’ve told us what your role is in the arts ecosystem. This is where you’ll tell us how you achieve and sustain it. And you’re getting so tired of me saying this, be specific. Please do not tell us that your work is for all Calgarians, as you described in the Barriers to Access section. We know that our organizations are working really hard to make all Calgarians feel welcome and invited to their work, but we also know that all Calgarians are not attending your work. That’s fine. Who is? What are the qualities and the characteristics of the communities who are participating in your work? Why are they leaning into it? So maybe it’s youth musicians and their parents. How are they experiencing a better life in Calgary because of your work?

I’ll also share that a common misconception about public funding programs, and specifically about Calgary Arts Development, is that we are always looking for growth. The impact of your work in community at the relationship level will always be of more value than just the total number of activities or audience members.

So remember that it’s CADA’s job to tell the story of the arts sector at the aggregate, and we do. We tell City Council every single year about the tens of thousands of events and the millions of audience members who participate in them, so we don’t need you to be always just thinking that it’s about more or telling us about more if that’s not what you’re focused on. We want you to tell us the why and the how. What is the experience of belonging that you create through your programming in your community?

And the final set of criteria statements are about how your organization uses your resources wisely. In our four strategic directions, this is how your organization contributes to resources. For the organizations we fund, this section is about leveraging the funds you receive from the city through CADA into strong planning, good resource management and thoughtful operations. And you know what I’m going to say, be specific. In almost all of these sections, two or three really specific, thoughtful examples in each section will go much further than a long essay that kind of tries to talk generally about everything that you do, which doesn’t get into much depth of the specifics of how you actually undertake your work. So assessors will want you to speak to both your aspirations and the challenges.

When we are making funding decisions in the operating program. We are looking holistically at an organization, which doesn’t just mean how the funds will be used towards all of the successful programs that you run. It also means considering how the funds will be used to address problems and create a more sustainable organization that can continue making good use of those funds into the future.

We are all deeply aware of the challenges that exist in the sector, so what are the specific barriers that are coming up to your organization to meet your goals?

In terms of goals and aspirations, again, remember we are not always looking for growth. So this could be about deepening your work in some area or increasing the quality of a program or stabilizing another. A goal could also mean letting go of something that isn’t serving you or considering a new business model or partnership.

So again, think about just ’26 and ’27. This is a two-year cycle, so we’re really just wanting you to tell us about the next couple of years. Remember that this is a standing committee and staff will be looking at your reports and applications, so are these things that you’ll be able to provide an update on? This is not necessarily to say that you’re going to be assessed in the future on if you achieved it, it’s totally okay to be come back to us and say, well, that didn’t work, here’s why. So what do you need to achieve these goals? Maybe it’s money, but it could also be access to time, resources, expertise or communities.

And the final couple of sections aligned to criteria statement eight. This organization does not present significant risk to its financial viability or unexplained disruption of activities or impact to community in the past, current or upcoming fiscal years.

This criteria will also be assessed through your financial statements and the financial form, but the governance and financial management structures that underpin your actual financials are a really important part of the assessment. So again, feel free to use the support material to reference longer documents. Please, this isn’t to say that we’re asking organizations to go deeply into your revenue recognition models in this section, like I said, if you have documents from your, you know, financial policies or manuals that you can just provide as background and speak generally about the policies and practices, that is totally okay, too. We don’t need to get into the deep, deep nitty gritty of your financial practices.

In addition, there is one final optional field called Open Space. So if there is anything that you weren’t able to share in any of the criteria sections and you really want to highlight it for the community committee, this Open Space section is available to include that. It is entirely optional. You will not be penalized if you don’t write anything into the Open Space section. Please, please do not feel that you need to just kind of come up with something to fill it in if you’ve already spoken to everything that you wanted to touch on through the criteria sections.

In addition to the written sections, you will be asked to submit financial statements and two forms. If you are a current grantee in the program, you may resubmit the financial form that you submitted earlier this year in February as part of your reporting. You can also feel free to make any updates or changes to it now that you are further along in the projection year beginning in 2025.

So you should have received an email from one of our program staff with a copy of the forms that we already approved earlier this year, and you can simply re-upload those or feel free to make changes.

If you are a new applicant, we highly, highly encourage you to attend one of our Open Offices or to reach out to program staff for an overview of how to complete the financial and programming forms. We will be checking those forms for accuracy and if you are successful in the program, you will be submitting similar forms as part of your reporting, so now is a really good time to learn how to complete them properly. All three columns in the form are required. Please take cautious note of those years, the forms are for fiscal years beginning in 2023, 2024 and 2025, not ending.

So at this point, this will mean that you’re submitting actual data for the fiscal year beginning in ’23, likely mostly all actual data for fiscal year beginning in ’24, unless your fiscal begins late in the calendar year, and likely fully projections for fiscal year beginning 2025.

If you are a CADAC client, you can submit your CADAC form. You don’t have to become a CADAC member to apply to our programs. And if you don’t know what CADAC is, don’t worry about it, that means you probably are or don’t have a CADAC number. This is an external program that is used by the Canada Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for their data collection. Our own forms are built to emulate or look similar to those forms.

Financial statements should be for your most recently completed fiscal year. For current grantees, that might mean that you are now submitting different statements than what you submitted earlier this year in your report. That’s awesome. The most up to date financial statements are always better. We do not currently have minimum audit requirements in this program, but if you have unaudited statements, they must be signed by two board members not involved in their creation, and we do require both your statement of operations and your balance sheet.

And the same deal for the programming form as the financial forms. If you do not have details of the programming for the year beginning in 2025, that’s totally fine, you can just enter placeholders. So we understand that for many organizations, you might know how many concerts you’re going to do, but you don’t know who the artists are or where they’ll be. That’s cool. We just kind of want to see how many activities in general you’re planning, so you can just put in concert number one, concert number two, concert number three, that’s fine.

For the first section, for fiscal year beginning in 2023, there is an optional column for each of your programs where you can enter actual attendance numbers. This is optional, it isn’t required. If you have them, I would recommend providing it. It’s really great context and information for assessors and staff to get a sense of how many people are attending or participating in each of your programs.

And I do also want to make a note about another section of the programming form. For each row you’ll see at the end of the sheet, there are three columns with drop-down lists where you can identify a specific community served, and we want to acknowledge that the language that we use in those drop-downs of LGBTQ, Aboriginal and multicultural do not align necessarily with the language that we now use to reference and speak about those communities. As we have collected data through this section for almost a decade, and we track it on a comparative year over year basis, it will require a pretty significant data cleaning project on our side to change that language. We are planning on doing that as part of our program evaluation and review process, so we do expect to see a change and update to that language in future years as we develop our new sets of reporting requirements.

Additionally, I want to be really clear that that specific Community Served section is intended for programs that are specifically designed for and with community. So, this section isn’t intended to identify every different type of group that might be showing up to your work. So, for example, if members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community attended your event, but the event was not specifically designed for, marketed to and actively intended to serve that 2SLGBTQIA+ community, do not select it from the drop-down. We love your audience members. Many of our organizations serve a variety of incredibly diverse audiences, but that’s passive participation and not what we’re intending to collect in this section, which is really around identifying when programs are designed specifically for communities. You’re not going to be penalized if those sections are blank. And in fact, it speaks better to your organization that you are being really clear and specific about when there is a specific community served.

And a final note on the topic of forms, for those organizations who have applied to this program before, you’re going to notice that we are not asking for the statistical form for this application process. And this is because we’ve found over the years that the form is really much more about reporting and is not as useful to the assessment process. Please do not stop collecting your statistics though, because you will still need to submit a statistical form for your reporting.

If you are a new applicant to the program, you will need to make a plan, if you don’t already, to collect some statistical data about your programming for the purpose of reporting. The statistical form collects numerical data on things like your number of public events, number of audience members, number of artists hired, things like that.

If you are interested in getting a sense of what you’ll be asked to report on, let us know. We’re happy to send you a copy of this year’s statistical form for your reference.

So Calgary Arts Development, for this new program, has also identified additional considerations that directly relate to our Commitment to Equity on behalf of the City of Calgary. The first consideration is that the organization is consistently led by, with, works with and serves an equity-deserving community as defined by our listed equity priority groups of Indigenous, Black, Persons of Colour, D/deaf persons, persons with disabilities, persons living with mental illness, and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals.

The additional consideration for organizations led by, with and for equity priority groups is tied directly to CADA’s definition of equity in our Strategic Framework, which acknowledges that there continue to be disparities and systemic barriers for individuals and communities who are members of these groups to access public funding and philanthropic support, and the purpose of the priority area bonus is to recognize organizations whose leadership, program design and mandate are specifically and actively centred in the lived experience of the specific equity-deserving community that they are serving.

Organizations with a commitment to equity who are doing work with equity-deserving communities whose programs are not led and designed by members of those communities will also speak to and be recognized for that work through the eight criteria, but will not be considered for this additional point. We are not asking organizations to share personal identifying information of staff in order to be considered, and we trust that organizations will be able to speak authentically to their work.

The second consideration is that the organization consistently and regularly offers arts programming outside of the inner city and downtown, in wards where lower amounts of annual arts activity occur. So there is a map linked in the guidelines that shows which wards will be considered. This consideration acknowledges the amazing work that has been done to develop Calgary’s arts activity and vibrancy in the inner city and downtown core, and we consider that and the work of organizations that happens in the inner city and downtown core to be a success.

It also recognizes that there are many areas of the city that have fewer activities. And we are hearing from Calgarians and councillors the desire to access arts experiences in their wards as well.

I want to note the use of the word ‘consistently.’ So this consideration is intended to recognize intentional, active and ongoing work and to really kind of advance the acknowledgment of that outside the downtown. This is not intended to push organizations to hurry and add one or two activities in an outer ward in a single year for an extra point. We are going to be looking at your past and upcoming programming. So this is really just around uplifting the conversation around activities that happen across the city of Calgary.

There is no additional section to speak to or make a case for either of these considerations. If you feel that your organization fits into one of them, you may use the Open Space section to highlight that for assessors, but we will be using the information already provided across the application to assess these considerations.

So assessors will rate each of these considerations on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree, ratings of strongly agree in both considerations will receive a maximum of five additional percent points, and then the number of additional points will scale down if only one of the considerations is rated highly, or if the total average rating is lower.

In the spirit of transparency and clarity, we have shared some general guidance on how funding decisions will be made for this program. For new applicants to the program, organizations that receive a total score below 65 per cent will not be successful in receiving an operating grant for the 2026 to 2027 cycle. I want to be clear here to say that this does not mean that organizations scoring above 65 per cent will automatically receive funding. It is highly likely that based on total competition, a higher score than 65 per cent will be required to receive funding. This is simply to say that any score below 65 will not be considered at all.

Earlier in this presentation I spoke about the challenges and disparities in the operating grant portfolio that we are attempting to address through the redesign of the program. The purpose of this assessment process is to consider each organization’s funding amount within the context of both their own work and impact in community, and in the context of the arts ecosystem and the grantees in the operating grant portfolio. So we are taking into consideration that a major factor for an organization’s starting grant amount was the amount of funds available in the year they entered into the program. So this is why we are returning to having organizations make a case for a funding amount in the program. An organization’s total score will not automatically result in grant increases or decreases, but of course, that will be a big factor in setting a direction for the funding decision. Actual funding amounts will be based on a combination of the total funds available, the total score, funding request rating, other considerations, ratings and comparison to peer organizations in the program stream.

With that said, we have shared some general guidance that allows us to budget for the program within our means for ’26 and ’27 and set some general expectations for organizations when you’re designing your funding request. So in general, we will cap changes to grant amounts at no more than 25 per cent within a single funding year. Organizations that score below 50 per cent will be considered for a grant reduction in line with what is quite a low score, and scores below 65 per cent are unlikely to be considered for an increase.

With that said, Calgary Arts Development staff may stray from our general guidance in special cases. So for example, if an organization’s starting grant amount is so small that a 25 per cent increase constitutes a very small actual dollar amount, or if an organization is significantly out of line from similarly assessed peer organizations, we may make larger adjustments to the grant amount to kind of right-size to those situations.

For all of our grantees, because funding amounts are set in multi-year cycles, we may also make changes incrementally over the term of the agreement. So, for example, an organization may receive a 10 per cent increase in 2026 and then an additional 10 per cent increase in 2027, or they might receive a 5 per cent decrease in year one, an additional 10 per cent decrease in year two, and making changes incrementally is part of our commitment to giving fair notice to organizations, to give them time to plan for changes to their funding amounts.

Because our own City of Calgary funding for 2027 to 2030 will be confirmed late next year, incrementally scaling out changes also allows us to commit funding amounts for 2026 within our current budget allocation with the expectation of further adjustments for ’27 when our new city budget is ratified.

So I shared how the funding decisions were made before I spoke about how to make your funding request in order to give you some sense of expectation for what you might receive that will help you come up with a funding request. So, again, this program intends to assess organizations on the appropriateness of their funding amount to their overall operations, ecosystem context and peer organizations in the program stream.

Your funding request will be rated on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree on the criteria statement: the funding request is clearly articulated, reasonable and appropriate to the organization’s overall revenues and expenses, and the current impact and amount of its activities in the community. This rating does not garner any additional points. It is used by staff and assessors to set a recommendation for the final funding decision.

We have very actively made this choice because it is important to us that applicants put the effort and work into making a case for your funding request. I will be very transparent and say here that, for example, organizations that request quadrupling of their current grant amount with no clear articulation of why, with the hopes that they get a portion of it, are unlikely to be successful in this program.

This is a program where kind of gambling a little bit, where playing that game of, oh, I’ll ask for X amount with the expectation that you’re going to receive much less, is not going to work well in your favour, because it is possible for an organization to score very highly across all of the criteria, but very low on the funding request consideration, if assessors feel that you have made an unreasonable or unarticulated request, and we are going to take both your score and your request rating into account when making decisions. So it is really important to explain how you made your calculations and how that funding will positively impact your organization.

In the application, you will be asked to request a specific annual funding amount. So note that this request should be for your annual grant in each of the years ’26 and ’27, not the total amount for the two years. You will be asked to provide a reasoning for how you came up with your funding request. Assessors and staff will be considering whether your request is reasonable, and that it is clearly described or calculated, and organizations could approach this in a variety of ways. While your actual operating grant is unrestricted and can be spent towards any area of your operations, there may be a specific operating expense line that you are seeking additional funds to cover. So, for example, you want to increase pay for your artistic director, so you would share the calculation of what that increased wage would be and how that adds on to your existing grant amount to come up with your total funding request, for example.

Some organizations could speak to how the increased funds would allow them to increase X number of rehearsal space rentals, or that the amount is calculated based on, inflation, a certain inflation percentage over the years. So however you decide to calculate and describe your funding request, please be really specific about what it means for your organization.

For current grantees, I shared that in general, we will not exceed a 25 per cent change to your grant amount in a single year. So we shared that to help set some general expectations and to help you plan for the future, so you’re not wildly guessing at what you might receive. However, you will not be expected or asked to cap your request based on that maximum, if that makes sense. So, for example, if your current grant amount is $10,000, we will not expect you to ask only for the, what, 25 per cent in one year? And then the second year will be, we’re looking for you to make a funding request that’s appropriate and reasonable to your organization. And because this is a two-year program, and you could see incremental increases in both funding years to get you closer to your request amount.

Your funding request also gives assessors a sense of your aspirations. So remember that the standing committee will review your application again in 2028, can track your progress across multiple cycles.

Not too many more slides, I promise. For current grantees in the programs, we still will need your reporting for the 2025 funding year on our usual timeline of mid-February. Because you will have just gone through this full application process, we are not going to ask you for any written information for that report, just the forms. And please note that the forms that you’re now resubmitting as part of this application process are from year 2024 reporting, so they can’t be used again for your 2025 report next February. The reason we still need the report submitted in February, rather than using information from this application, is that our reporting uses year over year comparative data, so it’s important that we receive the information on the same schedule of completed fiscal years in each report.

The forms for your 2025 report will ask for fiscal years beginning in ’24, ’25 and ’26, so you’ll receive a notification from us before the winter break with the correct forms and instructions on how to complete them, and the website will be updated with the correct downloadable forms as well, and you must submit your 2025 reporting in order to receive your 2026 funds. This is also part of the reason why we’re not asking you to re-complete the forms that you already submitted earlier this year and are allowing you to just simply upload the work that you already completed.

New applicants who are successful in the 2026 to 2027 program will not need to submit reporting next February ’26 because your activity this year was not funded by us. So your 2026 funds, if successful, will be released in February once we receive the money from the City, and then all grantees approved for funding in ’26 and ’27 will begin to submit reporting for the 2026 funding year in February ’27.

So, as I mentioned, we are now beginning the work to streamline the reporting requirements for this program, so we’ll provide those updated reporting requirements through next year and we’ll provide training and instructions as that becomes available.

My final slide is about the Fair Notice Policy, which is the kind of last major change that we’ve made for this program. The spirit of the Fair Notice Policy remains the same, which is that it is intended to provide organizations with fair notice over concerns about the viability of their organization and their grant, and to provide time to address those concerns before seeing any changes to their funding amount based on that risk.

We have simplified the process and policy and remain committed to addressing risk and concerns on a case-by-case relational basis with organizations.

For current grantees who are familiar with this policy, what this really looks like is that we have removed the specific financial deficit and liability ratio thresholds that were previously used to assess financial risk. So you might recall or be aware that previously the thresholds were a deficit of 10 per cent for two or more consecutive years, and a negative current liabilities to assets ratio. This streamlining is really just because those deficit and ratio thresholds are fairly arbitrary numbers that don’t necessarily reflect real risk after they leave the paper. So we will absolutely continue to assess financial health in application and report reviews, and we will work with organizations who are flagged to set mitigation plans and expectations to address concerns.

And of course, as always, in addition to the Fair Notice Policy and the conditions laid out in investment agreements, Calgary Arts Development, as a steward of public funds, reserves the right to revoke, reduce or suspend operating funding at any point with no notice in cases of sudden and severe risk to that public investment in cases of potentially illegal, hateful or fraudulent activity or behaviour by organizations or its staff. I do recommend reviewing the Fair Notice Policy on a fairly regular basis, just to kind of be aware of our commitment to you and in terms of our funding relationship, and it provides some context to our overall stewardship through our grant programs.

We’re coming to the end. If you’re interested in becoming an assessor, for this or any of our programs, you may nominate yourself or another individual. If you are interested in assessing the operating grant program, you will be asked to commit to a two- or three-year term, so bear that in mind. You will not assess your own organization, and more information can be found in those Assessor Terms of Reference in the Guidelines. I’ll quickly share a link, just to sign up for our newsletter, if you do not already receive it every Tuesday. It’s a really great way to get information about our programs, and as I get ready to answer questions, I’ll share our contact sheet one last time that you can grab information from.