Applicants

To be an eligible applicant, your organization must belong to one of the following categories:

• Not for profit organizations
• For profit organizations, if the nature and intent of the activity is:
  • Non-commercial
  • Not intended to generate profit
  • Supports program priorities and objectives
• Research organizations and institutes
• Indigenous organizations or governments
• Municipal, provincial, and territorial* entities, which includes:
  • Institutions
  • Agencies and Crown Corporations
  • Public health
  • Educational institutions (universities, colleges, CÉGEPs, school boards/school districts)

*Provincially/territorially funded institutions are eligible with the consent of the provincial/territorial government.

Note to organizations located in and operating in Quebec:

Ministère du Conseil Exécutif (M-30)

• The Quebec National Assembly adopted the Act respecting the Ministère du Conseil exécutif (M-30). The provisions of this Act include certain conditions on Quebec government bodies and certain other entities wanting to contract with the federal government
• You may wish to review the provisions of M-30 at the following website before submitting your Application for Funding to make sure you comply with the Act
• Any entity that is subject to the Act must obtain authorization from the Government of Quebec before signing any agreement with the Government of Canada

Projects

To be an eligible project, your project must meet all the following criteria:

• confirm your project responds to one or more of the Canada Service Corps service themes:
  • Reconciliation
  • Building an inclusive Canada
  • Preserving the environment
  • Promoting civic and democratic engagement
  • Strengthening youth resilience
  • Potential new themes that are youth-identified
• target participants between the ages of 15 and 30 at the time their micro-grant project begins
• target at least 50% of total participants who are Indigenous youth, under-served youth, or both
• have project activities that take place in Canada
• propose to redistribute at least 40 micro-grants per fiscal year (April to March)
  • Projects must redistribute at least 27 micro-grants for fiscal year 2024 to 2025.  This is because projects won’t have the full 12-month period for this year
  • We expect that approved projects under the Micro-grant Stream can start as early as August 2024. If your planned start date is after August 1, 2024, we’ll pro-rate your targeted number of micro-grants for fiscal year 2024 to 2025 when assessing your proposal
  • A fiscal year is a 12-month period that starts from April 1 to March 31. For example, the fiscal year 2024 to 2025 will begin on April 1, 2024, and ends on March 31, 2025
• proposes a total value for each micro-grant per youth-led project that does not exceed $5,000.
  • The value of each micro-grant can be lower than $5,000 but not higher than $5,000.
  • Please note that micro-grants can be for:
  • a single youth who may recruit other youth into their project if they choose
  • a single youth-led project wherein a number of youth are grouped together by the recipient organization to achieve an objective
  • In all cases, the project must be conceived by the youth and delivered solely by the youth.
• not exceed $3,000,000 per fiscal year in total funding amount requested from ESDC 

Note:

• all projects must let participants know of supports that they can access to help complete their micro-grant projects
• the intent of this call is to fund project activities up to March 31, 2027

Activities

You should also make sure that your project activities are eligible.

Eligible activities include:

• activities that support the development (incubation) of promising youth volunteer service ideas
• activities that support the implementation of youth led strategies or actions to address community issues
• activities that support the implementation of innovative methods of reaching Indigenous youth, under-served youth, or both
• activities that offer support for youth in the identification and validation of issues and priorities for community action
• activities that explore, test and/or develop innovative solutions, best practices, tools and/or methodologies (for example, toolkits, resources, etc.)
• activities designed to support access and participation in service opportunities for youth
• activities designed to support innovative approaches to facilitate youth participation in civic life
• activities designed to support knowledge development and research on engaging youth in service
• activities designed to test projects to engage youth in service
• activities that support the dissemination of information and knowledge

Who can participate in your project

To be eligible, participants must be:

• Canadian citizens, permanent residents or persons who received refugee status in Canada
• at least 15 years of age and no older than 30 years of age at the time their micro-grant project begins

Note:

• projects must target at least 50% of total participants to be Indigenous youth, under-served youth, or both

What the funding can be used to pay for

Eligible costs include:

• overhead costs, normally up to 10%, including costs related to central administrative functions of the recipient organization that are drawn upon to support agreement activities (such as shared postage, telephones, information technology maintenance, and head office support)
• data collection and reporting (including tools such as software programs, outside of administrative costs, that are used to collect data)
• costs of materials and supplies
• wages and mandatory employment-related costs (MERCs)
• training and professional development costs for project staff
• honoraria (program participants aren’t eligible)
• printing and communication costs
• professional fees, such as consultant, technical expertise, or facilitation
• domestic travel costs, not exceeding rates and allowances in the National Joint Council travel directives
• participant costs and supports such as:
  • living expenses
  • equipment or services that enable virtual service opportunities
  • mentorship
  • dependent care
  • transportation
  • accommodation
  • meals
  • mental health supports
  • career development supports
  • specialized services or referrals to appropriate resources
  • arrangements or equipment for persons with disabilities
• recognition or completion certificates and other non-financial incentives to encourage youth to participate and successfully complete their micro-grant projects

Note that participant living expenses must have a direct link to the project objectives and activities. Living expenses must be due to participation in an intervention. They must also be reasonable and at fair market value. Living expenses aren’t to replace or act as an employment or income support.

Where the recipient redistributes contribution funding to one or more persons or entities to carry out project activities, payments from the recipient to the third party to reimburse the latter for the above-listed types of expenditures incurred are also eligible expenditures.

Ineligible costs include:

• financial payment for participants volunteering their time, such as:
  • stipends
  • completion bonuses
  • scholarships
  • student loan repayment
  • severance pay
  • honoraria
• international travel costs
• gift cards as form of recognition
• living expenses and rent not related to domestic travel costs
• debts
• membership fees (organizational or individual level)
• credit card payments
• fines
• penalties
• mortgage payments
• primary accommodations of participants

Other eligibility requirements

To be eligible, you must:

• submit your application before the deadline of December 19, 2023, at 3:00 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST).
• make sure that your application package is complete and has all the required documents (as per the Prepare your documents section)
• confirm that your organization is able to provide safe and inclusive environments that are free from racism, harassment and discrimination for both participants and organization staff

We may refuse applications that are incomplete or contain errors

We may contact you for any mandatory information if it’s missing from your application. We’ll do this before we determine if your application is eligible. If you receive such a request, you must respond within 5 business days of the date we sent the request. If you don’t respond before the deadline, we’ll assess your application with the information on file.

While we refer to specific questions below, we’ll assess your application in whole while focusing on the program’s eligibility and assessment criteria.

We’ll review your application in 3 steps by:

Step 1: Screening for eligibility (questions 4, 5, 56 to 59, 61 to 62, 66 to 75, 79 to 80 of the application)

We will screen for eligibility based on whether the:

• application is received by the deadline
• application is complete as per the Prepare your documents section
• organization is eligible as per the Eligibility section
• organization confirms that it is able to provide safe and inclusive environments that are free from racism, harassment and discrimination for both participants and organization staff
• project is eligible as per the Eligibility section

It’s important to submit a complete application. We’ll assess your project only if you meet all of the eligibility requirements.

Step 2: Assessing on program criteria (questions 50, 56 to 59, 61 to 62, 66 to 78 of the application, and the Budget Detail Template)

We’ll assess your application based on the following criteria:

Step 3: Assessing if your project meets the prioritization criteria to select a diverse range of projects to fund (questions 79 to 83 of the application)

Under the Micro-grants Stream, we may give priority to:

• organizations that meet the diversity-related prioritization criteria. In other words, organizations that confirm:
  • they serve one or both of the following:
    • Indigenous populations (First Nations, Inuit, Métis citizens, Non-affiliated Indigenous persons)
    • under-served populations (Black and racialized populations, 2SLGBTQI+ populations, persons with disabilities, people from Official Language Minority Communities) and
  • at least 50% of their leadership, and if applicable, at least 50% of their governance bodies, is from at least one of the above-mentioned populations that they confirmed they serve
    • Leadership refers to executive management positions (director, and above)
    • Governance refers to Board of Director seats (governance bodies)
• Organizations that are youth-led
  • At least 50% of their leadership and if applicable, at least 50% of their governance bodies are youth between 15 and 30 years of age
    • leadership refers to executive management positions (director, and above)
    • governance refers to Board of Director seats (governance bodies)
• organizations that aim to pay out a high percentage of their requested total funding amount to youth through micro-grants
  • a high percentage is where the organization aims to pay 70% of their requested total funding amount directly to youth in the form of micro-grants
  • the remaining 30% would go towards other eligible costs such as overhead costs (normally up to 10%), participant and project costs. Please refer to the list of eligible costs
• projects that, together, provide geographic coverage across provinces and territories