Community Response Fund

Program Objective

The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation is committing $1,000,000 in funding for books and educational resources to support Canadian families in high-needs communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new Indigo Love of Reading Community Response Fund is part of the Foundation’s continued efforts to support literacy in high-needs communities across Canada. The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation has partnered with three outstanding national Canadian organizations to help distribute the funds to families for the purchase of books: Jays Care Foundation, Martin Family Initiative, and Boys and Girls Club of Canada. Local non-profit organizations that currently serve children and their families in high-needs communities can also apply for grants. Applications are open now and organizations are encouraged to apply today.

Who is eligible?

Community-based non-profit organizations in Canada, currently serving high-needs children/youth and their families. Preference may be given to organizations with Canadian registered charitable status.

What are they eligible for?

• Grant amounts will be variable per organization, with funds going towards the purchase of children’s books and literacy resources on indigo.ca or through an Indigo Corporate account.
• Grant amounts will be determined based on families served, calculated at roughly $25 per family.
• Most grants will be a maximum of $25,000 per organization (or the equivalent of 1000 families served) however if your organization has interest and capacity to serve more than 1000 families we will also accept larger requests.
• All books and literacy resources will be offered at a discount of 30% on indigo.ca.

How many of these grants will be available?

Our commitment to the Indigo Love of Reading Community Response Grant Fund is $1,000,000. These funds will be split between national-serving non-profit partners and grassroots community organizations with urgent need.

• We will be accepting the first round of applications between April 15^th, 2020 – May 1^st, 2020.
• Additional application rounds may open if funding permits.
• We are expecting an influx of applications and will not be able to accommodate all requests.

How will the literacy resources be allocated to my organization?

We realize that organizations and their communities have varying capacity in terms of distribution of resources to their communities.  The Grant will be distributed in one of two ways:

• E-mail distribution of an online coupon (please consider if your community base has internet access to purchase books).
• Centralized Distribution: An organization can receive books directly that they will safely distribute to families in their community.

Application Process

1. Complete this application (the application process is now over).
2. You will be notified in the coming weeks if your application has been approved.
3. You will receive a one-time donation of literacy resources.
4. You will be responsible for the submission of a brief impact report to be completed after book distribution is complete.  We will also encourage the use of a social media hashtag to share impact stories throughout the program.

Selection Criteria

We have created this portal and worked to create a simple application form to ensure organizations can complete this quickly and easily.

Successful applicants will be chosen based on:

• Demonstrated need
• Beneficiary groups served (we will look to serve families from a diverse range of demographic groups)
• Regional distribution (we will look to serve organizations from across Canada)
• Capacity to distribute (preference may be given to organizations already leading distribution programs for high-needs families)

Learn more about Indigo Love of Reading Foundation’s other grants