 Okay welcome back everyone or to our first-time participants welcome to the Economic Development Webinar Series. My name is Ben Kennedy and I'm with the Regional Programs and Engagement Branch of the Ministry of Jobs, Trade and Technology and I'll be facilitating today's webinar. I'm located in Victoria, BC on the unceded Coast Salish Territory of the Lekwungen people known today as the Esquimalt and Songhi's First Nations. Today's webinar as you all know is on capital project grants what they entail and how to apply for them in the 2019 intake. I'm first going to go over some housekeeping then we'll talk a little more about what's going on today and introduce our speakers before we get into it. So on your attendee control panel the orange area lets you shrink the panel to the side of the screen it automatically shrinks if you don't do anything for a while. Below that the orange microphone shows you that you're muted that is fixed to mute for this webinar. Blue blocks lets you expand the whole webinar interface to full screen and below that the little hand can be clicked to notify me that you want to speak but because there are many of you today the best way to raise a question is to enter it into your question box in the control panel. I'll then ask one of the presenters when we come to it if we don't get to all your questions or your question is unique to your situation we'll try to get you an answer via email after the webinar has finished. Finally you have two options for connecting to audio via your computer over VoIP or by phoning in. If you do click on phone call it'll give you a phone number to call with an access code for this webinar and a personal identification number for you individually. As a reminder this session is being recorded and the presentation slides will be made available online in about a week through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing's website gov.bc.ca forward slash gaming grants and a reminder that our past webinars can be found on our website gov.bc.ca forward slash economic development. Okay so let's get into it the community gaming grants program distributes about 140 million dollars of commercial gambling revenue per year to not-for-profit community organizations throughout the province. Each year a portion of that budget is allocated to capital projects undertaken by not-for-profit organizations at cost between 20 000 and 1.25 million dollars that provide significant benefit to their communities. Our speakers today have asked me to conduct a series of polls during this webinar which will hopefully focus some of the discussion to ensure that information is relevant to everyone here today as well as providing useful data for them in delivering these grants. So what I'm going to do is throw up a poll on your screens. It would be great if you could fill that out while I'm going through the rest of this and there'll be a couple of these as we go forward. So the first one is just asking how many people do you have watching the webinar with you. Often it's just yourself but we do find that some groups get together in communities and it's great to know the actual numbers for these webinars. Okay so I'm just going to close that one. We've got great response there and we've got the second one. Let's find out where everyone is from today in a rough geographical region around BC. Take your best guess if you're not sure but I've just clarified a couple of these regions. All right getting good responses there so I'll post more polls periodically throughout the presentation and we'll also be checking the question box periodically so please get your questions in early but as I close that I think that's enough for me. It's time to introduce our speakers so let's get them online. David Plyatt is the Acting Executive Director and Matt Dell is a Manager of Policy and Community Outreach from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. David and Matt will tell you more about the grant including eligibility criteria, how to apply in the assessment process for determining which organizations will receive funding. Then they've left plenty of time in the second half of the webinar for questions. David and Matt thanks for joining us today. Morning. Hey good morning thanks for hosting us today Ben. Nice job. Making all the technological stuff. Are we working? We're good. Can you see our screen? Yep no that you're up on the screen. Okay yeah thanks for hosting us today Ben. Hello everyone out there. How many people do we have so far Ben? We've got about 183 people online so good turnout. Oh that's perfect okay 183. Yeah most people I'll just let you know about 33% from Vancouver Island and coast 23 and 22% from northern BC and lower mainland southwest respectively. 10% from Caribou or Kootenay and 13% from Thompson, Okanagan so a really good mix of people from all around the province. Okay perfect well we're really excited to be here to talk about this capital project grant program again. We really like this project program and think it's a great opportunity for funding so I'm going to just dive into the information today and as Ben said if you have any questions you can type those through to Ben. We'll try to answer some of the simple clarification questions as we go and then we're going to do a period at the end of the webinar for larger questions and more detailed questions and I would encourage everyone to stick around for that because sometimes other people's questions can kind of bring up information that might apply to your organization. Well here's a quick overview of what we're going to show today. We're going to start out by talking about what's new in the program so this is the third year of the capital project program 2017 and 2018 we had really good numbers. This is the third year we've made some small tweaks to the program so we're going to go over those. For new applicants we will do a sector overview and just talk about the program in general kind of go through the funding model how that works, how much money is available. Then we're going to look into the eligibility criteria so what your organization needs to be, what projects we support, and the financial eligibility requirements that you'll need to meet. This program is a competitive program so we do have a scoring process that's very transparent and it's available in our guidelines. We'll introduce you to the scoring process and tell you what our team of analysts are looking for in your project proposal. For those groups who do are successful with funding we'll look into the accountability, what you can spend your money on, the reporting process, and some things around that and then we're going to go into some tips and kind of insider information on how to have a successful application and to make sure your application is as strong as possible. Anything you want to say? No I think that's a great introduction Matt and we should continue on. So most importantly we release a new set of guidelines every year. The guidelines for 2019 are not available yet. As you can see on this slide they're going to be coming out in early May. We're just working on a final touches getting all the graphics ready and all that. This presentation is based on the 2019 guidelines so everything you're hearing today is going to be what's in those guidelines. Two things. Very little has changed so if you are trying to work on your project or get your application ready look through those 2018 guidelines. The program is 99% the same. All the same documentation is required. You can still start getting your project budgets and timelines and all that stuff ready. That said when the new guidelines are out we will send out an email and you can check out our website and please refer to those just to make sure that you kind of caught all the changes which I will talk about here in a second. So what's new for 2019? Really not that much as new overall. We wanted to keep things very simple. I guess most importantly is what I was referring to is we have tried to improve the guidelines. We looked at some of the problems that people had last year. Some of the areas where they found information was not as clear or confusing and we've really tried to clarify every single aspect to the program. Most importantly we have a new section in the guidelines that's going to go into detail on the required documentation. So if you're leasing a building here is the exact type of document we will need to show you have a long-term lease of life. So that's going to add a lot of clarity and hope it's on our end that we can actually go through the projects and do a better assessment of them rather than having to figure out what sort of actual documents people may or may not have submitted. So please check out the sector guide. Maybe the biggest policy change in 2019 is we've tweaked the scoring process a little bit. We kind of looked at the first two years ago and went well where are people succeeding and where could we use the more information and we determined internally that we really wanted more information on the community benefit of a project. So previously the community benefit was worth 5% and we said well the whole purpose of this program is to support projects that have a wide community benefit. So that needs to be worth more money, worth more consideration. So we've increased the community benefit from 5% to 20%. In the guidelines we have provided and we'll get into this later more cues on what we're looking for on the community benefit, like really what need is this project filling in your community? Who, what type of people are going to use it? What's their accessibility to that? Does your community already have another project like this? So the guidelines will really kind of give you some ideas on what we're looking for. To accommodate that increase we have reduced the financial consideration waiting from 50 to 45%. The project feasibility which is your timeline risk management we reduced that from 35 to 25 and we've increased the environmental efficiency component from 2.5 to 5%. The other change is a win for the sector is that we no longer require future year budget. So you're just going to be able to require to submit your organization actuals and your organization current year budget. You won't need to prepare a future year budget anymore and that's the same change that happened in a regular community gaming grant program it was just um it was a bit difficult for some nonprofits to think that far ahead. So we've removed that requirement. I'm going to get on to the program now. Sector overview. So here's the basics on the capital project program for those who are new to the program or those who need a refresher. The community gaming grant branch provides $140 million in total funding. Our main program is the $135 million community gaming grant program. Overall that program supports ongoing non-profit programming services. There's not a big capital component so in 2016 a branch said hey there's a big need for capital project funding so we developed the capital project grant program. It has a total budget of $5 million per year and this is in my opinion a huge a huge win for the sector because this money is specifically for not-for-profit. It's not available in municipalities or other governments. This money is for small not-for-profit and it provides a large chunk of funding so although it's $5 million I think we supported 60 major projects approximately in 2017 and 2018 and those are big projects for their communities. So there's a lot of a lot of positives of this program. Matt. So $5 million. Yeah. Yeah just just have a question on that quickly. Are local governments eligible under this grant program? Do they fall under the definition of not-for-profit? Great question. No local governments are not eligible. That includes municipalities, regional districts, local municipally run libraries, museums, rec centers, none of those are eligible for this funding. So this funding is only for not-for-profit organizations so it's great because sometimes those government-run organizations have professional staff, grant writers, so they're hard to compete against. So this money is just not-for-profit which I think we've seen in 2017 and 2018. Even small not-for-profit with a bit of hard work can access this, it can be successful in this project. Okay. The ministry of municipalities, go ahead. Yeah no just sort of on that we've got another question. What do you consider a wide community benefit? Is this a prerequisite versus depth of value? So for example Jennifer's asking here, a community center versus a care home for a few adults with disabilities. Would that be wide enough? Yeah absolutely. We're going to get into the community benefit in the community benefit section later and then get through some of the details of what we're looking there. But we're not solely based on that. We understand that some programs only serve a very small portion of people but there's a significant need for services for those people. You know we're looking at groups that serve people with a disability or mental health challenges. Some of those people aren't going to support 1,000 people. They might only support 10 and that's equally as valid as a soccer club with 1,000 people. So we'll get into that later. Absolutely thanks. I wanted to quickly mention in the $135 million community gaming grant program that program does include a minor capital project and capital acquisition component where we fund projects under $20,000. So if you are looking for a small project you know a $10,000 wheelchair ramp or a lift for a staircase you can look to the regular $135 million program assuming you are a recipient or you're in that program. And of course both of these programs are funded with revenue from provincial gambling revenue. This is the meat of the program right here. These are the four fundamental aspects of our program in terms of financing. So we fund projects with a total cost between $20,000 and $1.25 million. We are very strict on that. Projects that are over $1.25 million are not eligible for our funding. Projects that are under $20,000 are not eligible. The reason for the limit is that we are looking for you know small not-for-profit projects. There's a lot of big projects out there 6, 7, 10 million dollars that could take up all our funding. We want to support those small groups who have these projects that are vital to their community. Our program will fund between 20 and 50 percent of the total cost of a project. So if your project is $100,000 and you have $50,000 we would fund the other $50,000. If your project is $1.25 million we would find we could fund 20 percent so which is $250,000. The max of our grant is $250,000. So again if you're at $1.25 million 20 percent of that would be $250,000. The most important part of this program is that it is a matching funds program. So matching funds are required. If you have a $100,000 project and you have no money unfortunately we won't be able to fund you. You would need to come up with that $50,000 whether that be through your own fund or anything through other grants through a mortgage or line of credit. And I also want to say that this program provides recipients with everything they ask for. So if your project is $100,000 and you ask for 50 if you're successful we will give you 50. We're not going to give you part of what you ask for and force you to scramble to find the rest. This project if you're successful you will get what you asked for so there is some assurance there. But this right here is really the crux of the whole program. It's a matching funds program and it has some limitations 20,000 to 1.25 million. I'm kind of some of the other information. So this sector is getting ready to open pretty soon. It's open between June 1st and July 31st this year so we're about a month and a half away. I'm really excited that everyone's tuned in right now. Last year we did the webinar on May 23rd so just a little while before that. So it looks like a lot of you out there are eager and ready to learn so that's great. The notification will be by October 31st 2019. Every organization can only do one application per year. You can't do one application for your new roof and one for the new bus that you need. Only one grant per project and you can still apply for the regular community gaming grant program. This does not make you ineligible for that program. I would say a significant amount of the applicants in 2017 and 2018 were groups who get regular community gaming grant funding throughout the year. Did I miss anything in there? No, I think you've heard off quite well. Okay, thanks. Thanks Matt. There's actually quite a few questions on who is and isn't eligible. Okay, I was going to say it looks like you're covering that in the upcoming slides but if you're happy. Are universities or colleges eligible? Okay, no. I don't think that they're considered a government funded organization, I believe. Correct. So again it's not for profit, community based, not for profit. Anything associated with government, run by government, under contract with government would not be eligible. That's correct Matt. We'll get into that. That would include First Nations, First Nation government as well, I imagine. First Nations government as well. We do support First Nations, not for profits. That includes a lot of the friendship centers around BC, mostly all of them, and a couple of them have been successful in the past. And other Indigenous not for profits but bands or government, they're not eligible for community gaming grants or this program. Okay. I'm going to get into that. Yeah, I think we've got quite a few on like fire departments and museums, so I think we'll just wait until after your eligibility section and if there's any unanswered questions we'll go from there. That's coming up very shortly here. I'm going to let David just talk quickly about the competitive process. Thanks Matt. Great introduction. Yes, so one of the key features of this particular grant program is that it's competitive. And that's quite different from the regular grant program, which basically we meet all demand to the best of our budget abilities. In this particular grant program, there will be a competitive element. So we strongly urge that all applicants make the strongest case possible in each section of their application. Mindful that all the other applicants are also making the strongest case for these grant funds. Therefore, incomplete or inaccurate missing documentation applications are going to significantly weaken your application score. Late applications will not be accepted at all. Grants will not be awarded until all the applications have been reviewed and assessed. So we're going to get on to the eligibility requirements, I think is the next section. So this is the required stuff. What you need to meet to kind of screen into this program here. I'm going to turn my notes down. Ben, do we have a poll question? Yeah, we've got a poll. I can launch that now for you. So what dollar value of capital projects are you interested in applying for? And I've got a lot of responses already. It looks like most responses over 30% are in the $175,000 to $250,000 range. And then the next two big categories being 50 to 125 to 50. Going for the big bucks first? Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. And then should we do that next question or do you want to do that later? Yeah. So how's your organization applied for a capital project grant in 2017 or 2018? Straight away, we've got most people saying no. We've got over 80%. No. So some first timers. A lot of first timers in the audience today. Oh, that's great to hear that. That's awesome. That's perfect. Yeah. That's why we do these, I guess. All right. Back to you guys. Okay. So we're going to kind of run through the eligibility criteria, which I think there's a lot of questions on this. So hopefully I can answer some of those. The eligibility criteria, I should say, hasn't changed from 2018. So if you're really eager to find out if you can apply or not, check out those 2018 guidelines and go through section two, which is the eligibility criteria. So there's three levels of assessment that applicants must meet. First, we're going to look at organizational eligibility. Is your organization eligible? Then we're going to look at project eligibility. David will talk about that. Is your project eligible? And then we'll look at financial eligibility. Do you meet some of our basic financial requirements? So if you meet those three, your org, your project and your finances are eligible, then you're going to screen into the process. Then we will look over the assessment criteria, how we score projects. Once we've done the scoring, we do make some final additional consideration to ensure that a somewhat fair regional distribution, and we screen for indigenous projects as well to make sure that we are supported some indigenous projects. But I'm going to dive into organization eligibility. So this is the exact same as our regular community game and ground program and who we are here to fund. Primarily, you must be a not-for-profit organization. That's absolutely crucial. You must operate for broad community benefit, and that would be opposed to not-for-profits who operate solely to serve their own members or their small membership. We're looking for orgs who are really there to serve the community. We're open to the community. We want to fund orgs that are doing something in the community, so delivering or facilitating programs within one of the regular community gaming grant sectors. A regular program has six sectors, arts and culture, sport, environment, public safety, human and social services, which is a big catch-all, meaning any org who provide services to individuals in their community to kind of enhance their quality of life or provide them with services, more packs and deep packs. Overall, a lot of non-profits fit into those, so if you're feeling uncomfortable about those, maybe you can ask a question later, but I would say they're really aimed to kind of capture most non-profits. Your org has to deliver or facilitate programs established and maintained by the volunteers. Again, we're looking for groups that are doing something in the community, not just kind of have a building that no one actually can go in or use. You can consult section two in the guidelines to go through that if there's any concerns. We look to orgs that have some basic structure that basically we want organizations to have a voluntary and broadly based membership, meaning orgs that have community members involved in them. I would say if I moved to your community, could I join your group? If yes, then that's a good thing. We want groups that are welcoming and open. Something we're strict on is that non-profit must have a voting membership that is more than double the number of board members. That shows us that community members are interested involved in the organization. If you have five board members, you need to have 11 voting members. If you have 16, then you need to have 33, something like that. Board members must be democratically chosen. Two-thirds must reside in BC. Board members can't receive remuneration. We only support organizations where the board and the members are individuals, not other organizations or other chapters. A lot of this, again, is aimed at looking for democratic organizations that have broad community involvement. Those are the types of groups that we hear that we want to support. Again, 2.1 in our guidelines can provide some more detail on those. We have some questions from fire halls, museums, all that kind of stuff. Again, if you're not for-profit organization, you're not affiliated with the municipal government or another level of government. Museums, we find a lot of small museums that are small non-profits, but then there's the big museums, Royal BC Museum. Those are government organizations that we wouldn't support. That same principle applies for fire departments. There are some small not-for-profit fire departments. I believe in 2017, we funded a large fire truck. That's right, and a fire hall. Fire truck and a fire hall in 2017. But again, if they're municipally run or regional or district fire department, those would be considered government and not eligible. So, I believe that's it on the eligibility rules. Maybe we can get into some specifics later on in the presentation, in the last hour on what type of orgs would fit in there. We kind of stick to these criteria quite closely, so I just encourage everyone to review either the Community Gaming Grant Guidelines or Capital Sector 1, Section 2.1, and go through those eligibility questions. So, if your organization is eligible, that's great. You're going to screen in through the first part of the application. Then we're going to look to your project and see if the project is eligible. And David's going to talk about what type of project our program supports, starting right now. Okay, thanks Matt. So, under the project eligibility section, there are three types of projects that are eligible. The first type is facilities, second type is community infrastructure, and the third type is acquisition. And we'll go through each of those in detail. So, a facility, we find a construction of a new building renovation or maintenance of an existing structure or place. It can include purchase of new used building materials. The facility itself could be an example of a child care facility. We funded several of those over the last two years. It could be a recovery house. The actual facility work could be an interior renovation or exterior renovation. If your community hall is falling apart because the roofing is poor, that might be an eligible project. We've done kitchen and bathroom flooring and other roofing projects. We also did an HVAC system in the past. Elevators could be eligible, though you're starting to push up on the dollar value there. Tennis bubbles, lighting. Lighting is interesting. We've done several theaters, including seating arrangements within those theaters. And we even funded a software system for curling club registration. So, the second type of project that category we have is community infrastructure. And that's the development or amenities that improve the BCE residents' quality of life. These can be things like playgrounds, outdoor structures like azibos, community spaces, gate parks, hiking, walking trail, a public wharf, and even an ecosystem restoration. We've funded a dock for the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue. As an example, we funded, what else did we fund there? We have funded some outdoor structures with a water park in one area of the province. So, these are different than a facility, but they are similar in the sense that they provide infrastructure towards the community that individuals live in. And the third and last point is acquisitions. This is essentially the easy category in which you just purchase a fixed capital asset. Most likely for a long-term use, ownership by the applicant organization. So, we funded buses, vans, things of that nature. I noted elsewhere, computer systems, office and technical equipment, audio, visual equipment, and sports equipment. Also, boats could be qualifying in this case. We've done some canoe and kayaks versus some of the kayak clubs, I believe. And sailing. Any questions on that, Ben? Yes, sir. Go ahead, Ben. Yeah, if anybody's confused when they're looking through which category they think they fit, they should just pick the one they feel best represents their particular application. If we deem it a little differently, you can just reclassify it. So, there will be no penalty applied to the wrong type of project. Okay. So, applicants shouldn't apply to all categories in one application. They should just pick the best one. One project, one category. That's right. And the majority of what is being purchased or done with that grant application should fit into that category. And can an organization apply for multiple grants? No. There is only one grant for one project. So, a building restoration could include everything from the front entrance all the way up to the roof, including HVAC systems and so forth, but it would not include the purchase of a van, as an example. So, that would be a separate project. So, organizations will need to be careful in selecting what project it is that they want to complete. The name of the game with this particular grant is we want to have successful completion of projects. We don't want half-built buildings. We don't want to have equipment, search and rescue equipment van only partially built. We're looking for successful projects to fund. Yeah. So, funding for actually plans, like if you're going to build a quite large-scale site like a marina, that's not qualifying. You want to actually see the marina being built. Correct. We will not fund developmental studies, research projects. Things of that nature will not qualify. We're looking for hard assets, essentially. Given that software isn't quite hard, it's still one of those assets that we would consider a project. Great. Great. Okay. Well, yeah, there's a few more coming in, but I think we may as well keep going. I'll save a few of these to the end, and there's a few very specific ones that I might just email to you afterwards. Okay. We're looking forward to those. Great. Okay. So, once you're in those three categories, which a lot of people should be, they're quite open and broad. These are just examples of it on here. Then there's a couple of requirements for each category, and this is really based around, do you have permission to build on the site you want to build on? That's what we kind of need evidence of. So, for project eligibility, these are things we're going to look for on facilities and community infrastructure. So, you're making a tangible change to the land. The project must be undertaken by an eligible organization for community benefit. They must be accessible to the public upon completion. And accessible means if you're doing a building renovation, your building doesn't need to be over 24 hours a day, but we want to know that over the course of a week or a month, that the public will be used in the asset. Most importantly, we need evidence that the land that the project will be built on, that the organization has the right to do that. So, land is going to be owned by an eligible organization. We need proof of that ownership, and that proof. The applicant must provide a certificate of title that indicates the name of the applicant and a legal description of the land or facility, or they can provide most recent PC assessment, PC property assessment for the land. Or if there's a long-term lease, we need evidence of that long-term lease. Again, we don't want to do a full renovation on a building that the nonprofit is going to be kicked out of next year, and then it will be converted into some space for a developer. We're going to be renovating the building. We want to know that nonprofits are going to be there for 10 years. So, what we need is a recent document of permission for the project to proceed from the owner of the land and then a signed copy of the lease. The term of the lease must demonstrate that the applicant is in control of the land or facility for a minimum of 10 years from the date of application. If a signed copy of the lease is less than 10 years, which it may be, it's quite common, a letter of commitment signed by the owner and the applicant's require that demonstrates firm commitment to renew the lease for an additional term. The letter, the lease and the letter of commitment must demonstrate that the applicant is in control of the land or facility for a minimum of 10 years from the date of application. So, our guidelines will have all this information in it again. But again, we're looking for that commitment to long-term. And that's where I think a lot of groups had challenges in the last couple of years with just not providing the correct documentation to outline that 10-year commitment. And we've really tried to improve that this year to provide specific examples. So, if you are in a building where there's a lease, please check the guidelines and make sure you've submitted the right documentation. On public land, so if it's on public land, so if you are a rotary and you want to build the gazebo in the municipal park, we need a document that demonstrates that the applicant has authority to proceed and will be in management and control the project for a minimum of 10 years from the date of application. We have letters of support from, say, a municipal counselor or insufficient alone. We need documents that demonstrate the approval to proceed with a specific project that has been granted to the applicant from the controlling body, such as the minutes of a council meeting showing a motion and approval, a letter of date is signed by the authority for the land or facility that referenced the specific project. So, again, this is a tricky issue in 2017 and 2018. So, if this kind of comes into your organization situation, please maybe ask us questions over email or check out the guideline. We can make sure we don't want to exclude groups out of technicality. We want to make sure you have the right document. Yeah, letters of support would not fit this category. They're good to have in terms of showing demonstrating community support, but it would not replace the legal authority to proceed with the project on public land. What we received a lot of in the past is a letter from the mayor that said, we love this group. They do great projects. We support their gazebo, but it didn't say anything about the time that the land, didn't say anything about how long who was going to run the gazebo. It really didn't provide us any assurance. So, we would kind of need that extra step. And for acquisitions, it's a little bit easier. So, acquisitions, again, it must be necessary for the delivery of a program or service. So, if you are wanting to buy a bus, we want to know why you're going to buy the bus. Well, to pick up the seniors from the senior center and to drop them off wherever they're going. It must be for community benefit. The project must be for the purchase of privately owned six capital assets for long-term use. So, we want to know that the organ is going to own the asset and it plans to use it in the long term and it must fully belong to the organization. So, the application is definitely a bit easier for acquisitions because you don't need to get into all of those technicalities around land development. That's kind of, that's the project we support. And then depending on the project, the documentation we need to make sure that your project passes our assessment rules. So, so far we've talked about organization eligibility. Are you eligible or not? Is your project eligible or not? And then we have a couple of basic financial eligibility rules that David is going to talk about here. Thanks, Matt. This comes back to the money. With financial eligibility requirements, these are core and they need to be demonstrated that they're in place at the time of the application. First point is there must be a separate gaming account. This is a checking account dedicated solely to receiving community gaming grant funds. If you're already a past recipient of community gaming grant funds, you have one of these gaming accounts. If you're a new organization, you will need to set this up prior to the application. Why do we need a gaming account? It's in order for us to be able to send the money to you to a dedicated account knowing that you can receive those funds. Secondly, you must have the matching funds that equal or exceed the value of the funding requested of your own. So if you are trying to demonstrate that you have those funds, you must be quite clear to us that those funds are either restricted through your minutes, council motions, or that you have GICs that are clearly dedicated towards the project, etc, etc. If you have restricted funds already designated to the project in mind, you must also use those funds in full as your matching requirement. So many groups have been fundraising for 10 or more years to do a particular project. Soccer is a soccer clubs or one of them for field improvements. If you have those funds that are dedicated to the project that you need additional funds, that's why you're applying for the community gaming grant capital project, you will need to put all of that money towards your project. And David will just jump in there. Can those funds have already been used towards the project? So your project can have started and be eligible for a capital project. So the matching funds, if it's already been spent on that project, it still counts as matching funds? Well, if now we're getting to the point, has the project actually been completed? Yeah. So we will not be reimbursed for completed projects. Okay. So as long as the project started, there's some money being put into it, it's not completed. They need some more funds to finish the job. They can be eligible, right? Right. Now the organization should be quite clear as to why they need additional funds if they've already started the project, but that should not be insurmountable. Okay. So past recipients of community gaming grants have to have all their paperwork up to date. They must be in good standing with the branch and that includes being up to date with their gaming account summary reports. Some of you may know them as gassers. This is one of the minimum financial reports that needs to be submitted on an annual basis based on your fiscal year end. It just shows us how those funds have been spent. Thanks David. Thank you Matt. Thanks David. There's a couple more on funding we had sort of earlier on. So would an organization be required to have raised the matching funds before applying because they need to be in hand? Yes. The matching funds must be on hand. All right. We look through that. Again, but we do accept a mortgage or a line of credit. So if an organization has raised 40 and they have a mortgage letter approved for $10,000, that together would be $50,000. Yeah. A pre-approval document from the bank would be acceptable. That is acceptable. We assess every single group's matching funds. We'll talk a little bit about this later, but that if you say, well, next year over 2020 we're going to fundraise and we have all these big plans to get the remaining money, you will be marked very critically for that. Correct. Just because other groups already have the matching funds. And as David said, we are trying to fund projects that are ready to go and that are going to be done in three years. And I have a funder to kick up next year and get sidetracked. There will be no additional funds to any pre-approved project, but the one-shot deal. Sure. And especially in some of these smaller communities, contractors might offer to donate services. Can that count towards the matching funds as a contribution? We're going to get into details on that. Labor will not be included, but materials will be. Perfect. Materials and equipment. Yes. Okay. I'll leave the rest for later. Thanks, guys. Okay. Okay. So now we are going to get into the scoring process. So hopefully everyone meets those eligibility requirements. You passed all that. Now what we do after we check all of that with each org is we go through the application and we score each organization basically essentially out of 100% and we give each application a percentage. This is how our scoring process works. I want to be very transparent with this. So first, we have three sections to the score, four sections actually. The first section is called alignment with sector objectives. And again, sector objective is benefiting the community, responding to a community's need. So we need to know about how this project is going to benefit your community, how it's going to respond to a community need. There's two sections in this. The first one is worth 20%, which was up from 5% in the last couple of years. Community benefit section. Explain to us how does the project benefit the community by addressing a community identified by need. So to score well, what we're looking for, someone had asked about this earlier, how is it responsive to a community's need? We want to know how will enhance the well-being of individuals in the community. We want to hear about what broader problem or need of the community that the project and its associated programming will address. Tell us how the project or acquisition will support people in need, their needs, their development, they're involved with the community. And this would be great if it included some descriptions on the population of who will benefit from it and the programming. Maybe numbers and statistics were possible. For example, if it's a museum in rural BC, how many people come to your museum each year? Are there programs for kids of the museum? We find a lot of groups, I assume we know all of this already, and our program gets 5600 applications a year, and a lot of them we don't know about these groups. So it's really important to get into detail on how your organization and project will benefit the community. What, again, programs are offered, people, what kind of people? So that's a community benefit. We're 20%, which is a big chunk this year, so I think we're spending a lot of time kind of drafting that up in a word document, a couple of pages or more, if necessary. Headings, pictures, testimonials, letters of support. Again, more details, we don't know about your organization and what you do. The other section is inclusiveness and accessibility, and this is where we're really looking for products that are open and accessible to all the public. This includes all members of the public, people with barriers to disabilities, and we want to know that it's open and inclusive to anyone, regardless of age, ability, gender identity, and expression. Any of those types of things. If there is a limitation for a certain group of people for any reason, that's not necessarily an automatic inclusion, but we would want to know about that. In some cases, there are exclusions, so a senior center might say, hey, it's only over 50, over 55. Just let us know about that so we can, it's not going to necessarily impact the project, but it's important for us to know about. The specific language around that will be coming in the guideline, so just make sure to check our guidelines to see what we're looking for there. So that's 25% of the project. Next, we get into kind of the technical details on the project, the project feasibility section. There's four main documents in here that we're going to score. First is the project timeline. Project timeline needs to include start expected, start and end date, major milestones of your project. If you're doing a building, you know, we hope by November to have the roof on so we can close it up over the winter and get started again in March. That's that kind of stuff that shows that you have a plan or a better plan than the next person. And you understand what your project involves. So the clearer you are in explaining what those milestones are, the better understanding the grant annals will have when assessing your project. Great. And then a risk management table, identifying the potential risks to the project and strategies for managing them. If you don't know what a risk management table is, I would encourage you to look one up on Google. There's a lot of different styles out there. Some are going to be quite simple. If you just need to purchase or put in a small project, there might not be a lot of risk, but we still want to know about them. You know, what happens if your contractor fails on you? What happens if you don't put the permits that you need? Or what happens if there's a major way, whatever you think they are, just so it shows us that you're sort of aware and mitigation strategy. Appropriate approvals and permits, we need to know about any, you don't need to have all your plans and permits in place, but we want to know which ones are going to be required and how you plan to get them. So you need a building permit. We don't know this kind of stuff. And I think in the past, some groups have left this sort of empty and we need to know what permits are there. Even if for an acquisition that you want to buy a bus, you do need to know this. And just if there are no plans of permits or approvals, then you need to say that we've looked into it and there are none required for our audio-visual system. Okay, great. But do you need an electrical permit to put in the new audio-visual system? If you haven't noted that, it's going to, I think, reflect in the store a little bit because we might say, you know, what if they don't, what if you don't get the permit? If it's less blank or not addressed, we're going to assume the worst. So if you have that information or you know about it, you should document it in the application. All this will go towards increasing your mark. Yeah. And then lastly in this section, it's a long-term plan to manage the project. So we don't want to fund the brand-new building that the group doesn't take care of for the next 20 years. We want a plan to operate, a plan to manage and maintain the project, including where the finances are going to come. So if you need to clean the gutters and make sure your drainage system works and whatever else, just kind of record that out in a Word document right away, your plan is, and how you plan to fund that. We want to fund projects that are going to be benefiting the community in the long-term. That's right. So those two sections together, 25 and 25 percent, the biggest section is coming up here. This is the financial consideration section. Oh, this is you. Yeah. So yeah, thanks Matt. So with the assessment criteria, back to the dollars again. This section is dropped a little bit in value from last year, which is a good thing in a sense that we're able to reallocate some of those points to other portions of the application. But it's still a significant part of your application, and it needs to have some careful attention paid to it. So financial considerations include documenting the project cost. This is 100 percent of the value of the project, not your portion or our portion, the total value. You also have to be quite clear about what grant amount you're requesting. So again, we're going to be checking the grant amount request versus the total value of the project. We will not be funding more than 50 percent of the value of the project. Then we'll look at the financial feasibility of the project and how you're demonstrating that. Project budgets are a good indicator that your organization has anticipated what it will cost to deliver this project. The budget also has to show anticipated revenues and all anticipated expenses in order to realize the request of capital. You also need to ensure that all matching funds are included in the project revenue. So you will see your fundraising or your dedicated restricted funds, and then we'll see the community gaming grant capital project funds. You also need to demonstrate the amount requested for the capital project and how it must be included in the project revenue. So moving on to cost estimates and quotes. If you're building something or you're purchasing something, there should be a quote or an estimate written up professional third party. So we've seen with purchase acquisitions of bands, we've seen two or three different dealerships with estimates or quotes in writing provided to the organization. That was excellent pieces of advice to us. Preference is going to be given to applicants who attach at least two quotes. Three quotes is better, four quotes is good. If a sole source provider or provider is located outside of BC is the only option, please note why it is the only provider available. We need to understand why it is that that project can't be delivered from sources within BC or by other than just the one provider. Okay, there's just a question coming through on what happens if the actual costs of the project are less than what was quoted in the grant application. Good question. So depending on the value of the project and the percentage that we provided funds for, if we provided up to 20% of the value of the project, they could use the excess capital project grant funds to cover the increase, the decrease I should say in the value of the project. However, it can exceed 50%. If there's excess funds and our share, the government share would be more than 50%, those funds must be returned to the Minister of Finance. They cannot be spent on the project. Great. Okay. And just again, there's quite a few on plans and professional services such as architecture design. Are those able to be covered? Yes, those are eligible expenses towards the project. Fantastic. Okay. Yeah, there's a few on this. Okay. Yep. And again, overall description of the planned use of the grant funds, how they will be spent, timelines of the planned expenditures, that kind of information is very useful. And again, letting us know what your matching funds are. Are they sitting in a bank account? Are they restricted and segregated to guaranteed investment certificate? Whatever the nature or it's a pre-approval mortgage loan, those types of pieces of information are very important in taking the guesswork from the analyst in determining if you have actually those funds available. Again, we're not looking to fund projects that don't have a matching component. I want to say also the matching fund section is where I believe is where I believe probably most of the applicants had challenges in the last couple years of not making it clear where those matching funds were. So we've changed the guidelines to prompt what we're looking for there. And the application will be a bit easier this year to attach evidence of your matching funds. And one of the biggest challenges that happened was groups applied in July. And the only evidence they applied for their matching funds was their balance sheet from say the previous fiscal year, which didn't have their matching funds on that balance sheet. And in the meantime, they deposited the money or the other grants or fund raising, but we didn't have evidence of that. So we need evidence of all the matching funds. And the more clearly you can spell that out so we don't have to dig through your balance sheet, the better. If you got a grant, another grant include that letter of confirmation from the other grant. If it's in a restricted fund, you can upload the word document that says 10,000 is located here, 10,000 is located here, and 10,000 is located here, see the attachment. The more clear you can make that, the better you're going to be because we had to exclude some great projects because they did just did not really show us where their matching funds were. Would a letter from an auditor be sufficient for confirmation of funds? It could be. It would depend on the date of the audit confirmation letter and exactly what it said as to the nature of the funds and the location of the funds. Okay, thank you. Okay, so 25 for community benefit, 25 for project feasibility, 45 for financial consideration. The very last section is an environmental efficiency component or sort of like reducing cost components. So environmental efficiency, how the project includes climate action or environment and energy efficient features that will reduce the organization's greenhouse gas emissions, lower the organization's long-term operational expenses such as heating or cooling costs and or improve the use of the organization's human and or technological resources. And again, this is kind of included. So we have two absolutely identical projects side by side, two buildings. This building is going to include some really fantastic energy efficient features or climate action features and this one wasn't. This this scoring here would allow us to kind of fund the project with some climate action features. Again, if you're going to purchase a bus or a vehicle, two exact same applications, but one went for the energy efficient vehicle, that is a priority for us. So please include any information on that as possible. We're applicable, of course. We're applicable. If you're buying a lighting system or you know a theater projection system, maybe there is no component and you can just note that and it's not applicable. I shouldn't really impact your score. That's how we score the project. We go through every single one of those categories. So again, it's competitive process. Please make your absolute best case, make it clean, spell it out for our analysts. They're going through these applications, you know, daily. So if yours is clean and stands out and hits all those points, you're going to score better and have a much better chance of being successful. Things are not easy for us to understand. It's going to impact your score. There are some other documents that need to be submitted and the mortis organization stuff that David's going to talk about here. Yeah. So we get to the supplementary document. When you're doing your application, don't worry if you think you've missed a place to upload your document. There's always a very last section of the application where you can put any sort of grab bag type items too. So what are important that we need to see are your constitution and bylaws for your organization. Even if you're not a registered not for profit society, you have to have a constitution and bylaw. We're also looking for a complete list of your board of directors at the time of application. That'll include things such as their position within the organization and contacting. We'll need minutes from your most recent annual general meeting. This is to demonstrate that you have a vibrant active working organization. Going back to the gaming account, we need to see that gaming account has been set up. A void check is the best way to do that. Lastly, we're going to get to your organization financial. So we will need to see your most recently completed fiscal year balance sheet, your most recently completed fiscal year's revenue and expense statements, and any other documents related to your financial statements. So if you have audited financial statements, we will need to see the whole document to cover page to the very last page of notes. And lastly, we'll need to see a current year budget. Now all of these items are covered off in the pre-application checklist, so we really recommend you have that handy and go through that carefully as you're accumulating your documents. One question on that is just must matching funds be already placed in a restricted account by the time of the application, or can the funds still be in a general account and placed in their restricted account once the capital project is funded? So they could be in a general account, but we'll need to see some evidence that they have been dedicated towards the project. So those groups that are doing again a competitive process, those groups that have identified and restricted their funds, provided the minutes to support that or the audited financial statements, they're going to have a much more solid looking application in terms of matching funds than the group that says, here's our copy of our last minutes and the funds are sitting in the general account. So you can strengthen your position by having restricted, but it's not mandatory to do so. Okay, and I imagine that's similar for if audited financial statements aren't available when the application is submitted. They could be submitted afterwards, but it would strengthen your case to obviously have it all at once. Yes, it would be better if you had them available prior to submission. One of the issues last year, so say if your fiscal year ended on June 30th and you applied on July 10th, we require you most recently complete it, which was really 10 days ago. So some group last year said, ah, we won't do that. We'll submit the previous year's application. And that led to an automatic exclusion. We need the most recently completed. We've included language here to say, if your fiscal year recently ended and you don't have completed financials such as they're being audited, then please submit internal or draft financials. But we need to see what you did in your most recent fiscal year. Do not submit the previous fiscal year. Good point, Matt. And yeah, again, there's a pre-application checklist. It's two pages long. It has little boxes on it. You just check off all those boxes. If you get started right now, you have another month and a half. Your application is going to be looking beautiful by that point. Yeah, make sure it's all there, please. Okay, Ben, do we have a poll question? Yeah, so this is relating to what sector does your organization belong to? I've just put together arts and culture or sport. But there's also public safety, environment, human and social services, PACS and DPACS. Okay, so as the poll is going on, it looks like human and social services is getting around 40%. 30% to arts and culture or sport, 25% to public safety, and virtually nothing for 4% for environment. That's fine, actually. Great, okay. Okay, so close that one. Okay, should we do the next one or should we keep going? Well, let's get out of the way. So, is your organization a previous applicant to gaming grants or licensing? A lot of newbies for this specific grant, but have you applied to a gaming grant or licensing? 70% yes, 30% no. Okay, excellent mix. Okay, so you've gone through your eligible, your project's eligible, and say you win and you're going to get your funding. Here is what David's going to talk about, some accountability, what you need to do to kind of follow our rules. So you'll get a notification letter, whether you get the grant or deny the grant, you will get a letter telling you what's happened. Now, if you've got the grant, there'll be your requirements on how to spend it. So, we're going to go through these eligible expenses which are not complete, but a good example of what fit into this category. So, those costs that are considered direct and necessary for the successful implementation of an approved project are eligible. If you're buying a van and it needs to be inspected as part of the approval process to purchase it, that's a necessary cost. So, other examples include project related fees, paid to professionals, back to the architectural, crowd seed and an accountant if necessary, technical personnel, consultants, contractors, those can all be eligible expenditures, project materials, the lumber, concrete, paving stones, all of that towards the direct delivery of that project. Transportation or shipping costs for those acquisitions, if the van has to be because of its particular nature imported into the province, shipping costs for that particular item can be an eligible expense. Licenses, permits, insurance required for the project to be done are eligible. Now, insurance on an ongoing basis is an operating cost, that does not fit into this capital project. Any other direct or necessary cost incurred in the implementation of the project can be eligible. It should be quite clear to us when you file your annual gaming account summary report what the funds were spent on. So, continuing on with the accountability, grant funds have to be fully dispersed within 36 months of receipt, unless otherwise approved in writing by the community gaming grants branch. So, when we're reviewing your risk matrix or your budgeting for the project, we anticipate that to show that the project will be completed within 36 months. Those that can't be completed within 36 months at the beginning of the application are not going to score very well at all. We do understand that things happen, strikes, delays and delivery of materials can happen. Communicating with the branch in writing about these problems can and probably will allow an extension to the completion of the project. On the flip side, we also want to see the project started within 12 months of the receipt of funding. We don't want to see these funds sitting in bank accounts not doing anything for extended periods of time. Organizations are allowed to transfer the grant funds from that gaming account either by check or electronically from to a general account for the reimbursement of eligible project expenses. That is not a problem. Organizations also need to submit on an annual basis gaming account summary report. This you have to do within 90 days of your fiscal year end. There will be a document provided to you upon winning the grant that will show this process. When you complete that document, it has to be clear and detailed reporting as to how the funds from the grant were spent during the course of the year. Those expenses must be consistent and comparable to those identified in the approved grant application. You are approved to build a building, but we see a banding purchase. We're going to question that and probably seek refunding of that money. Keep the money tight to the project that you were approved for. On that, is scope creep acceptable? Obviously the best made plans can change as something goes on, but as long as it's staying to the intent, but there is scope creep, what's the situation there? That's an interesting question. You can cover off a myriad of things. If the planned acquisition was a van and it's a few extra accessories towards the van, probably not a big deal, but if it's a building being built, scope creep might be out of line in terms of what the project was originally approved for. It really would depend on the nature of this particular item. If you think something like that is likely to happen, that should be part of your description of what could happen during this project lifecycle. You can always email us if that's the case. If you were going to buy this installation, but now you found this other one on sale, I don't think we care about that kind of thing. If you open up a wall and know there's mold and now you're going to change up the project, I think we're pretty understanding, but it's probably just best to send us an email and we can respond and then it's just documented and we can be sure there won't be any problem. Okay. I think communication is the main thing. Okay, next slide. We're getting closer to the end here. Okay, so project completion. So yay, the day comes within 36 months that you've completed your project. We need to be notified in writing that that has happened. Here's the mail address, email address, and we would like a short post completion report to include a description of what was done and how it's benefiting the community, a breakdown of 100% or total project expenditures, and some photos as possible of that particular completed project. The branch is going to request these materials because they may be used to publicize the outcome of the capital project sector and anytime an organization receives community gaming grant funds, they're subject to an audit by the gaming policy enforcement branch. That's the sister branch of us that has those audit capacity. Okay, right near the end and then we'll get to some questions. I put together some tips for everyone, which I like to do because it's going to kind of help you out. They might seem obvious, but I'm just going to run through them really quickly. So please read the sector guide. It's going to be 15 pages, sit down with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and read through it. You're going to have a much better understanding of how our program works. Review the pre-application checklist. It's going to be, I'm not sure if it's in the guidelines, but it's on our website anyway. Get those boxes out and just start saving all of those documents. There is a frequently asked question. Again, it's four pages. Just read it. Guaranteed you're going to learn something that you didn't know that's going to make your application better. Matt, we're going to be updating that too as the sector is open, aren't we? We're good. I think because we do get interesting questions during the sector intake and if we think it's going to be applicable to more than just the person that contacted us, there may be updates during the sector intake. Okay. The best thing that you can possibly do is this one right here. Save all required information as a word or PDF document for easy upload. So go through, okay, what's my project description. Write it out in a word document and save it as a project description 2019 and saved. Make sure it's nice and clean. Have someone else review it. Then go on to the next one. What's my accessibility and inclusion fee? Well, who are we open to? Are you open to everybody? Okay, great. Save that as a word document. Put all those in a folder and just get them ready. Have them nice and clearly organized. Our application is a one-shot deal, so you load it off, you open the application and then you go and you're just going to upload all those documents. There's no saving. There's no saving the application, but if you have them all saved in a folder on your hard drive, you're going to be fine. If you go into the application and you save project description and start typing things out and you're there, you're going to have problems, so please don't do that. Don't apply at the very last minute. Technically, you can apply on July 31 at 11 at night, but if there's some sort of computer glitch, it's just not going to work out well. Apply early. If you're ready in June, feel free to apply in June, then you can have your summer and relax. If you're saving it to the last minute, try to apply it day or two early, just in case there's a problem with your computer or our computer. Lastly, we have a phone staff. I'm going to put up their number next. They're available to help you with your application, to help you with technical problems. I'm going to be available. Please call us if you have questions. If you have a question and you decide to do something without asking us, it's the wrong thing. You might be excluded. It's not worth it. So who can you get help from? Here's our contact right here. Mostly there's this phone line here, 1-800-663. That's our personal phone staff. We have an analyst on every single day. If you leave a message, they will call you back. We fund a group called the British Columbia Association of Charitable Gaming. They're based in a lower mainland and they represent the entire and off-the-profit sector for gaming purposes. They have staff available to help you, including do a full walk-through of your application if you need to be. BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centers can provide help for Indigenous organizations. I know a lot of friendship centers around BC have capital needs, so please contact them and they are willing to help. And also what's really cool is we have community charitable gaming associations. So these are local groups that we fund to help local organizations with their gaming grant applications. They're around the province. They're all incredibly talented and love helping local groups. So here they are depending on where you are. These are general regions up north. We have Rick at Northern Light to the huge health. Prince George, we have Marvine who kind of helps with the whole interior. She can look through your application for you, answer questions. Carolyn and Kelowna has a wealth of knowledge and has definitely helped out a lot of groups in the past with some of the great applications you've seen there. Tracy and Chilliwack can help out the whole Fraser Valley region out to who knows where but she's really knowledgeable as well. So there's their website. We have Max and Victoria and Jerry and Comox and of course the BCACG again. So use these resources. They are free. They're there to help you and I guarantee if you ask for one of their assistance, your application is going to improve. No question about it. I believe that's it Ben. I think our next slide is the question slide. I'm going to leave this up just so people can get that there but fantastic. Thanks for tuning in. Again, please check for our guidelines. They'll be up in probably two weeks or use the 2018 guidelines. Up now the program has really not changed so you can start getting the application ready right now. David and I are here for the next 40 minutes to 11 to take some questions. We might not get to everyone but phone our staff, talk to the CCGAs right here or send us an email on this lots of times. And this webinar is going to be put on YouTube so this will be up on YouTube. It'll be up on our website. And how long might that take then? We usually get it up in about a week. So there's a bit of a turnaround here. To everyone, the slides are available right now in your handout section of the control panel. But once again, thank you Matt and David. We've got lots of questions so I'll try to ask you the big ones. If I don't get to your question, it might be because we either run out of time or that it's very specific in which case I will be sending those to Matt and David after this who will give you a more detailed response for your situation. But also feel free to email the Community Gaming Grant as well. Okay, so we had quite a few around the eligibility in terms of local government funding. So if a not-for-profit receives funding from a local government, does that automatically disqualify them or is there a certain level of funding that they can't go past? So no, they can receive funding from a local government. But the funding, when the organization gets that funding, it has to be under their control. If it remains under the control of the local government, then it's not really for the use of the organization. So you can get your matching funds from a local government grant or some other mechanism that they might have in place. Yeah, that's very common for us. And that is a really good thing. It shows local support and local commitment to the non-for-profit. And that's what we're looking for. So just make sure that's clear. The non-profit needs to be in charge of the project and the funding. Great. And that would apply, I guess, for private donations. They need to be already donated to the not-for-profit and in their control. That's what you're looking for. Correct. I think we do accept letters. So if it's a letter of confirmation, but that's where there's a score into that. If we have a handwritten letter that says, I plan to donate $10,000 guaranteed signed X person. If there's two exact projects and one has a letter and one has the cash already in the bank account, but I do think we do accept letters if it is a confirmed donation. It depends on how strongly written it is and the support behind that letter. But matching funds can be... We have accepted, for example, federal grant funds that were contingent on receiving a community gaming grant fund. So we have accepted those as matching funds. So the better you get the better you're going to score. But we're open. Yeah. All right. There was a question on back-to-back applications. So year-to-year for the same project versus different projects, are both of those okay? Both of those are okay. So we definitely had a fair number of groups who applied in 2017, weren't successful. They went home, they changed their application, they made it better, and they were successful in 2018 for the same project. That's perfect. That shows a commitment. We love it. Otherwise, only one grant per project. And what that means is a bit of a gray area. If you have run a community center and you got a grant last year for a brand-new roof, but this year you need to install a new playground, that would be probably a separate project. There's a two separate projects, even though it's the same community center. That's okay. If that group has fundraised the money and made a commitment to it, that's perfectly valid. But if last year they did a roof and then we find out they didn't quite finish the roof and they need the gutters and it's not quite clear and they want more money now to kind of finish it, that would be for the same project and that would be a big stretch like that. There's no funding, no two grants for the same project. We don't fund phases, we don't fund project A followed by project B associated with project A. They have to be distinct. Okay. Similar to that, what about retrofits or upgrades to heavy machinery or say a search and rescue vehicle? It's not a brand-new vehicle, but it does need to be retrofitted. So that can be eligible. In that case, how old is the vehicle would be one of our concerns, what's the expected life of that vehicle, even with the retrofit, etc., etc. So the acquisition or the upgrade of that equipment can be accepted, but they have to make a case as to why that's the best route to go and what's the expected use of that equipment life span wise. One of the most common projects was groups who had purchased an old rundown building and were applying for funding to retrofit the building and that's fantastic. A lot of non-profits can't build a brand-new building, but they might have access to some old ones. So we did some really cool renovation projects that completely revitalized the building. We did some asbestos and things like that. That is all good as long as you can explain why that building is going to be crucial to your group and the community. That's right. Cool. All right. I'm just looking through. We've got a lot more questions coming in, but some of the earlier ones, just a really specific one was, is a deadline for minor capital for arts and culture April 30th? Yeah. So in a regular $135 million gaming grant program, the first sector is arts and culture, February 1st to April 30th, that deadline to April 30th, and as part of that regular program, you can have a minor capital request or capital acquisition for under $20,000. That's coming up in a week or so that deadline is over. So those smaller projects are better fitting into those minor capital projects in the regular grant program stream. And just for clarification, minor capital projects versus capital acquisition, just for those of in the audience who are new to nonprofits, could you just? Sure. Super easy. A minor capital project is a capital project to a building, something tangible and fixed, pouring a concrete wheelchair ramp, building a staircase. Capital acquisition is an acquisition, buying some sports equipment, buying a computer, buying a new chair. But again, that's the other program. Yeah, not too much, other than it has to directly relate to the program being delivered. Yeah. Great. Okay, we've got a couple on specific types of equipment. So under office equipment, would computer system and audio visual equipment be separate application or one? Depends on the value of the overall project. If you can lump it all together and it's more than $20,000, I would recommend that you do that. I mean, lumping things together is naturally. You know, you have a nonprofit who needs to upgrade all their systems and that includes the new phones and the new computers and the new, whatever they're using, some webcams. Like put it all in one shot, one package, we need an IT system upgrade. We don't really care what is included in there, as long as we know it's relevant and needed for your organization. And that's, we understand the reality of being a nonprofit. Like you need to, if you can't have a new computer, if you have an old audio system, it just doesn't work. So that's great. I mean, really, that shows in my opinion that you're more aware of what you need as an organization. Yeah, that's fine. If you can't count on being a winner in the following year's application either. Again, this is a competitive model. And so each year's intake is going to be judged against each other. And so those projects, one project that might have been a winner last year in the sense of scoring high, might be edged out by another group this year that's new to the program. Yeah, the same principle, I find a restate that goes for renovations. You don't have to just do your windows. If you want to do renovations, we funded some projects that were windows, some fashion boards, a new gutter, like a restoration that might include 10 different components. And that's okay. Obviously, your budgets are going to be a bit more complex and you might need a quote from the window guy and a quote from the investment payment guy. But we funded a full foundation repair. And then once that was done, we also did a kitchen renovation as part of the same project. So don't feel bad about thinking big and really requesting the changes that you need to make your building functional for the community and into the future. Perfect. So there would be a way then if say the total building cost was going to be over the 1.25 max for the grant that they could have the grant fund a section of that building, whereas they're completing the rest of the building with their own funds. Is that possible? Would you be able to break it down like that? That sounds pretty, we're getting into a big project there. So it'd be hard to say yes or no exactly on that. I mean, they could just say we are going to do all the windows and that's their request. As a competitive process, again, we're looking to fund small not-for-profits with projects under 1.25. If we get an application in and it's pretty clear like the project's $2 million but they want us to build a foundation, that sounds like a $2 million project. If they're building the building separately but they want to fund the audio visual equipment, I think we would have to just look at that internally. There's so many scenarios in our program and we do when they get in that gray area have to just look at the details on what's in it. But my example is a very good one. Perfect. Yeah, that definitely clarifies that a lot, I think. So if local government funds provided as matching funds, can they be spread over the 36-month period? So each tax year, say the local government provides a third of the matching funds if this is committed to in writing? I don't see an issue with that. The commitment we're looking for as a me as a plane jane guy, but if it looks obvious to me that the government's really committed and they put the details in there and it's signed by the mayor and city planner, that sounds reasonable. If we're analyzing it and it looks as though the local government could back out on year three, that'll be a big hindrance to getting good marks on that section of the scoring. Yeah. All right. Some other more general ones. Are religious groups, is there any implications of that? Did you say religious? Religious groups, yeah. That's a bit of a gray area depending on if they meet a regular criteria. It needs to be a not-for-profit operate primarily for community benefit. Again, we're going to look at that open community benefit everyone, the community, the members, are there any requirements to be a membership that you have to be part of the religion? So overall, religious groups aren't eligible for our funding due to some of those reasons. But I mean, it depends on the nature of the project in this case. So restoring a church, probably not. Building the soup kitchen to see the downtown east side of eligible. Yeah. So you're really going to bring it back to those eligibility requirements and whether you're a religious group or not, if you're meeting those requirements, your case is going to be strong. Yes, exactly. All right. Any word on the program going forward into 2020 and further? So what we're planning on doing, this is the third year of the initial three-year rollout. We're going to step back after this summer, reevaluate how the program is operated, look at its strengths and weaknesses, its successes and so forth, and we'll present that to the minister for evaluation and direction on next year. Great. Good to hear. And combined applications. So we have a not-for-profit, but it's going to be a shared facility, say would it be better and would it be better to bring all those groups together into the application or keep it sort of exclusive to that one group for your application? So you can have, for lack of a better word, a conglomeration or a joint venture for projects. However, there clearly needs to be one applicant who's designated the lead and was responsible for receiving and recording and and extending those funds. So you can have a combination of two or three organizations working together pooling their funds. However, there has to be a lead partner who's going to be responsible. And so you want to, now we're starting to get complicated. It's not undoable, but you want to make sure that it's your, that this project and the way it's being structured is going to be eligible, like it's going to be completed and it's going to be able to be maintained into the future. Mm-hmm. Okay. You should just be clear. Yeah. I think that's what is coming across here is that there's a lot of flexibility, but you just want to be as upfront and clear as possible in your application to be competitive. Mm-hmm. So I think we're coming to the end. There's a lot of very specific questions for people on the line that we'll get to afterwards the webinar. All right. I think just a couple on sort of mixed municipal ownership. So if, say, there's a not-for-profit working out of a building, but it's owned by the municipal government, is there, is that a consideration? Is that going to make them ineligible? Say they need renovations? There's no difference between a non-profit operating a building which is owned by a municipal government or a private developer. We're going to look to that long-term commitment again, is that, you know, we're not here to retrofit municipal buildings either, but if the non-profit has a commitment to be there for 10 years and they can provide the best evidence of that, like a 10-year lease, 10-year commitment, then that's, I think that's okay. There's no difference in that again, owned by a private developer where we would also need a 10-year commitment. Fantastic. Yeah, we're not backstopping local government projects here. We're here to support not-for-profit delivering the necessary things in their communities. Perfect. And in terms of your regional look, do you try to preference grants so there's a spread across the province or is it purely based on the individual application? There will be a spread across the province to ensure that every region is represented from the pool of available funds. Perfect. Okay, I think that's going to be all the questions there. There's just a couple on where people can find previously funded applications. Is that available anywhere, projects? It is. It takes a bit of digging though. I think we were hoping to put it on our website. Is that something that I could do? It's definitely available, but it is a little bit of digging. How about we put it into the FAQ? Okay, we will put that into the FAQ. I can try to commit to it probably in the next week in the FAQ because we are actually really excited about these projects and we do want them. When you look at the list, it's just amazing to see you have got funding and some really cool projects in small towns all around the province. So we'll put those into the FAQ so you don't have to go and do a Google search, which is just tricky. Perfect. That would be great. We were always trying to share successes in the province. With that, I'm going to wrap things up. Thank you so much, Matt and David. That was incredibly informative. We got to so many questions. I hope everyone, if I didn't get to your question, as I said, I will get to it later, or Matt and David will be able to follow up with you. I really appreciate it. That was very informative webinar. Okay, thanks for hosting, Ben. You've been a pleasure to work with and thanks for everyone who logged in to listen today. We're really excited that the people still interested in this money. It's a great program. It's relatively simple to go for, not as competitive as you may have made it sound. You do have a good shot at getting funding. If you spend a bit of time on your application, you get all the required documents and you're going to be ahead of, you know, you're going to be right up to present. So please call our phone line here if you have any questions. We're here to help. We want good submissions. We want a fun great project. So good luck. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Okay, so I'm just going to bring it back to our normal screen here. So thanks everyone for participating. Just quickly, we have an upcoming webinar in June. What to say to foster visitation post wildfire marketing messages. So Destination BC is going to put out, is putting out some research on how to encourage tourism after you've been hit by a wildfire and there might be perspectives on your community of not being quite back up to scratch. But tune into that one and don't miss another webinar. Sign up for our webinar mailing list. I send out invitations to register beforehand and also after the webinar, I'll send out when it's available online. But otherwise, thank you for joining us at the end of this webinar, please complete the feedback survey that helps us develop new content. And I hope to see you all next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye.