City standardizes process for ad-hoc capital funding requests

By ANNA SMITH Local Journalism Initiative on February 19, 2025.

The City of Medicine Hat now has a standardized application and evaluation process for ad hoc requests for capital funding.

Between 2019 and 2024, annual funding for major grant programs in the city has increased by $17,000, or roughly 4.5 per cent, says the city, from $380,000 to $397,000.

Over the same period, requests submitted for these programs have increased $697,000 (81.1 per cent) from $837,000 to $1.5 million.

“There was previously no process to bring forward informal capital grant requests, though more and more organizations were coming to us asking for help,” said Joseph Hutter, managing director of public services.

“Non-profit organizations would request to address council and it was only then that council would hear their wish for funding. Council would then have to refer back to administration to run the numbers and provide a recommendation,” said Hutter. “This prolonged the process, so we really needed a framework that would receive and evaluate such requests ahead of time. That way all the pertinent information is included so council can make an informed decision.”

The new Capital Grant Application employs an online form to collect consistent information from each organization as a baseline to evaluate against pre-established criteria, with primary grant streams as Family and Community Support Services, Community Vibrancy Grants, Microgrants and Major Grants.

“For every dollar we give away, we also give away five and a half cents of forgone investment revenue, so we must be very cautious to ensure that any money taken out of reserves will positively impact the community as a whole,” added Hutter, who clarifies that this is not an additional grant program.

“There is no budget for capital grant requests, so we are not opening an intake for applications. This simply establishes a consistent approach for collecting detailed information and applying a scoring rubric if and when an organization has a proposal outside of all of our regular granting channels,” said Hutter. “If a proposal meets the criteria and eligibility thresholds, only then will it move through to council for budget consideration.”

Information on eligibility and evaluation criteria, application guidelines and to apply can be viewed at medicinehat.ca/grants.