LCF Announces This Year's Community Vitality Grant Recipients

LCF Announces This Year's Community Vitality Grant Recipients

Today, the London Community Foundation announced $943,900 in grants as part of its annual Community Vitality Grant program. Funded by LCF’s Community Fund, this program supports high-impact, innovative, and collaborative initiatives that create systemic change in the London and Middlesex region.

Community Vitality grant recipients are chosen through a months-long deliberation process in which a panel of community volunteers, along with LCF staff, discuss and review project proposals put forward by local agencies.

“The process was difficult, as it always is,” says Lori Runciman, Director of Grants at London Community Foundation. “But our just-released Vital Signs report, Be the Change, affirmed the process’s effectiveness because the chosen initiatives will impact the same quality of life aspects prioritized in the report: housing, racial equality, well-being and food security.”

This year’s process was extra challenging as it required anticipating the possible impacts of COVID-19. Grappling with how the initiatives could proceed, and how LCF’s funding could be used as intended, despite constantly changing circumstances, was critical.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, LCF has opted to forgo its usual Community Vitality Celebration, instead inviting community members to visit www.lcf.on.ca/vitality for Honouring Community Vitality, a special digital report complete with videos and in-depth stories on each grant, as well as a recap of the Foundation’s response to COVID-19.