Alberta Ecotrust is built on the foundation of active partnership – one of collaboration and participation. Twice a year we gather the Grant Review Committee (GRC) together to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in dozens of environmental projects across the province through the Alberta Ecotrust Environmental Grant Program.

Volunteer representatives from our corporate and nonprofit Visionary Partners form the GRC. They commit to working together to review applications and award grants to nonprofit organizations working on environmental projects.

This bi-annual GRC meeting is the exciting main event of our grant program and is always preceded by many months of work that see our staff and our committee members meeting with applicants, reviewing proposals, and deliberating on each project. It is the culmination of the journey to decision-making that all Foundations must make, and at Alberta Ecotrust the way that we take that journey is critical to our success.

For many years we have built our grant program around the principles of participatory grantmaking. In other words, ceding decision-making power about funding to the organizations we serve. There are many different versions of participatory grantmaking, but for us it means having our Visionary Partners at the table and working collaboratively towards a consensus decision on which projects to fund.

We take the responsibility of investing the dollars that are so generously donated to us very seriously, and while we can never profess to making perfect decisions every time, we at least know that our process is participatory, collaborative and transparent. And those are principles that we think very highly of at Alberta Ecotrust.

Yesterday, our GRC met, deliberated, and celebrated investing nearly $300,000 to 15 projects across Alberta. We can’t wait to share the people and projects improving the health of Alberta’s ecosystems this spring with you.