Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Small grants reap big returns

The Winter City Committee handed out $6,000 in taxpayers' money but this helped community groups in Prince George leverage more than $150,000 additional dollars from other sources.

The Winter City Committee handed out $6,000 in taxpayers' money but this helped community groups in Prince George leverage more than $150,000 additional dollars from other sources.

The Winter City Committee (WCC) is a council-sanctioned group of volunteers that works with City Hall to promote the winter-based culture and lifestyle of this city. In a report released this week, they talked about a number of the things they did throughout this past year, and one of the key ones was dispersing $6,000 provided to them by city council to stimulate local groups doing winter-centric projects and initiatives.

Many of the groups who applied for a WCC grant also apply for other contributions from foundations, corporations, other levels of government, and all kinds of other envelopes of development money. In many cases, these other contributors only give money to projects that get the prior support of their local government.

WCC chair Nancie Krushelnicki told city council this past week that of the 10 groups that got a grant from the committee, all were able to at least double their money via other sources and some went far beyond that.

The report showed that the most modest of request had the most modest of returns, but even that - a $300 to Knox United Church for 30 strings of decorative lights - translated into $600 in the end.

The biggest gains were made by the Coldsnap Winter Music Festival that got $900 from the committee and ended up collecting almost $110,000 from other sources.

Another major gainer was the Prince George Iceman sporting event which received $900 and leveraged that into a total of $35,000.

In addition to the grants, said Krushelnicki, the committee had an otherwise busy and successful 2010.

Part of the success, she said, was Prince George winning two national awards at the WinterLights Symposium held March in Charlottetown. The accolades were for festive season celebrations (anchored by the Festival of Trees) and for the funding program that administers the grant money to local community groups.

In 2010 the WCC launched the Prince George Skate event to stimulate outdoor rink activity and the Nominate Your Neighbour goodwill campaign to recognize winter decorating of homes or businesses.

The committee took part in the myPG public survey, with winter lifestyle goals in mind, and played an active roll in the 2015 Canada Winter Games bid.

Since Prince George won that bid, they will invest a lot more energy and volunteer time over the next four years to make that event successful, said Krushelnicki.

In addition to Krushelnicki, the group is comprised of Tom Dielissen, Renee Trepanier, Marlies Greulich, Linda Self, Betty Burbee, Ranjit Gill and Sherry Powney - volunteers all.

The City of Prince George provides the help of two staff people: community services co-ordinator Cheryl Livingstone-Leman and legislative support clerk Wendy Fauth.

The committee meets monthly from September to June. Applications are now being accepted to join this committee for the year ahead.

For more information look them up on the city's website.