In 2016, the Oakville Community Foundation approached the Sheridan research team for assistance in improving the efficiency and effectiveness in their grant application and disbursement process. The Foundation and Sheridan agreed that a collaborative approach by service users (clients) and service providers (agencies) to create funding proposals was preferable. This collaborative approach differed from the more traditional practice of service providers developing their own proposals in response to RFPs from The Foundation, separately and without knowledge of what other agencies were doing.
The Community Ideas Factory was a community-college partnership exploring social innovations within the charitable sector of the Halton Region. It was a collaborative research project between Sheridan College and the Oakville Community Foundation. The goal of the project was to change the philanthropic granting process in Oakville so that it is more bottom-up, participatory, and evidenced-based.
The following documents are summaries of our Creative Problem-Solving sessions, which is part of our research project Community Ideas Factory in partnership with Sheridan College.
