Calgarians will be able to tap into $25,000 from the Calgary Parking Authority as they launch a new program geared towards giving back to citizens.
The CPA’s new sponsorship program is focused on providing cash to individuals, businesses, community organizations and other interested parties for small projects that are connected to parking, mobility and transportation.
Chelsea Webster, marketing specialist with the CPA said the sky’s the limit on potential projects they’ll fund.
“We’re just trying to cast the net as wide as possible because there’s a lot of groups that don’t have access to funding for those specific types of projects,” she said, noting they’ve already had interest from groups like Bike Calgary.
Interested parties can go through the application and submission process online and the proposals will be reviewed and funded on the fly. Webster said there’s no specific application deadline and they’ll fund as many endeavours as they can for the remainder of 2019.
Webster spitballed a couple of potential ideas, but said they don’t want to influence the kind of projects that come forward.
“We don’t want people to be limited by our imagination.”
The $25,000 is being funded direct through CPA revenue and while they’ve focused on meeting the needs of Calgarians through tech improvements, enforcement and public safety, Webster said they haven’t been as good at community outreach.
“One thing we haven’t really done is let our community describe how they want help. Our goal is to help fund those types of initiatives,” she said.
They plan to gauge the uptake in submissions this year to determine if the amount of funding should be increased, and the program extended another year. Webster said both are already on the radar.
There’s a public information session March 1, and at that point they’ll begin accepting applications. The public information session will be held at 608 – 9 Avenue SW between 12 and 1 p.m. Anyone interested in attending is asked to rsvp to sponsorship@calgaryparking.com.
“We’re really excited to have the program available and see what the community has. Our goal is to build relationships with our community in ways that we haven’t really done before,” Webster said.
