Donor Stories

Over the past year, Hope House Guelph’s Guelph Community Backpack Project has made a meaningful impact for children and families across the community. In 2025, the program distributed 2,991 backpacks filled with grade appropriate school supplies across 12 community pick up sites with the help of 238 volunteers and 793 volunteer hours. Children shared overwhelmingly…

Next up in our #GCFGrantStories series is Community Grant recipient Guelph Community Singers (GCS), which received funding for its Singing is Pure Joy Program. According to its website, GCS Guelph Community Singers is a fun-loving, accessible, and secular community choir with over 100 voices. After the first wave of the pandemic, the choir pivoted from…

Guelph Dance received a 2024 Musagetes Fund grant to help cover its operating costs for the year. This support allowed the organization to grow its team and continue offering exciting dance programs across the community Guelph and Wellington. Guelph Dance has a small but hardworking team, and runs programs all year with three part-time staff…

The Guelph Film Festival (GFF) received a 2024 Musagetes Grant to support its annual celebration of documentary film and community dialogue. This funding helped cover operational costs, especially supporting the work of staff who bring the festival’s vision to life. In November 2024, GFF hosted its 27th edition with nine days of screenings, talkbacks, and…

Today in #GCFGrantStories, we feature Guelph Museums’ McCrae in the Mirror, a play funded through the Guelph Community Foundation’s Musagetes Fund. Since 2004, the Musagetes Fund, a donor-advised granting stream, has provided grants to registered charities (or organizations partnered with a registered charity) that provide contemporary art and culture programming, emphasizing new approaches to building…

The Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition (GNSC), along with the Community Resilience Coalition of Guelph and Wellington (CRC), received a 2024 Community Grant to launch Fostering Resilience Champions, a youth leadership program that helps local young people build life skills and stronger connections in their community. The grant helped create a youth leadership group with ten…

Over the course of a full day retreat, Guelph Youth Singers created a meaningful and engaging experience that brought together 31 children and youth from across Guelph and surrounding areas! Youths, ages 6 to 18, were actively involved in rehearsals, team building activities, and creative sessions that strengthened their musical skills while fostering a strong…

Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival – enthralling, inspiring and educating If the best community initiatives build rich and broad partnerships then the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival’s (GCDF) Karen Kaeja Residency project certainly leaps to mind. These dancers and community-builders know how to stretch a grant and do so with creativity and grace! With a $2,500 grant from The…

Each year, The Guelph Community Foundation invites requests for funding from charitable organizations within Guelph and Wellington County. Charitable organizations deliver the services and champion the causes that make our community thrive. Whether it is recreation opportunities for children, meals for the hungry, end of life care, or culture for the soul, our not-for-profit sector makes it all happen. The…

Today in our #GCFGrantStories series, we feature Community Grant recipient Hopewell Children’s Homes (HCH), which received funding for its Hopewell/YMCA Community Partnership Program for Inclusion, Well-being & Improved Health Outcomes. HCH works with individuals with a range of physical and developmental abilities and help their residents in reaching their maximum level of achievement and independence.…

Thanks to support from a Community Grant, Hopewell Children’s Home was able to create a Snoezelen room for their clients. Snoezelen Multi-Sensory Environments are relaxing spaces that help reduce agitation and anxiety, but they can also engage and delight the user, stimulate reactions, and encourage communication. These environments can be used to calm and reduce…