What's new for 2012?
Funding Priorities for 2012
In preparing the budget for 2012, City programs have been asked for a 10% reduction in their budgets. The 2012 City of Toronto Operating Budget approval is scheduled for January, 2012.
As the time we are releasing these guidelines, the 2012 CSP budget is not known. In order to recommend a balanced budget for the CSP program in 2012, funding levels for returning organizations may be reduced or cut entirely in 2012. Funding recommendations will be made based on individual program assessments, not as an "across the board" percentage reduction.
All organizations will be assessed against the program criteria, and also ranked to determine their relative priority for funding. CSP is an ongoing Partnership program funder, and 2012 assessments will be based on the organization's 2012 application submission, as well as applications, funding conditions, year-end reports and site visits for the 2010 and 2011 years.
How will the CSP assessment process work to meet a reduced budget?
Highest priority will be on continuing to fund organizations/programs that:
- Demonstrate the strongest fit with the CSP program mission and goals;
- Maximize the impact of CSP funding through leverage and good management;
- Help address the priority of community equity: improving consistency in funding to diverse neighbourhoods and communities of common bond.
Lowest priority for continuing funding will be for organizations/programs that:
- Do not demonstrate high need for city support to maintain the program activities;
- Have few approaches to linking governance and services to building community capacity through volunteers, leadership and participatory decision-making;
- Cannot demonstrate performance improvements in identified governance and management areas.
2012 New and Increased requests:
CSP will not be open to applications from new organizations in 2012.
CSP will not accept new and increased requests from returning organizations in 2012; all returning organization requests will be considered at the flat line level.
The CSP Equity Framework
The Community Service Partnerships Program is committed to ensuring that funding decisions are made in an equitable way. We consider three areas of equity:
- Community equity
improving consistency in funding to diverse neighbourhoods and communities of common bond.
- Service equity
improving funding level consistency among service sectors.
- Organization equity
improving funding level consistency and access to resources among funded organizations.
For 2012 the CSP will focus on the area of community equity and target available resources to communities that are disadvantaged, high-risk and marginalized.
New Resource - Wellbeing Toronto:
Wellbeing Toronto is a new web-based measurement and visualization tool that helps evaluate community wellbeing across the city's 140 neighbourhoods. Using geographic information software, Wellbeing Toronto allows users to select, combine and weight the significance of a number of indicators that monitor the neighbourhood wellness. The results appear instantly on easy to read maps, tables and graphs. This free tool supports decision making and seeks to engage citizens and businesses in understanding the challenges and opportunities of creating and maintaining healthy neighbourhoods.
