Local Poverty Reduction Fund

For help with technical difficulties, please contact the LPRF Support Centre at 1 800 263-2887 or lprf@otf.ca. Your inquiry will be acknowledged within 24 hours.

• The LPRF was open to a wide range of groups, including not-for-profit corporations, registered charities, broader public sector organizations such as municipal governments, district social service administration boards, as well as Indigenous communities and Indigenous-led organizations.
• The third and final LPRF application deadline closed on June 28, 2017.

• Grant sizes depended on the type of project and evaluation methods proposed. Applicants were required to provide a business case that estimated necessary funding based on the type of project and evaluation they proposed.
• LPRF considered grant proposals lasting up to three years to provide enough time for program leaders to demonstrate results. Some projects require less time, so the Fund also supported one- and two-year projects.
• View the list of projects funded in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Private-sector (i.e. for-profit) organizations could partner with grantees in many ways, for example through in-kind supports, financial contributions, providing evaluation expertise, or by providing jobs and apprenticeship opportunities. Private sector organizations cannot be the applicant or direct recipient of funding.

Yes. LPRF is a special program funded by the Government of Ontario and administered by OTF. OTF and the Government of Ontario require a minimum of 4 weeks’ notice in advance of any recognition activity; this includes the sharing of preliminary and final evaluation results/findings of your LPRF project. Please notify your LPRF Program Manager, who will connect you with an OTF Public Relations Associate to help your organization develop appropriate recognition activities and materials.

A proportion of all grant funds are held back until the grantee has submitted the final report and until OTF has reviewed and verified the satisfactory completion of the grant. For LPRF grants, 10% of the grant budget for the final year of the grant is held back.

Each year, OTF audits a random sample of grants. Usually an audit will take place after a progress or final report has been submitted. It is important to adhere to the Terms & Conditions associated with your grant. Keeping good spending records and tracking against the expected results of your grant will help your organization be ready to report to OTF, should the grant be audited. Grantees are required to retain all receipts and expenditure records relevant to the grant for a period of six years.

It is necessary for grantees to follow the approved project plan, project budget and detailed evaluation plan, as they are part of the Grant Contract obligations. To help support our grantees, OTF staff stay in frequent touch with our grantees. As detailed in the Grant Contract, LPRF grantees participate in a minimum of four engagements a year with an OTF Program Manager. Please inform your Program Manager promptly if you experience changes within your organization, or encounter difficulties with your third party evaluator, or your project plan, or if you need to reallocate funds or extend the length of your project. Grantees who are not successful at fulfilling the approved project and/or detailed evaluation plan may have their grant, or a portion of the grant, rescinded.

• The purpose of LPRF is to evaluate innovative, local, community-driven solutions that either prevent or measurably improve the lives of those most affected by poverty. All LPRF projects must include a program evaluation carried out by a qualified third party evaluator.
• Evaluation is about program evaluation: collecting and using evidence to assess the impact, effectiveness and efficiency of a program. The type of evaluation depends on the initiative. Some organizations may benefit from doing a program evaluation to measure effectiveness; others might propose a process evaluation to assess the program delivery or impact on a target population.
• LPRF proposals needed to clearly outline how the organization would evaluate the project, how it could demonstrate outcomes, and how it relates to the Poverty Reduction Strategy indicators.

• Funds can only be used toward program costs if they are to support a new activity or program in order to evaluate that new activity or program.
  • For example, an evaluation could look at outcomes for a different set of clients who have not historically received services. In this case, program expenses could be covered by the fund in order to provide services to this new set of clients.
  • A second example might be where a service provider intends to add a new approach to case management, or a new form of counseling, as a way of increasing the effectiveness of an existing benefit or service. The incremental cost of the new case management or counseling would be an eligible expense under the project grant, while the existing benefit or service would continue to be funded from its pre-existing funding source.
• Funds cannot be used to ‘backfill’ expenses currently funded through existing government grants or other sources.

• The Fund emphasizes partnership and collaboration as a way to encourage smaller agencies to apply. Organizations with less capacity to evaluate could partner with larger ones that have greater resources and relevant expertise.
• The government has partnered with the Ontario Trillium Foundation to administer the LPRF. OTF’s primary role includes providing outreach and proposal support to applicants as well as high-engagement monitoring to successful grantees. OTF provides grantees with a range of supports, including webinars, workshops and one-on-one support. These are designed to promote local partnerships, encourage knowledge-sharing and help grantees carry out successful projects.