CASE STUDY | Participatory Grantmaking in the Peel Region

This resource is also available in French. Click here to access the French version.

This case study from Myriam Bérubé and Karenveer Pannu provides an overview of Tamarack’s Participatory Grantmaking project in Ontario’s Peel Region. The pilot project was a collaboration between the WES Mariam Assefa Fund and the Tamarack Institute.

The project explored the following questions:

What would happen if residents were able to decide what organizations and services were funded within their community?
What would happen if funding priorities were defined by community residents instead of philanthropic foundations?
How might this change and empower a community?

This case study presents key lessons learned from the Tamarack team’s perspective during the first half of this two-year project, which launched in 2021.

Deepen Your Learning:

Read about Empowering Newcomers to the Peel Region Through Participatory Grantmaking

Learn about the Monitoring Collaboration tool, which was used by the team profiled in this case study

Note: This document was published in 2022 and uses the word stakeholder to reference the different parties connected to the outcomes of a situation or decision.

Since using the term, we as an organization have learned more about the origins of this word and its original uses. We want to acknowledge this history and communicate our desire to change which we are still developing as an organization.