Provincial government matching charitable COVID-19 donations

MEDICINE HAT, AB -The province is launching a program to help charities during the COVID pandemic.

Starting on Wednesday, the Alberta government will match donations from charities and non-profits up to $2 million until May 31st.

The Community Foundation of Southeast Alberta (CFSEA) qualifies for this program with their COVID-19 response fund.

Community engagement coordinator Niki Gray says this will help address the medium to long term needs of communities in the region.

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She says the local COVID-19 response fund has been pretty steady with donations coming in and people being able to give what they can.

“I think my favourite part about is that a lot of people think that you have to be really well-off or elderly to be able to donate to a charity. But there are a ton of $25 dollar donations made to it and it’s really encouraging we’re reaching a larger demographic and the community members see that this is a big need.”

Meantime, CFSEA is re-purposing the spring grants that they had available in May and June and will start to roll those out at the end of April. That’s a separate amount of money that will address the COVID-19 urgent and immediate needs right now.

She says CFSEA will apply the spring grants first before the COVID19 response fund.

Applications for the COVID-19 response fund will be available in the next week or so.

To donate to the COVID-19 response fund visit the CFSEA website.

Gray says the COVID response fund will address the 6-18 month needs.