Summer camps struggling after provincial grant cuts

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This article was published 18/05/2024 (670 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Summer camps in Manitoba — like Camp Koinonia in Boissevain — are being forced to change how their summer programming will be carried out after at least eight of them were denied grant funding last week by the provincial government for the first time in years.

Matthew Heide, general manager of Camp Koinonia, said the camp had applied for $22,000 under the Urban Hometown Green Team program. The grant would have been used to hire two youths for the summer season — one for maintenance and the other as a head cook.

The camp was informed it had been denied funding on May 10. The work period that the grant is supposed to cover begins on May 1.

“By not being able to hire those people, what it does is it puts, on the maintenance side, more pressure on our permanent staff, which we have only two of, and then the rest of the summer leadership, camp counsellors, staff in general … to pick up that other slack,” Heide said.

“Because we can’t hire a full-time head cook, we’re currently looking for volunteers.”

The camp will try to find volunteers to work a week at a time from the community. But that won’t solve the problem for Camp Koinonia.

“The unfortunate reality is we just hired new full-time staff. So we have a new maintenance person and new food services person. It’s all brand new to them as well,” Heide said, emphasizing the additional pressures the new hires will have to deal with in training new volunteers every week.

Heide has been brainstorming how to make up for the lost funding. One idea he has considered is potentially partnering with businesses and individuals willing to sponsor someone to work for Camp Koinonia for a week at a time.

The impact of the lower funding will affect each camp differently. Some, like Circle Square Ranch Spruce Woods near Austin, have had their funding significantly decreased as opposed to outright denied.

Many camps will be looking for volunteers in the wake of lost funding for paid positions and some will just have to foot the bill for debt they’ll incur over the summer, Manitoba Camping Association executive director Kim Scherger said Friday.

“Some camps have actually already made decisions to cut some staffing positions … There’s some camps who are considering cutting some weeks of programming at camp. So then children wouldn’t get to go to camp,” she said.

Scherger added that the amount of debt some camps will incur will be in the range $30,000 to $90,000.

Scherger said that denials were issued about a week and a half later than decisions are usually sent out. With no warning, she said, camps that rely on funding and expect it based on approved applications in the past were shocked to find out they were getting nothing.

The provincial government is clear on the Green Team application website that prior approval does not guarantee future funding.

Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Ian Bushie, who oversees summer camp funding, has been adamant that funding denials would not lead to camp closures. Asked on Thursday at the state of the province event in Brandon about the situation, Bushie said, “Rest assured that there are no camps across Manitoba that will be closing.”

He pointed out the NDP government has increased camp funding in the 2024 budget to $5.9 million as opposed to the $4 million offered pre-pandemic by the previous government.

Like many other organizations, summer camps were provided with additional emergency funding during the pandemic. For 2020-21, the Green Team budget was $8.7 million. For each of the next three years, the budget was $9 million.

This year’s funding represented a $3.1-million decrease, coupled with a record number of applications.

“I understand that there was more groups or organizations that asked for funding,” Heide said. “So am I guaranteed a grant? No. It just would have been nice to know earlier. That’s probably the biggest thing.”

The late denials combined with the lack of warning about decreased funding did not allow adequate time to make up for the gaps in funding by applying to other programs, Scherger said.

Had the government warned applicants that approvals would be tighter this year, they might have broadened their funding requests, she said, noting that many of the deadlines to apply for other grants, like Canada Summer Jobs, have already passed.

» cmcconkey@brandonsun.com