Endorse Community Grants Audit Recommendations

Statement Watch

It's over to you. Thank you, Chair. Good morning, committee members. Today, my team and I will present the results from our Audit of Community Grants. It's a topic that's near and dear to my heart personally. Well, it would be near and dear to my heart. As we all know, auditors are heartless beings. So if I had one, it would be near to it. So next slide, please. We have our slides up. Go ahead. There we are. Excellent. Council members expressed interest in an audit of community grants, seeking assurance on the efficiency and effectiveness of granting processes carried out by the Arts, Culture, and Community Services Department, or ACCS. Our examination had a broad lens encompassing program design, implementation processes, supporting grant approval, and the monitoring of grants and reporting to Council. Council approved spending $34 million for 931 grants for 2024. Underlying our grant criteria was the reasonable expectation that grants would align with strategic priorities, and the processes to recommend grants for council approval would be fair, objective, and transparent. Okay, we're one slide ahead, so just hold right there, please. Could you go back? Okay. There we are. That's the right one. Thank you. ACCS provides not-for-profit organizations with a variety of grants to assist a wide range of community services. These services are provided through child care centers, neighborhood houses, theaters, shelters, arts and culture organizations, and other community-based social service organizations. Section 206 of the Vancouver Charter allows Council to provide money grants to charitable institutions and organizations deemed by Council to contribute to culture, beautification, health, or welfare of the city. ACCS distributed $28 million across 826 operating grants and $6 million across 105 capital grants in 2024. These grants were a mix of one-time and ongoing grants and included operating support and capital assistance. Operating grants focused on providing funding for specific projects or providing organizations with funding to assist in covering their operating expenses. CAPITAL GRANTS FOCUSED ON PROVIDING FUNDING TO BUILD OR UPGRADE FACILITIES USED BY ORGANIZATIONS TO PROVIDE SERVICES TO THE COMMUNITY. THE OBJECTIVE OF THE AUDIT WAS TO DETERMINE IF THE CITY OF VANCOUVER DESIGNED AND ADMINISTERED ITS COMMUNITY GRANTS PROGRAMS TO EFFECTIVELY AND EFFICIENTLY DELIVER ON COUNCIL APPROVED POLICY AND PRIORITIES. Effectively means having clear and measurable objectives, designing the grant programs to achieve these objectives, and measuring and reporting out on the resulting level of performance to track progress and improve the programs. Efficiently refers to optimal use of resources intended to achieve outputs and outcomes through means such as streamlined processes. The audit focused on the period between July 1st, 2023 to June 30th, 2025, and included materials produced prior to then

that were used as guidance policies and administrative procedures during the audit period. We examined 19 grant streams, providing three-quarters of the total community grant funding. Next slide, please. We set out to examine aspects of governance and oversight, grant selection and monitoring and reporting, which is primarily carried out by three ACCS teams. We examined whether ACCS had appropriate policies, processes, and objectives in place to support stewardship of grant funding, in alignment with council-approved policy and procedures, suitable grant selection processes to effectively and efficiently deliver on program objectives, developed and applied grant monitoring processes to manage risk and ensure accountability, and tracked and reported on the performance of the city's grant programs. Next slide, please. There were several items out of scope for this audit. We didn't examine compliance with financial controls and corporate policies. Nor did we assess the processing of grant payments made by the city's accounts payable system or electronics fund transfers. We didn't look at implementation of potential recommendations included in the jurisdictional scan of municipal granting or examine the activities of grant recipients. We also didn't examine grants administered outside of ACCS. Other grants outside of scope were grants provided to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Vancouver School Board. We also didn't include non-profit leases, which were the subject of a separate examination in 2024. Next slide, please. Overall, we found that our audit criteria were partially met. We concluded that the department's granting program aligned with charter requirements and linked to council's strategic priorities. While we identified a number of good practices, however, we also identified opportunities for improvement. Next slide, please. The report contains 10 recommendations intended to further strengthen the administration of community grants. I'd like to thank the ACCS senior leadership team, all of whom I think are here today, for their assistance and cooperation throughout the audit, for their response to the report, and for the action plan to the audit's 10 recommendations. I now ask Laurie Barrett, Deputy Auditor General and Engagement Leader for this audit, and Subramanian Prebhachandran, Senior Auditor on the project, to present the detailed audit findings and resulting recommendations. Laurie? And good morning, committee members. The following slides will present the audit findings and recommendations related to our examination of grant program planning and design. And next slide, please. Thank you. For the audit, we examined a sample of 19 grant streams, including 10 operating and 9 capital, which covered approximately 75% of the value of grants dispersed in 2024. We found that all grant streams had goals that directly or indirectly linked to Council priorities and strategies. Defining program objectives is a core component of designing a grant program so that success can be assessed and measured.

We found that ACCS had developed objectives that were specific, realistic, and measurable for five of the 19 grant streams that we examined. Expanding this practice to all streams would assist in determining the best balance between the number of grants and the monetary value of each and create a foundation for demonstrating effectiveness. Objectives are also related to the distinction between attribution and contribution grants. Attribution grants often align with issuing fewer, larger, multi-year grants that support goals of achieving meaningful outcomes, initiating systemic change, and attributing impact back to the city's investments. Conversely, contribution grants can have broad community reach, but their impacts are more intangible and symbolic as they typically involve a large number of smaller grants. This attribution-contribution distinction is central to decisions about grant size, reach, and strategic intent and can be applied to both ongoing grant streams and one-times awards. Next slide, please. These findings and considerations led us to the first of our recommendations, that ACCS should create measurable objectives for all grant programs, demonstrate how they align with council priorities, determine if their intent is attribution or contribution, and develop a grant balance aligned with these considerations. Next slide, please. Performance measurement frameworks provide a consistent way to assess and report program performance to support accountability, impact assessment, and continuous improvement. They align an organization's strategic goals with individual programs through clearly defined key performance indicators, or KPIs. Effective performance measurement frameworks enable answers to the questions, what does success look like, and how do we measure that success, and use those answers to adjust and refine programs to achieve results. ACCS had 40 metrics for activity levels, including measures such as total attendance at public events, total investment in grant-supported child care spaces, and number of clients accessing homelessness services. While it is important to measure levels of activity, and this is a good start, on their own, measures of activity are limited in their ability to demonstrate impact. We also found that ACCS's metrics did not include efficiency measures. These could include administrative measures such as processing time per application or the number of applications processed per employee. Next slide, please. This leads us to the second recommendation, which is for ACCS to develop performance measurement frameworks for its grant programs to ensure performance data is well connected to grant stream objectives. Next slide, please. Using a risk-based approach to the planning and design of grant programs supports right-sizing grant administration practices relative to the risks presented by various grant scenarios and factors such as grant size and project complexity.

Documentation includes the risks themselves, as well as appropriate risk responses. And through monitoring and ensuring that risk responses are performed as intended, grantors can identify any adjustments as needed. We found that ACCS had identified seven high-level granting risks, but that connections between these risks and individual grant streams could be strengthened. Next slide, please. Therefore, we recommended that ACCS should build on the granting risks it has identified and improve its risk assessment process by developing and monitoring a grant risk register that documents risks in each granting area, the likelihood and consequence of identified risks, appropriate risk treatments, and monitoring activities to ensure the risk register remains relevant and actionable over time. Next slide, please. Having a standardized policy and procedures for community grants is a good practice that we saw in several municipalities such as Edmonton, Toronto, and Ottawa. Granting policies would typically include sections that define what a grant is, identify the objectives and priorities of the granting program, and assign accountabilities for the granting process. ACCS did not have an overarching policy to guide grant administration, but utilized the city's corporate policies and some guidance and procedures, documents for specific grant streams. Reliance on discretionary decision-making can create risks of unintended outcomes, inconsistencies, and unjustified spending, and developing some uniform standards and guidelines could reduce granting risks without compromising granting effectiveness. Next slide, please. So based on this finding, we recommended that ACCS should enhance the efficiency of its granting programs by improving guidance for processes and decisions that apply across the grant lifecycle through establishing a clear definition of a grant, minimum requirements and guidance developed from the results of the risk assessment process for each phase of the grant life cycle, circumstances and processes for new grant opportunities and one-time direct award grants, and standardized and consistent practices as appropriate across granting streams. And I will now turn the presentation over to Subran, who will discuss the findings and recommendations related to grant administration, as well as information provided to Council. Thank you, Lori. Up next slide, please. Thank you. So with regard to criteria clarity, criteria can be thought of as two kind of buckets. There's eligibility criteria, which is mandatory criteria that applicants must satisfy to qualify for a grant, and that ensures that the applicant's proposal is aligned with objectives.

And then there's assessment criteria to determine how well an applicant meets the criteria by evaluating as a means of measuring relative merit and funding priority. We found that eligibility criteria was clear for each of the grant streams we examined. However, there were some gaps for some of the assessment criteria. These gaps included, in some cases, having assessment criteria without weights that helped prioritize key criteria or weights without scoring guide to facilitate consistent scoring by evaluators. Next slide. We found that ACCS appropriately promoted grant opportunities through a variety of means to potential applicants. This included email distribution, postings on the city's website. For select streams, there was also application assistant tools. These included materials that were translated into different languages, and in some cases, webinar sessions available for prospective applicants to guide them through the application process. All this designed... to encourage a wide variety of relevant applicants to apply for those grant streams. However, we did note that assessment criteria was not always published and the relative weightings used to select grant applications were not published for certain streams. Next slide. To improve granting assessments, we recommend THAT THE CITY SHOULD DEVELOP CLEAR ASSESSMENT CRITERIA ALIGNED WITH EACH GRANT STREAM SUBJECTIVE, INCLUDING THEIR RESPECTIVE WEIGHTINGS AND RATING SCALES, COMMUNICATE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA TO POTENTIAL APPLICANTS TO ENSURE TRANSPARENCY IN GRANTING DECISIONS, AND DOCUMENT INTERNAL GUIDANCE TO PROMOTE CONSISTENT OBJECTIVE AND APPROPRIATE ASSESSMENT OF APPLICATIONS ACROSS GRANT ASSESSORS. NEXT SLIDE. We found that for two particular streams that ACCS had developed multi-year funding format that produced win-wins in reducing administrative burden for both applicants and staff. Applicants only had to apply once and staff adjudicated the decision once. And so although funding in these cases for these three-year grants were pre-approved for years two and three, they remained conditioned on Council approving annual budgets for those particular years. Grant recipients we spoke to expressed gratitude for the reduced administrative burden that these streams provided them. Next slide. To enhance operational efficiency while also increasing funding certainty for grant recipients, ACCS should assess the opportunity to build upon its existing multi-year operational grant streams to increase the proportion of multi-year grants relative to one-year grants. Next slide. With regard to records, the assessment or adjudication process for applicants and for ongoing competitive grant streams involved essentially two steps.

The initial step involved the scoring of an application by adjudicators. Some of these adjudicators were external to the city, and they generally scored the application relative to predefined criteria. This was followed in some cases by staff discussions of factors that were not considered in the initial scoring. These discussions included alignment with council priorities, balance of program characteristics of the recommended recipients, and funding continuity for prior recipients. Next slide. In some cases, the first phase of the assessment was well documented, but subsequent phases were not. At times, it was unclear how the initial and subsequent assessments were consolidated into final recommendations. Staff was able to explain the selection decisions, but assessment documentation needed to be improved to be able to withstand objective review for both ongoing and one-time grant streams. Next slide. ACCS should review its grant assessment methods and tools and improve the documentation of factors considered during the grant assessment process to ensure that complete records are maintained that support grant recommendations to counsel. Next slide. Thank you. Terms and conditions for grant agreements. We found that all grants were appropriately approved and all grant documentation was appropriately stored. The grant agreements had appropriate terms and conditions, including provisions for returning unused funds and reporting requirements for recipients. However, we did note that for six streams, those streams did not require final reporting. This could create a risk that if the recipient did not reapply for the grant, that the city would not receive a report on what the recipient was able to accomplish with the grant. Next slide. The city should review and update its grant agreements to ensure that they include reporting requirements where lacking. Next slide. Thank you. We found that for the monitoring process that the reporting process was not overly burdensome for recipients and staff did a good job in leveraging other mechanisms for reporting. For example, we did note that for select arts and culture grant recipients, they were Recipients were able to report select statistics through CADAC, which was a national joint centralized system through which arts organizations can submit financial and statistical information for use by a variety of funders, and that would include the city. This allowed recipients to streamline the reporting and not have to duplicate reporting certain statistics and financial information to multiple funders and did not have to do anything unique for the city for that reporting.

There was some gaps and variation in monitoring tools, and this included some updates not being received as required by grant agreements and some inconsistencies in the follow-up process. We did note that the monitoring process did lead to some effective outcomes. In one granting team, there was situations where recipients had either failed to submit reports or reported challenges in delivering their programs. In these instances... Staff was able to redeploy funding or discontinue funding for those recipients. Therefore, ensuring monitoring activities are appropriately tailored to focus on high-risk grant recipients, criteria, and streams may assist in the overall granting effectiveness. Next slide. Based on this finding, we recommend that in alignment with a risk-based approach to granting, the city should establish grant monitoring activities proportionate to grant risk and ensure that each ACCS granting team develops corresponding monitoring protocols. Next slide. Thank you. Reports to Council. During the audit period, which was July 1st, 2023 to June 30th, 2025, ACCS had provided Council with 43 reports. This included some helpful information, which included grant recommendations, budget requests, grant stream descriptions. However, they did not compare results to grant stream objectives or compare and contrast planned and actual results. Tailoring information provided to Council within these windows to include grant performance may improve Council's ability to oversee the granting process. Next slide. Based on this finding, we recommend that ACCS should inform Council about the processes used to arrive at grant recommendations and report to Council on key performance indicators. These are the findings and recommendations identified from the audit report, and now I'll hand the presentation back to Mike. You could go to the next slide, please. We have two recommendations for the committee to consider, that the Auditor General Committee endorse the 10 recommendations in the report dated April 30th, 2026, entitled Auditor Community Grants, and further, that the committee recommend, the council endorse the recommendations in the report. I'm happy to take questions at this time, or if you wish to hear from the department.

Statement Watch

We found that ACCS had developed objectives that were specific, realistic, and measurable for five of the 19 grant streams that we examined. Expanding this practice to all streams would assist in determining the best balance between the number of grants and the monetary value of each and create a foundation for demonstrating effectiveness. Objectives are also related to the distinction between attribution and contribution grants. Attribution grants often align with issuing fewer, larger, multi-year grants that support goals of achieving meaningful outcomes, initiating systemic change, and attributing impact back to the city's investments. Conversely, contribution grants can have broad community reach, but their impacts are more intangible and symbolic as they typically involve a large number of smaller grants. This attribution-contribution distinction is central to decisions about grant size, reach, and strategic intent and can be applied to both ongoing grant streams and one-times awards. Next slide, please. These findings and considerations led us to the first of our recommendations, that ACCS should create measurable objectives for all grant programs, demonstrate how they align with council priorities, determine if their intent is attribution or contribution, and develop a grant balance aligned with these considerations. Next slide, please. Performance measurement frameworks provide a consistent way to assess and report program performance to support accountability, impact assessment, and continuous improvement. They align an organization's strategic goals with individual programs through clearly defined key performance indicators, or KPIs. Effective performance measurement frameworks enable answers to the questions, what does success look like, and how do we measure that success, and use those answers to adjust and refine programs to achieve results. ACCS had 40 metrics for activity levels, including measures such as total attendance at public events, total investment in grant-supported child care spaces, and number of clients accessing homelessness services. While it is important to measure levels of activity, and this is a good start, on their own, measures of activity are limited in their ability to demonstrate impact. We also found that ACCS's metrics did not include efficiency measures. These could include administrative measures such as processing time per application or the number of applications processed per employee. Next slide, please. This leads us to the second recommendation, which is for ACCS to develop performance measurement frameworks for its grant programs to ensure performance data is well connected to grant stream objectives. Next slide, please. Using a risk-based approach to the planning and design of grant programs supports right-sizing grant administration practices relative to the risks presented by various grant scenarios and factors such as grant size and project complexity.

Documentation includes the risks themselves, as well as appropriate risk responses. And through monitoring and ensuring that risk responses are performed as intended, grantors can identify any adjustments as needed. We found that ACCS had identified seven high-level granting risks, but that connections between these risks and individual grant streams could be strengthened. Next slide, please. Therefore, we recommended that ACCS should build on the granting risks it has identified and improve its risk assessment process by developing and monitoring a grant risk register that documents risks in each granting area, the likelihood and consequence of identified risks, appropriate risk treatments, and monitoring activities to ensure the risk register remains relevant and actionable over time. Next slide, please. Having a standardized policy and procedures for community grants is a good practice that we saw in several municipalities such as Edmonton, Toronto, and Ottawa. Granting policies would typically include sections that define what a grant is, identify the objectives and priorities of the granting program, and assign accountabilities for the granting process. ACCS did not have an overarching policy to guide grant administration, but utilized the city's corporate policies and some guidance and procedures, documents for specific grant streams. Reliance on discretionary decision-making can create risks of unintended outcomes, inconsistencies, and unjustified spending, and developing some uniform standards and guidelines could reduce granting risks without compromising granting effectiveness. Next slide, please. So based on this finding, we recommended that ACCS should enhance the efficiency of its granting programs by improving guidance for processes and decisions that apply across the grant lifecycle through establishing a clear definition of a grant, minimum requirements and guidance developed from the results of the risk assessment process for each phase of the grant life cycle, circumstances and processes for new grant opportunities and one-time direct award grants, and standardized and consistent practices as appropriate across granting streams. And I will now turn the presentation over to Subran, who will discuss the findings and recommendations related to grant administration, as well as information provided to Council. Thank you, Lori. Up next slide, please. Thank you. So with regard to criteria clarity, criteria can be thought of as two kind of buckets. There's eligibility criteria, which is mandatory criteria that applicants must satisfy to qualify for a grant, and that ensures that the applicant's proposal is aligned with objectives.

Statement Watch

And then there's assessment criteria to determine how well an applicant meets the criteria by evaluating as a means of measuring relative merit and funding priority. We found that eligibility criteria was clear for each of the grant streams we examined. However, there were some gaps for some of the assessment criteria. These gaps included, in some cases, having assessment criteria without weights that helped prioritize key criteria or weights without scoring guide to facilitate consistent scoring by evaluators. Next slide. We found that ACCS appropriately promoted grant opportunities through a variety of means to potential applicants. This included email distribution, postings on the city's website. For select streams, there was also application assistant tools. These included materials that were translated into different languages, and in some cases, webinar sessions available for prospective applicants to guide them through the application process. All this designed... to encourage a wide variety of relevant applicants to apply for those grant streams. However, we did note that assessment criteria was not always published and the relative weightings used to select grant applications were not published for certain streams. Next slide. To improve granting assessments, we recommend THAT THE CITY SHOULD DEVELOP CLEAR ASSESSMENT CRITERIA ALIGNED WITH EACH GRANT STREAM SUBJECTIVE, INCLUDING THEIR RESPECTIVE WEIGHTINGS AND RATING SCALES, COMMUNICATE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA TO POTENTIAL APPLICANTS TO ENSURE TRANSPARENCY IN GRANTING DECISIONS, AND DOCUMENT INTERNAL GUIDANCE TO PROMOTE CONSISTENT OBJECTIVE AND APPROPRIATE ASSESSMENT OF APPLICATIONS ACROSS GRANT ASSESSORS. NEXT SLIDE. We found that for two particular streams that ACCS had developed multi-year funding format that produced win-wins in reducing administrative burden for both applicants and staff. Applicants only had to apply once and staff adjudicated the decision once. And so although funding in these cases for these three-year grants were pre-approved for years two and three, they remained conditioned on Council approving annual budgets for those particular years. Grant recipients we spoke to expressed gratitude for the reduced administrative burden that these streams provided them. Next slide. To enhance operational efficiency while also increasing funding certainty for grant recipients, ACCS should assess the opportunity to build upon its existing multi-year operational grant streams to increase the proportion of multi-year grants relative to one-year grants. Next slide. With regard to records, the assessment or adjudication process for applicants and for ongoing competitive grant streams involved essentially two steps.

The initial step involved the scoring of an application by adjudicators. Some of these adjudicators were external to the city, and they generally scored the application relative to predefined criteria. This was followed in some cases by staff discussions of factors that were not considered in the initial scoring. These discussions included alignment with council priorities, balance of program characteristics of the recommended recipients, and funding continuity for prior recipients. Next slide. In some cases, the first phase of the assessment was well documented, but subsequent phases were not. At times, it was unclear how the initial and subsequent assessments were consolidated into final recommendations. Staff was able to explain the selection decisions, but assessment documentation needed to be improved to be able to withstand objective review for both ongoing and one-time grant streams. Next slide. ACCS should review its grant assessment methods and tools and improve the documentation of factors considered during the grant assessment process to ensure that complete records are maintained that support grant recommendations to counsel. Next slide. Thank you. Terms and conditions for grant agreements. We found that all grants were appropriately approved and all grant documentation was appropriately stored. The grant agreements had appropriate terms and conditions, including provisions for returning unused funds and reporting requirements for recipients. However, we did note that for six streams, those streams did not require final reporting. This could create a risk that if the recipient did not reapply for the grant, that the city would not receive a report on what the recipient was able to accomplish with the grant. Next slide. The city should review and update its grant agreements to ensure that they include reporting requirements where lacking. Next slide. Thank you. We found that for the monitoring process that the reporting process was not overly burdensome for recipients and staff did a good job in leveraging other mechanisms for reporting. For example, we did note that for select arts and culture grant recipients, they were Recipients were able to report select statistics through CADAC, which was a national joint centralized system through which arts organizations can submit financial and statistical information for use by a variety of funders, and that would include the city. This allowed recipients to streamline the reporting and not have to duplicate reporting certain statistics and financial information to multiple funders and did not have to do anything unique for the city for that reporting.

There was some gaps and variation in monitoring tools, and this included some updates not being received as required by grant agreements and some inconsistencies in the follow-up process. We did note that the monitoring process did lead to some effective outcomes. In one granting team, there was situations where recipients had either failed to submit reports or reported challenges in delivering their programs. In these instances... Staff was able to redeploy funding or discontinue funding for those recipients. Therefore, ensuring monitoring activities are appropriately tailored to focus on high-risk grant recipients, criteria, and streams may assist in the overall granting effectiveness. Next slide. Based on this finding, we recommend that in alignment with a risk-based approach to granting, the city should establish grant monitoring activities proportionate to grant risk and ensure that each ACCS granting team develops corresponding monitoring protocols. Next slide. Thank you. Reports to Council. During the audit period, which was July 1st, 2023 to June 30th, 2025, ACCS had provided Council with 43 reports. This included some helpful information, which included grant recommendations, budget requests, grant stream descriptions. However, they did not compare results to grant stream objectives or compare and contrast planned and actual results. Tailoring information provided to Council within these windows to include grant performance may improve Council's ability to oversee the granting process. Next slide. Based on this finding, we recommend that ACCS should inform Council about the processes used to arrive at grant recommendations and report to Council on key performance indicators. These are the findings and recommendations identified from the audit report, and now I'll hand the presentation back to Mike. You could go to the next slide, please. We have two recommendations for the committee to consider, that the Auditor General Committee endorse the 10 recommendations in the report dated April 30th, 2026, entitled Auditor Community Grants, and further, that the committee recommend, the council endorse the recommendations in the report. I'm happy to take questions at this time, or if you wish to hear from the department.

Statement Watch

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share a few words. Margaret Witkins, General Manager, Arts, Culture, and Community Services, and I'm joined by a number of staff who support the grant process within ACCS. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the work of the Office of the Auditor General. We certainly appreciate the audit and the opportunity it provides to strengthen practices. At its core, a grant is a tool that allows the city to advance council priorities and support work with tangible benefits for Vancouver residents and communities. Through ACCS, the city provides funding to many organizations delivering arts and culture programming, social services, community supports, and infrastructure. This includes anything from festivals and cultural institutions to small community-based programs and inclusive spaces. as well as organizations supporting seniors, youth, tenants, neighborhood serving services across Vancouver. Nonprofit organizations are essential partners for the city. They advance city priorities by delivering services that the city does not provide directly. As noted, the scope is broad and reflects the many ways community organizations contribute to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods, economic activity, and build a more inclusive, resilient, and connected city. Within that context, ACCS works diligently to ensure public funding to support this important work is administered in a way that is fair and transparent. Grant processes are grounded in city policies and informed by best practices across municipalities and other funders. They seek to balance strong administrative oversight with funding delivery objectives while also operating within resource and system constraints. Within this context, recent jurisdictional reviews indicate that ACCS's grant programs align with, and in some areas, lead municipal best practices. The audit provides an opportunity to further strengthen how these grant processes, assessment approaches, and decision-making are documented and communicated. ACCS accepts in whole or in part the OAG's recommendations. The audit identifies areas for practical action and enhancements. Some recommendations align with work already underway or in place, including the expansion of multi-year grants. Several are also supported by existing processes and governance, including council-approved grant frameworks and regular reporting to council through reports, briefings, and annual grant impact summaries. Certain audit recommendations, such as those focused on performance measurement, do present feasibility challenges within a municipal context where grant programs support such a wide range of priorities and services. Some recommendations could introduce additional administrative requirements that could reduce ACCS's funding delivery or increase barriers to applicants. So these are ones that need to be approached carefully to ensure there is a commensurate benefit. As outlined in our response to the OAG report, ACCS will implement recommendations in a way that reflects operational realities, available resources, and the need for accountability and accessibility. This will include strengthening consistency in documentation and processes. expanding our risk-based approach to grant administration, enhancing clarity around objectives, measurements, and alignment with council priorities, and continuing to build on the multi-year funding to support stability in the sector. We also continue to report to Council through existing mechanisms and explore opportunities to improve clarity and transparency, as well as responsiveness. Thank you, and we'll be happy to take questions when we get to that step.

Statement Watch

I just have three questions for the department. With respect to recommendation number seven, which departmental policies and procedures will take priority and how will they address variation across the different teams?

Thank you for the question. So the recommendation number seven relates to how we enhance our documentation for grant programs, if I'm remembering off the top of my head. And so really... What we found through our review of the recommendations is that we do have documentation in place for all steps of the grant administration cycle. And sometimes those are held in different systems. So sometimes in VanApply, sometimes those are held in spreadsheets. And so the focus of our action in this area would really be to enhance our consistency

and synthesis across all of the grant programs versus honing in on on a singular area it's it's really that opportunity for consistency okay and then the second question on recommendation number seven um what objective metrics are being used to balance administrative demands with staff capacity

Objective metrics to balance administrative demands with staff capacity. Currently, we draw heavily on practices in other municipalities in terms of how we approach the level of documentation, the level of reporting requirement that are placed on organizations that are applying for grants. The jurisdictional review that was undertaken in 2024 did reveal that we are at the lower or middle size of sort of staff relative to the size of the grant program. And so there are kind of general guidance. These are some of the general points of reference that we use to determine whether or not our administrative efforts are right-sized.

And with respect to recommendation number five, given the broad scope of funding programs, what specific steps will be taken to ensure the feasibility study is not just theoretical, but actionable?

The feasibility study, I'm sorry, could you just elaborate on that aspect?

Sorry. What specific steps will be taken to ensure the feasibility study is not just theoretical but actionable? This is on number five.

Thank you. So number five focuses on how we enhance our communication related to assessment criteria. And in this area, we generally have clear assessment criteria across many of the grant programs. And there really are kind of a few targeted areas where there are kind of exceptions to some of our core programs. And so what will make this practical is that we will take a very kind of hands-on approach for those areas that are exceptions to ensure that enhancements can be realized.

Statement Watch

And thank you, Mike, and your team for an excellent report. Very thorough and very helpful to uh to uh i hope the uh the department of terms going through um in terms of um the recommendations um i noticed that the response from our management and they indicated that um a number of the items recommendations will be implemented by december 2027 which is a year and a half from now and i was just wondering as a number of them relate to improving efficiency whether management has considered any steps to move forward the timing of their review and implementation of those of those points really to a more near term Thank you for the question. As you'll note in the management response, there's kind of a range of time frames. Some of them are within year 2026, and then others, as you've properly noted, are targeted towards the end of 2027. The ones that have a longer time frame are ones where We won't wait until December 2027 to initiate improvements, but we do know that to make substantial change would require some time. And so I would, you know, look at performance measurement as an example. Further to Councillor Zhou and the auditor's discussion, performance measurement is one that does require a fairly kind of... nuanced and detailed look to determine how to put a meaningful framework in place that supports accountability but does not introduce undue administrative burden. And so we would want to make sure that we take the time to do that right. That does not necessarily mean that we wouldn't be making incremental improvements in the meantime, but in terms of full completion of the recommendation, we wanted to allow adequate time.

Thank you. Archie, further questions?

No, that addresses the issue, and I'm glad that the department's moving forward a number of the issues on a quicker basis, particularly around the efficiency area.