The Regina Public Interest Research Group (RPIRG) is a student centre at the University of Regina that works on social and environmental justice issues. RPIRG gives out up to $35,000 in funding each year to students for events, projects, or training opportunities.
To learn more about all of our grant programs, who is eligible to apply, and compare them, please visit our funding page.
The Racial Justice fund large community service grants are meant to specifically fund initiatives that support:
- Racial justice organizing/advocacy/research being done individually or as part of groups, collectives, and organizations based in Regina (or led by UofR students in Saskatchewan more broadly)
- General health, wellbeing, and safety of racialized students and Regina residents
For more information about our Racial Justice fund, visit www.rpirg.org/BIPOC-fund
Applications for large grants are due by midnight on each of our 5 annual funding deadlines:
July 1 - Oct 1 - Nov 1 - Feb 1 - March 1
Applications can also be made to retroactively fund initiatives (if they have happened in the past year).
Please note: Applications can take up to 4 weeks to process and approve, and this partly depends on when the next board meeting is after a deadline. If you would like to attend a board meeting to discuss or make a presentation about your funding proposal, we would love to hear from you! Please contact info@rpirg.org to arrange.
Eligible initiatives
1) Projects and events including advocacy and legal actions, campaigns, workshops, community surveys or similar feedback tools: no maximum amount*
Event is defined as a one-time activity with a particular goal. For example, hosting a workshop, rally, or speaker.
Project is defined as a series of activities or events coordinated to reach a particular goal with specific start and end dates. For example, organizing a campaign with multiple aspects over a number of days or weeks, organizing a community survey, a workshop series or other community programming, starting a community garden, a campaign or advocacy work, etc.
2) Training and conferences including gatherings and other professional development that support the above listed priorities: up to $600/person or $2000 for 4 or more people in a group. If you have a group attending a conference, you must apply for funding as a group. RPIRG will not accept multiple individual applications for the same conference.
Training and Research Funding provides one-time funding to help individuals and groups attend a conference, training opportunity, or grad research that is focused on the above listed priorities.
3) Grad research: up to $800 per research project, for research related to the above listed priorities
Grad research funding prioritizes research taking place in Regina and Saskatchewan, or benefitting groups or communities living there. Applicants can only receive funding once per project, and cannot pair it with conference/training funding.
*Typically, if an application is requesting more than $1500 there is a good chance we will not be able to fully fund it, due to the volume of applications we receive. Please keep this in mind when you are deciding on how much funding to request in your application. When submitting your budget, please indicate which parts are of a higher priority, so that if we are unable to fully fund your application, we can more easily assess which parts need it the most.
Please note: we are a non-partisan organization and as such do not provide funding to political parties or their candidates/electoral campaigns. However, non-partisan educational events such as election town halls which will include all political parties may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us to discuss.
Please also note: Fundraisers are generally not eligible for funding. If your fundraiser fits RPIRG’s funding requirements and you believe it should be eligible for funding, you can bring your rationale to the RPIRG Board of Directors and we will make a decision on a case-by-case basis.