Church Grants in Canada 2026: Funders and Real Gift Sizes

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Church Grants in Canada by the Numbers (2026)

Foundations gave about $187 million to 2,637 Christian charities in fiscal periods ending in 2024, according to Grantsights analysis of the CRA qualified donees data. That money came from 1,652 different foundations in 4,869 gifts, and the median gift was $5,000.

Private foundations, usually set up by one family or company, made 2,254 of those gifts (46%) worth about $91 million. Public foundations, which include denominational and community foundations, made the rest. Across all charities, not just churches, the same foundations had a median gift of $6,566, so churches get slightly smaller gifts than the average charity.

Here's how it looks by the recipient's province:

Grantsights analysis of CRA T3010 data (2024 List of charities, Qualified donees file). Province is the recipient charity's province in the CRA identification file. Yukon's median rests on five gifts, so don't read much into it.

The honest reading: a church that needs $6,000 for a youth worker's summer, a new furnace or a community meal has realistic options in every province. A church that needs $300,000 for a roof won't get it from one foundation unless it's a heritage building in Quebec. Ontario's total is large partly because denominational bodies headquartered there receive big gifts that they then pass on to congregations.

The Funders That Give to the Most Churches

Only 374 grantmakers gave to three or more different churches in the 2024 data. That's the real pool of repeat church funders in Canada; the other 1,278 gave to one or two, which usually means a family foundation supporting its own congregation. Here are the ones that reached the most churches:

Grantsights analysis of CRA T3010 data. "Churches funded" counts distinct recipients in CRA category 0030.

Two warnings about this table. First, a single big gift can swell a total. The United Church of Canada Foundation's largest reported gift was about $2.37 million to the United Church of Canada itself, and the Vancouver Foundation's was about $1.46 million to the Pacific Mountain Region of the United Church. Second, community foundation gifts include donor-advised funds, where a donor picks the church. A case in point: The Calgary Foundation's largest gift in the category was about $965,000 to the Salvation Army in Alberta, which is a Christian charity but not a parish. You can't apply for donor-advised money. Compare the median, not the total, when you judge what a funder might give you.

Denominational Foundations: United Church, Anglican and Others

The United Church of Canada Foundation funded 325 churches in the 2024 data, more than any other grantmaker. If your congregation belongs to a denomination with its own foundation, start here: these funders exist to give to churches like yours and know your governance already.

United Church of Canada Foundation. Its main program is Seeds of Hope. According to the foundation's own page, it runs a Spring and a Fall cycle each year, the Fall 2026 cycle is closed, and the Spring 2027 cycle opens January 15, 2027. Grants can cover up to 50% of a project's budget, with a short application for requests of $2,000 or less. It favours new projects with lasting impact, and it says capital projects aren't a priority in most cases, though some named funds within the foundation do grant for capital. Its homepage says Seeds of Hope gave almost $550,000 to 74 recipients last year. You don't have to be a United Church congregation, but non-United Church applicants need a strong fit with the church's values.

Anglican Foundation of Canada. It gave to 73 churches in the 2024 data, with a median of $5,000. Anglican parishes apply through their diocese, and the diocese sets the real deadline. The Diocese of Toronto, for example, takes applications by March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1, requires Synod Council endorsement, and lists building projects and accessibility upgrades among eligible work. The Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island set September 15, 2026 as its most recent deadline and requires a bishop's letter after its executive council votes. Ask your diocesan office for its calendar first.

Other denominations. Lutheran Church-Canada Financial Ministries (35 churches) and the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (27) both show up as repeat church funders. Catholic parishes should ask their diocese about its own funds. Ex Corde Foundation, an Ontario public foundation, gave to 47 churches with a median of $20,000 in the data, the highest median among the repeat funders outside Quebec, so read its own criteria before you contact it. Most denominations also run loan funds or diocesan grants that never appear on general grant lists.

Heritage Money for Older Churches, Especially in Quebec

The Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec gave about $10.7 million to 75 churches in the 2024 data, with a median of about $82,800. No other church funder in Canada comes close on gift size. Its largest reported gift was about $1.09 million to the Fabrique Sainte-Thérèse-d'Avila.

According to the council's Restoration program page (opens in a new tab), the program pays for restoring religious heritage buildings and their contents. Places of worship of any tradition built before 1945 with a heritage value of A, B or C in the council's inventory can qualify, as can buildings from 1945 to 1975 rated A. Listed or cited buildings built before 1976 also qualify. Fabriques, dioceses, religious communities, municipalities, band councils and some private owners can apply, and applications for building work go to the regional round table at any time of year. The building has to be insured with a working fire detection system, and work must finish within 36 months. The maximum from the Minister for one project is $5,000,000. The program standards document linked from that page lists maximum assistance for non-profit owners such as a fabrique or diocese of 80% of eligible costs for a classified building and 70% for one that isn't classified. Confirm the current rate with the council before you build a budget on it.

Outside Quebec, there's no national program for church restoration. Heritage churches elsewhere should check their province's heritage branch and their municipality, and treat a heritage grant as one slice of a larger campaign.

What Government Funding Can and Can't Pay For

Canada Summer Jobs pays not-for-profit employers up to 100% of the provincial or territorial adult minimum hourly wage, which makes it the most widely used federal program for churches. The rule across every public program is the same, though: government money pays for community work that serves the public, never for worship or religious instruction. Grantsights checked each program below on Canada.ca or the province's site.

Canada Summer Jobs. According to Employment and Social Development Canada, eligible not-for-profits include "community, charitable or voluntary organizations, including faith-based organizations." Jobs for youth aged 15 to 30 must run 6 to 16 weeks at 30 to 40 hours a week, between April 19 and August 28, 2027, and applications close December 3, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. The 2027 applicant guide makes some projects ineligible, including ones that restrict access to programs, services or employment, or otherwise discriminate contrary to applicable laws on prohibited grounds such as religion, and ones that promote intolerance. Read that list carefully before you write job descriptions. Our Canada Summer Jobs guide covers the application in detail.

Security grants. According to Public Safety Canada, the Canada Community Security Program funds not-for-profits linked to a community at risk of hate-motivated incidents, and its eligible gathering spaces include places of worship such as churches. It covers up to 70% of eligible costs, takes applications year-round, and aims to decide within a month. In Ontario, the Government of Ontario's anti-hate grant lists churches among eligible religious organizations if they're a registered charity or not-for-profit (registered by December 31, 2024), meet at least monthly, and use a non-residential space in Ontario.

New Horizons for Seniors. According to Canada.ca, community-based projects can get up to $50,000 for up to 52 weeks, with up to $25,000 of that for capital costs. Not-for-profit organizations can apply, seniors must lead the project or help plan and deliver it, and you can't use it to renovate a building your organization doesn't own. That last rule matters for congregations whose building belongs to the diocese or a property trust. The program pages don't single out faith groups either way, so a seniors' program run by a church's incorporated outreach arm fits better than one that looks like a parish activity. See our New Horizons for Seniors guide before the next call.

Accessibility. The Enabling Accessibility Fund's main page lists grants up to $200,000 for small construction projects such as ramps, accessible doors and washrooms. Its 2026 call was a different, larger stream ($500,000 to $1,000,000) aimed at workplaces and communities, and it closed March 16, 2026. Watch for the next small-projects call rather than counting on it.

Community Foundations: The Most Overlooked Route

Community foundations made 749 gifts worth about $14.4 million to Christian charities in the 2024 data, according to Grantsights analysis of the CRA file. That's about 3% of their total giving, so churches are a small part of their work, but every large city has one and most mid-sized towns do too.

The Vancouver Foundation, The Winnipeg Foundation, The Calgary Foundation and Toronto Foundation all gave to dozens of churches. Much of that was donor-advised money, which you can't apply for. The rest came through open programs that fund community work, not worship. The Winnipeg Foundation's Community Grants page is unusually clear about this: it won't fund "exclusively religious activities," meaning worship or religious instruction, or organizations that proselytize, especially to youth. Its fall 2026 window closes October 30, 2026 at noon, with grants up to $100,000, and the next one runs February 19 to March 19, 2027.

Our community foundation grants guide explains how to find yours and how their cycles work.

What the Funder Lists Don't Tell You About Church Grants in Canada

About 1,278 of the 1,652 foundations that gave to churches gave to only one or two. Most "church grants Canada" lists are built from names in that long tail, and that's a red flag. A family foundation that gave $10,000 to its own parish last year isn't an open funder, and writing to it cold rarely works.

The money mostly isn't for buildings. Outside Quebec heritage funding, very little of what's available pays for roofs and furnaces. The United Church of Canada Foundation doesn't prioritize capital in most cases, community foundations fund programs, and federal programs pay for wages, seniors' projects and security. A common mistake is spending months on grant searches for a building repair that only a capital campaign, a denominational loan or a heritage grant will cover.

Worship and community work are separate budgets. Nearly every public funder and many community foundations draw the same line: they'll pay for the food bank, the seniors' lunch or the newcomer English class, not the service. Write the community program as its own project with its own budget, participants and outcomes. Churches that run larger programs often set up a separate registered charity or not-for-profit for that work, which also helps with funders that expect it.

Your denomination is your best bet. In the data, the top church funder by reach is a denominational foundation, and the Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic foundations follow. They also tend to know what other funders in your region want to see.

The CRA data is public, and you can use it. The qualified donees file shows which foundation gave how much to which charity. Before you apply to a foundation, look up what it gave to churches like yours in your province. If a funder's church gifts are almost all under $3,000, asking it for $40,000 is how applications fail.

How to Build a Church Funding Plan That Works

The $5,000 median tells you how to structure the money: one denominational grant, one community foundation grant for a program, any government support you qualify for, and your own giving. Here's a hypothetical example, not a real church, to show the shape.

Hypothetical: a United Church congregation in Winnipeg wants to run a weekday drop-in meal for seniors and needs $40,000 for a year, including kitchen equipment. A realistic plan might apply to New Horizons for Seniors in its next call, with seniors on the planning committee and the equipment inside the $25,000 capital limit. It could apply to The Winnipeg Foundation's Community Grants for the program costs, written as a community meal, not a church activity. It could ask the United Church of Canada Foundation's Seeds of Hope for a share up to 50% of a new piece of work. And it could hire a summer student through Canada Summer Jobs. Each funder gets a separate, clear part of the budget.

A few rules apply almost everywhere:

1. Check your legal status first. Most funders give only to qualified donees, which for a church usually means a registered charity number. Confirm yours is active on the CRA's charity list before you apply.
2. Don't start work before a decision. The Winnipeg Foundation won't pay costs from before its decision date, and most funders follow the same rule.
3. Ask for the right size. Look up the funder's typical church gift in the CRA data. Asking for ten times its median is the commonest reason a strong project gets nothing.
4. Show who benefits outside the congregation. Community foundations and government programs score public benefit, so count the neighbours you serve.
5. Write a clean budget. Our guides on how to write a grant proposal and how to write a grant budget apply in Canada too.

Where to Go Next

Start with your denomination's foundation and your diocese or regional office, since they gave to the most churches in the data, at a typical $5,000. For community programs, read our community foundation grants guide and our overview of grants for nonprofits in Canada. Ontario churches with a community program should also look at our Ontario Trillium Foundation guide. If you're hiring a student next summer, the Canada Summer Jobs guide has the dates.

Sources Checked

All pages read on October 28, 2026.

• Government of Canada open data, CRA List of charities and other qualified donees (T3010 data) (opens in a new tab)
• Canada.ca, Canada Summer Jobs applicant guide (opens in a new tab), who can apply (opens in a new tab) and 2027 backgrounder (opens in a new tab)
• Canada.ca, New Horizons for Seniors Program community-based projects: who can apply (opens in a new tab) and 2026 call for proposals (opens in a new tab)
• Canada.ca, Enabling Accessibility Fund (opens in a new tab) and 2026 call for proposals (opens in a new tab)
• Public Safety Canada, Canada Community Security Program information sheet (opens in a new tab)
• Government of Ontario, Ontario Anti-Hate Security and Prevention Grant (opens in a new tab)
• Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec, Restoration program and program standards: https://www.patrimoine-religieux.qc.ca/en/financial-assistance/restoration-program/
• United Church of Canada Foundation, Seeds of Hope: https://unitedchurchfoundation.ca/grants/seeds-of-hope/
• Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Anglican Foundation of Canada: https://www.toronto.anglican.ca/parish-administration/grants-funding/anglican-foundation-of-canada/
• Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Anglican Foundation grants for 2026: https://www.nspeidiocese.ca/news/anglican-foundation-grants-for-2026--1206
• The Winnipeg Foundation, Community grants: https://www.wpgfdn.org/granting/community-grants/