SickKids WomenPowered Grant: Up to $25,000 for GTA Child and Youth Health Charities (2026 Round Closed)

The SickKids WomenPowered Grant gives registered Canadian charities up to $25,000 per year to support work that improves the health and well-being of children and youth. It is a grant to organisations. There is no stream for individuals — no bursary, no scholarship, no award you can apply for on your own behalf — so if you are a student, a researcher, or a family looking for personal support, this is not the right door.

Status: the 2026 round has closed, and the next cycle has not been announced

The official document is titled WomenPowered Guidelines 2026, and it sets the deadline at 11:59 pm EST on January 20, 2026. That date has passed.

The official source currently available is the 2026 guidelines. They do not announce a subsequent cycle, a future deadline, or a reopening date. Treat this page as a historical reference until SickKids Foundation publishes new guidelines or an official application window.

What the 2026 guidelines do tell you is the shape of the cycle. They describe an annual maximum award and refer to “the application deadline this year,” which points to a recurring yearly competition rather than a one-off round — and that year’s deadline landed in January. That is a reasonable planning assumption, not a promise.

Two places are worth checking as the year turns:

• The guidelines PDF itself, at sickkids.smartsimple.ca/files/567829/f114213/WomenPowered_Application_Guidelines.pdf. When SickKids refreshes the program, this is the document that changes.
• The foundation’s grants and awards hub at sickkidsfoundation.com/aboutus/grantsandawards, which is an official place to check for program updates.

If you want a direct answer rather than a refresh-and-hope routine, the guidelines name a contact for applicant assistance: [email protected]. A short, polite email asking whether another round is planned and when guidelines are expected will save you months of guesswork.

At a Glance: SickKids WomenPowered Grant

What the grant is actually for

The guidelines are unusually relaxed about scope. Funding “can be used to support a specific project or address some of the most urgent needs of an organization.” That second clause is rarer than it sounds. Many funders will only touch a discrete, named project with a start and end date; WomenPowered explicitly leaves room for a charity to say here is the pressure point that is hurting us right now.

The program also states what it favours. Preference goes to work that directly affects children’s physical, mental, or emotional health; that is led by smaller community-based organisations; that engages families directly in planning and implementation; that focuses on health equity and improving access for underserved populations; and that shows potential for long-term impact or scalability.

Read those five together and a picture emerges. This is not a fund chasing novelty for its own sake. It rewards organisations close enough to the ground to know which families are being missed, and honest enough to design around that rather than around a press release. The overview language reinforces it: the program prioritises efforts involving collaboration between families, health professionals, and community organisations.

Eligibility, exactly as written

The guidelines list six requirements. To be eligible, applicants must:

• Be a registered Canadian charitable organisation in good standing with the Canada Revenue Agency.
• Have a primary mission centred on the health, well-being, or development of children and youth.
• Deliver programs and services that primarily benefit children and youth within the Greater Toronto Area.
• Show a commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion in both programs and organisational practices.
• Provide evidence of financial stability, governance, and impact measurement capacity.
• Have operated for a minimum of three years prior to application.

Preference — not a requirement — is given to organisations operating between $1 million and $5 million in annual revenue.

That revenue band deserves a moment. It is a deliberate middle. Very small grassroots groups and very large institutions both sit outside the sweet spot. If your charity is a $300,000 operation, you are not barred, but you are competing against the stated preference, so your case for governance strength and measurement capacity has to be airtight. If you are a $20 million organisation, the same is true from the other direction, and you will want to be clear about why $25,000 is meaningful to the specific work rather than a rounding error.

The three-year minimum is a hard gate. A charity that registered less than three years before it applies is out, no matter how good the idea is.

Three categories of organisation are named as ineligible outright: those that are not registered charities in Canada, entities whose primary activities sit outside children’s health and well-being, and organisations unable to demonstrate fiscal responsibility and impact measurement capabilities.

The GTA clause is where national and provincial charities usually stumble. The word is primarily. If your services span Ontario or the country, you cannot assume a reviewer will locate the Toronto-area share of your work on your behalf. Name the GTA sites. Give the number of children and youth you expect to serve in the region. Show where referrals originate and which local partners feed them.

What the grant will not pay for

The exclusions list is short and worth memorising, because one of them quietly reshapes how most people would instinctively build a budget.

• Salaries or benefits for permanent staff.
• Projects primarily benefitting individuals outside Canada.
• Retroactive funding or reimbursement for expenses already incurred.

The first is the one that catches applicants. The obvious use for $25,000 in a stretched charity is coordinator time — someone to keep referrals moving, chase missed appointments, and stop young people from quietly disappearing between steps. Under these guidelines, you cannot simply point the request at your existing permanent staff line. If any part of your budget touches personnel, confirm the treatment with the foundation before you build the request around it, and be precise in the application about what kind of engagement you are describing.

That constraint pushes budgets toward direct delivery costs, and those are often the ones that move retention anyway: interpretation and translation so consent and instructions are understandable, transit support so a young person can physically get to a session, childcare for siblings during appointments, culturally responsive facilitation, materials, and the modest tooling needed to track outcomes properly rather than across five spreadsheets and one person’s memory.

The retroactive exclusion means timing matters. Money spent before an award is not recoverable. Do not build a proposal that quietly asks the funder to backfill a decision you already made.

Required materials

The guidelines are specific, and shorter than most applicants expect. Alongside the application form, you submit:

• Your latest audited financial statement.
• A detailed budget and funding rationale.

Note the word audited. This is not a “financial statements of some kind” request, and it pairs directly with the eligibility requirement to evidence financial stability and governance. If your charity does not produce audited statements, resolve that question with the foundation early rather than discovering it the week of a deadline.

“Funding rationale” is doing real work in that second item. A budget is a list of numbers; a rationale explains why each number is the size it is. If you request interpretation support, say how you estimated demand. If you budget transit assistance, tie it to participant volume and expected uptake. Numbers that visibly came from experience read very differently from numbers that came from rounding.

Partner support letters are not on the required list. That does not make partnerships irrelevant — the program explicitly values collaboration between families, health professionals, and community organisations — but it does mean the collaboration should be evidenced inside your narrative, through named referral pathways and concrete coordination arrangements, rather than through a folder of decorative letters.

How your application is assessed

Applications are judged on alignment with program priorities, organisational capacity, potential impact, and financial feasibility. The process runs in three steps: an internal pre-screening to confirm eligibility, evaluation by a grants committee using a standardised scoring rubric, and final review and approval by the SickKids WomenPowered advisory council and members.

The pre-screening step is worth respecting. Eligibility is checked before anyone reads your narrative, so a missing CRA detail or an unclear GTA footprint can end the process before the quality of the idea is ever considered.

Decisions arrive within three months of the deadline. The guidelines do not promise a specific notification day, so applicants should plan around that full window.

Reporting obligations

Recipients commit to a final impact report one year after receiving funding, and must be able to track and measure outcomes with transparency about how funds were used. Recipients are also invited to take part in SickKids WomenPowered events, presenting on the impact of the support they received.

Plan the measurement before you spend the money, not after. Choose a handful of indicators your team can actually collect during a busy month — attendance rate, referrals received, time from referral to intake, completion rate, a brief pre/post measure tied to your goals — and collect them consistently. A clean one-page evaluation plan beats an elaborate framework nobody maintains past March.

The repeat-funding rule shapes strategy here. The same project can be supported for up to two consecutive years, after which the organisation waits 24 months before reapplying for that same project. Treat year one as the year you stabilise delivery and year two as the year you improve it, and end with evidence rather than anecdotes. That evidence is what gets you taken seriously by larger funders later.

How to apply when a round is open

The guidelines lay out the route in four steps:

1. Step 1 — Complete the eligibility form to confirm your organisation’s qualifications.
2. Step 2 — Provide organisation details, including your CRA registration number.
3. Step 3 — Complete the application form, ensuring all required documentation is attached.
4. Step 4 — Submit before the deadline. A confirmation email is sent on receipt.

Submission runs through the SickKids granting database at sickkids.smartsimple.ca, where you navigate to the SickKids WomenPowered grant application portal. That address is the submission system, not an information page — it will not tell you whether a round is open or explain the program. For the substance, use the guidelines PDF; for context on the foundation’s other local granting, use the grants and awards hub.

Because the eligibility form comes first, you can often confirm your standing before writing anything substantial. Do that early. It is a cheap way to find out that the three-year rule or the GTA test is going to be a problem.

Common mistakes

Assuming a deadline that has not been published. The most expensive error available right now is to build a future project plan around a date nobody has announced. Prepare the materials, then confirm the date.

Budgeting permanent salaries. It is explicitly excluded. Applications that route most of a $25,000 request into existing payroll are asking for a decline.

Burying the GTA connection. If a reviewer has to hunt for your Toronto-area impact, you have already lost ground. Put it near the top with numbers attached.

Vague outcomes. “Improve wellbeing” is a sentiment. Reviewers assessing potential impact need indicators they can observe: wait times, completion, attendance, measured change.

Leaving the audited statement to the end. It is a named requirement and it is the one document you cannot produce in a hurry.

Claiming inclusion without mechanics. The eligibility criteria ask for a demonstrated commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion in programs and organisational practices. Show the design choices — scheduling, language access, location, transportation, facilitation — and say what you will monitor to confirm they work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the grant open right now? No. The 2026 deadline of January 20, 2026 has passed, and the official guidelines do not announce a next cycle.

Can an individual apply? No. Applicants must be registered Canadian charities in good standing with the CRA.

Can a national or provincial charity apply? Potentially, if it is a registered Canadian charity and its programs and services primarily benefit children and youth within the Greater Toronto Area. The GTA focus must be explicit and evidenced.

Are audited financial statements required? Yes. The guidelines name the latest audited financial statement as a submission requirement.

Can the same project be funded twice? Yes — for up to two consecutive years, after which the organisation must wait 24 months before reapplying for that same project.

How long until we hear back? Applicants are notified of funding decisions within three months of the application deadline.

Does the grant have to fund a discrete project? Not necessarily. The funding may support a specific project or address some of an organisation’s most urgent needs.

Who do we contact with questions? The guidelines direct applicants to [email protected] for assistance.

Where to check next

Read the 2026 guidelines here: WomenPowered Application Guidelines. When a new round opens, applications are submitted through the SickKids granting database, and the foundation’s broader local granting is listed on its grants and awards page.

If your charity meets the three-year, CRA, and GTA tests, the useful work between now and an announcement is not writing prose. It is getting the audited statement in order, agreeing internally on the one pressure point worth $25,000, and deciding which handful of numbers you will be able to report a year after the money lands.