Backgrounder – NHSP Pan-Canadian Call for Concepts

The New Horizons for Seniors Program (NHSP) is a federal grants and contributions program that funds projects that make a difference in the lives of seniors. The NHSP provides funding to organizations to help ensure that seniors can benefit from, and contribute to, the quality of life in their communities.

The objectives of the NHSP are to:

• promote volunteerism among seniors and other generations;
• engage seniors in the community through the mentoring of others;
• expand awareness of elder abuse, including financial abuse;
• support the social participation and inclusion of seniors; and 
• provide capital assistance for new and existing community projects and programs for seniors. 

Since its introduction in 2004, the Government of Canada has invested more than $882 million and funded over  36,649 local projects and broader-reaching collaborative projects in hundreds of communities across Canada.

The Program funds projects that support the social inclusion of seniors via two funding streams – community-based and pan-Canadian. Approximately $50 million is provided each year to support one-year community grants through the community-based stream and more than $13 millon is allocated yearly for the pan-Canadian funding stream.

Pan-Canadian projects

The NHSP’s pan-Canadian stream funds multi-year projects that use collaborative and innovative approaches to build community capacity and increase seniors’ social inclusion. This stream provides project funding up up to $5 million and with a duration of up to five years.

The most recent NHSP pan-Canadian call for concepts, launched in 2018-2019, used the collective impact approach, an approach that brings together multiple community organizations to work together to achieve shared results. This call focused on increasing the social inclusion of seniors.

The 2023–2024 NHSP pan-Canadian call for concepts will continue using the innovative, evidence-based collective impact approach and while the previous theme of social inclusion is retained, this call for concepts takes an important step forward by requiring that all concepts focus on vulnerable seniors.

The objective of this call for concepts is to invite eligible organizations to submit an application that broadly describes a concept for a collective impact plan that will measurably increase the social inclusion of vulnerable seniors.

More specifically, this process seeks to:

• build the collective capacity of organizations to recognize and address barriers to social inclusion faced by vulnerable seniors;
• provide access to information, programs and services for vulnerable seniors to enhance their social inclusion within their communities;
• support service to seniors as part of action research to better understand effective approaches for increasing the level of social inclusion of vulnerable seniors in their communities;
• develop innovative approaches to engage and retain senior volunteers to improve their social inclusion in their communities; and
• address systemic barriers that contribute to the social isolation of vulnerable seniors.

The call for concepts is a two step application process. In the first step, interested organizations will submit a concept for a proposed collective impact plan focused on the social inclusions of vulnerable seniors. Successful applicants in step one will be invited to develop a full project proposal in step two.

For more information, visit Funding: New Horizons for Seniors Program – Pan-Canadian projects.