Catapult Canada is a national, community-building initiative that aims to increase equity of learning access for youth. Established by the Rideau Hall Foundation (RHF), Catapult Canada channels new resources to community programs, helping them build know-how, capacity, funding, evaluation frameworks, partnerships, and infrastructure.

Catapult supports youth-serving organizations in Canada to design, build, scale up and evaluate the impact of initiatives to better support Canadian youth in their learning goals, especially those underserved by the education system and disengaged from education and/or career pathways.

The objectives of the fund are to:

The Rideau Hall Foundation’s Catapult Canada initiative invites applicants to submit proposals to our Fall 2023 Open Call. We are inviting applications from registered non-profits, charities and registered unincorporated groups.

Applications should focus on project description, alignment with the Catapult Canada mandate, project activities and impact.   We recognize the importance of national learning and local context, as well as promoting strong coordination and partnership across government, funders, delivery organizations and educational systems.

Priority Areas:

For the Fall 2023 Open Call, in addition to alignment with Catapult Canada’s objectives, we will prioritize initiatives that:

Open Access Fund:

Newcomer, Refugee and NEET Youth Fund:

The RHF expects to fund multiple Catapult projects from coast to coast to coast. Recipient organizations will become part of an ongoing Catapult community dedicated to sharing project progress, learnings and promising practices with a view to a wider knowledge dissemination strategy to inform the broader sector. 

The submission portal closed on December 10, 2023.

Portal FAQs:

NOT RECEIVING CONFIRMATION EMAILS – Please check your spam or junk folder for our emails. If you are not seeing any email from the RHF portal it may be possible that it is being blocked. As such, add [email protected] to your email contact list and if you have IT support, ask them to add rhf-frh.ca to your organization’s trusted domains. Then try resetting your password via the application portal.

PREVIOUSLY FUNDED ORGANIZATIONS – If you are a Catapult previously or actively funded project having trouble accessing, please reach out to [email protected] to initialize your account.

TWO OR MORE ASSOCIATED EMAILS – If you are attempting to have two email addresses associated with your organization note that this is not possible in our system. Only one associated email is possible per application.

UNABLE TO SAVE YOUR APPLICATION – Please note that at this time the portal DOES NOT autosave when you first begin filling out an application. As such, we suggest that you first go through each of the application windows, filling out only the mandatory fields (with a red asterisk). You will then be able to go back and edit the rest at your own pace and save as you like.

ACCESS TO OFFLINE DOCUMENTS – For the Open Access Fund – You can download a PDF version of the Application Form, and the Budget Template. For the Newcomer, Refugee and NEET Youth Fund – You can download a PDF version of the Application Form, and the Budget Template.

Review Process:

Applications will be reviewed by a combination of an internal review team of RHF staff and an external team of volunteers from the RHF’s networks across Canada. The RHF team may request additional clarifying information from applicants during the review phase.

Upon completion of the review phase, all applicants will be notified of their application status via email. All eligible applicants that we are unable to fund, will be invited to connect with the RHF staff team for a 30-minute feedback call on their application.  

The Rideau Hall Foundation expects to fund multiple Catapult projects across the country. Funded groups will become part of an ongoing community dedicated to sharing project progress, learning failures and promising practices with a view to a wider knowledge dissemination strategy to inform the broader sector.

Deadlines and Key Dates

The following are key dates for this Fall 2023 open call:

November 16, 2023
Open Call Launches with access to the portal.
December 10, 2023
Application Portal Closes. Applications for both funds must be submitted no later than Sunday, December 10 at 11:59 PM ET.
January 31, 2024
Applications Reviewed. Applications will undergo review by RHF internal and external reviewer committees.
February 1, 2024
Applicants Notified & Approved Projects Start All applicants will be notified of their application status. Approved projects start.

About the Rideau Hall Foundation

The Rideau Hall Foundation (RHF) is an independent and non-political charitable organization established to amplify the impact of the office of the Governor General as a central institution of Canadian democracy, and to better serve Canadians through a range of initiatives linked to learning, leadership, giving and innovation.

Today the RHF has become a nation-building charity: a catalytic platform to connect people, causes and organizations which – while they will exist for differing purposes – share a common belief in and commitment to the potential of Canada. Learn more about how we work to shine a light on Canadian excellence here: www.rhf-frh.ca.

Connect with us via @RideauHallFdn on twitter or subscribe to the RHF newsletter for updates and announcements of key dates for subsequent open calls.

Joining the Catapult Community

Catapult is committed to building a sustainable and dynamic ecosystem of youth-serving organizations in Canada that facilitates peer-to-peer learning and problem solving; the sharing of resources, promising practices and innovative ideas; and providing community support and partnership. To that end, all grantees will be part of a community of practice, facilitated by Catapult and co-developed by grantees to meet their evolving needs.