Applying for Funding — Part 1

An Introduction to Our CMF Application Process

We recently submitted an extensive application for funding to the Canada Media Fund. The application process was quite extensive, even getting to the point of deciding to apply took a lot of discussion, thought and planning to make sure that it was the right choice.

The CMF’s mandate:

The Canada Media Fund (CMF) fosters, develops, finances and promotes the production of Canadian content and applications for all audiovisual media platforms.

In 2011, they opened an Experimental Stream that focuses on the production of innovative and high-risk ventures for experimental digital media. They describe the focus of this stream as:

The Experimental Stream encourages the development of innovative, interactive digital media content and software applications.

Applying to the CMF was a serious undertaking, we needed to have a lot of things in order (not just an idea) and we needed to know exactly why we were pursuing funding through them instead of other venues. We chose to make our application for a few key reasons:

1. The project we applied with is intended to be revenue-generating.
2. The scope of the concept was preliminary, we want to bring a new product to market but there is a lot of design and prototyping work to be completed first.
3. We learned that other funding agencies in Canada look at supporting ongoing industrial research rather than helping companies start projects.
4. The size, structure and focus of the CMF’s three tiers of funding made sense with the design / development timelines we envision for the project.

One of the tough things about approaching various funding agencies in Canada is that the process is extremely opaque. There are a lot of resources for learning about the structures and mandates of various opportunities, but there is a general lack of hands-on experience that has been published. For instance, when it comes to IRAP or SR&ED funding there are services that will manage, write and submit an application for companies on a commission or fee-based system — for good reason, they keep their process closed.

We are interested in fostering a strong community of support around the production of new technologies, projects and ventures. As such, we’re committed to being transparent, and helping other people and organizations move forward.

Applying to the CMF is difficult, this is our attempt to clarify our experience of completing the submission.

Part 2: A Brief History of Our Application Process