Welcome to the Community Radio Fund of Canada/le Fonds canadien de la radio communautaire (CRFC/FCRC).

Canadians have access to an ever-growing number of media choices from around the world. Ironically, programming that reflects local communities and their concerns from both commercial and public broadcasters are declining. Canada’s non-commercial campus and community broadcasters, mandated to present community-oriented programming and access, struggle to maintain operations and respond to the increasing demands of their local communities. Despite having a large and diverse community radio sector, Canada is one of the few industrialized countries that has no mechanism in place at the national level to support local community broadcasting. Until now.

The Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) was founded in November 2007 as the result of a three-year partnership among Canada's largest community radio associations: the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA/ANREC), the Alliance des radios communautaires du Canada (ARC du Canada) and the Association des radiodiffuseurs communautaires du Québec (ARCQ).

It is an arms-length, not-for-profit funding organization that solicits and distributes funds geared toward the development and sustainability of local community radio broadcasting in urban and rural Canada. It provides the campus and community sector with the necessary resources to continue to provide local programming and community access, as well as to develop and enrich this vital component of the Canadian broadcasting system.

The CRFC is certified by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and you can view our certification letter here. Efforts are also being made towards securing funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The CRFC is available to all non-commercial, community and community-based broadcasters in Canada (as set out in Public Notices CRTC 2000-12 and 2000-13) and their representative associations.

Mission Statement

The purpose of the Community Radio Fund of Canada is:

• to facilitate the development of high quality and accessible community-oriented and not-for-profit audio programming and related services for all Canadians;
• to contribute to a sustainable community media sector in Canada that reflects the diversity of the communities it serves by building the capacity of community radio stations, broadcasters, producers, and distributors;
• to solicit and distribute grants and other forms of support to producers and distributors of Canadian community-oriented and not-for-profit audio programming, and for such other purposes that support the aims of community broadcasting in Canada; and
• to promote the engagement of Canada's community media sector with listeners, communities, government, and other stakeholders, and develop community media as an essential Canadian cultural institution.