Last Call for Proposals: Hiring Grant Funding for Business via Career Focus
The highly successful ICTC Career Focus program offers business funding grants for eligible companies to hire a recent graduate. As mentioned in the Upcoming Grants for Small Business in Ontario blog, this program subsidizes wages of new graduates who will be hired to specialize in IT, business development, or online marketing work within the applying organization. The types of tasks that the graduate would perform may include search engine optimization (SEO), software development, database creation and maintenance, building content and link building strategies.
Increases to Funding for Small Business Program
This Ontario government funding program provides small business funding grants for ½ of the eligible participant’s salary, up to a new maximum of $12,750. In the past, the maximum amount was $10,000 or maximum of 50%. These business funding grants are provided over a period of 4-8 months. Some of the benefits of this program are listed below:
- Employers gain employees that are highly skilled
- Participants complete paid work experience
- Ideally, companies will retain the participant once the contract is complete
It is important to note that companies that have applied for these small business funding grants in the past can reapply for Career Focus with a new candidate.
Apply for Ontario Business Grants
If you are interested in applying for this funding for small business program, I encourage you to contact Mentor Works, the Canadian government funding experts to gain support and guidance in your application. Currently, there are only approximately 12-15 spots available. Additionally, if you would like to receive current updates on other Canadian government grants for small business, sign up for our Weekly Canadian Government Funding E-newsletter or follow us on Twitter.
Hi Cynthia: I check for funding weekly and receive your regular newsletters.
my question is to apply for the Career Focus can you be a relative of the owner? (Arm’s length)
Also are there any other programs (other than the tax credit) for a co-op student?
Thanks, Looking forward to a seminar in Cambridge.
Thanks for your guidance
Hi Jackie. Great questions and thanks for visiting the blog and signing up for the newsletter! As it turns out, the ICTC Career Focus program only allows new employees, more than arm’s length from the company’s ownership. Therefore, a relative cannot apply for ICTC Career Focus. The Ontario Co-op Tax Credit is the best funding incentive for hiring a co-op student. Other hiring grants are dedicated to graduates or post-graduate students. I hope this helps and all the best!