General News

Mulmur Community Fund to launch in 2027

February 19, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Joshua Drakes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Mulmur Community Fund is ready to bring lasting benefits to residents by supporting local recreation and cultural initiatives without drawing on the township’s regular budget.

Created under the umbrella of the Dufferin Community Foundation, the fund will provide grants for projects that enhance the quality of life in Mulmur.

Gord Gallaugher, founding chair of the Dufferin Community Foundation (DCF), said that, unlike traditional municipal funding, the Mulmur Community Fund is not intended to cover core government services.

“It’s designed in general terms to enhance quality of life in Mulmur or for the residents of Mulmur Township, but it’s not meant to subsidize any township-related or regular government-related things,” he said. “So it’s not strictly recreation, but extra things that fall a little bit outside of the normal government-funded things.”

The fund targets extras that enhance amenities in small communities but are difficult to finance with tax dollars alone. Decisions on how the money is distributed will be made by a citizens’ committee appointed jointly by Mulmur council and the DCF, ensuring local voices guide where support is directed.

“There are a lot of recreation related items that would qualify for funding from this – everything from trail development to perhaps tennis courts or pickleball courts that haven’t been here before,” Gallaugher said. “The township is in the midst of a major fundraising effort to greatly renovate our arena in Honeywood, and I would imagine that there would be some of the things there that could be funded from this fund as well.”

The fund was first initiated in 2021, but growth was slow until a recent focused campaign gave it a major boost.

Through direct email outreach to local residents and word-of-mouth promotion, organizers raised enough money to push the fund past its crucial $25,000 threshold — the minimum balance required before grants can begin to flow.

“It didn’t come together quite naturally at first, and there wasn’t any specific promotion for it… so it was very slow until it got this boost,” Gallaugher said. “If a fund is created but it lingers there, attracting not much in the way of attention or money, donations, for a period of time, it’s going to be folded into something else, because it’s unsustainable.”

“That makes it all the more gratifying that we’re now over that hurdle,” he added.

Donations have come from both long-time supporters and new contributors who learned about the initiative through recent publicity and local newspaper coverage.

Now that the fund has reached that required goal, the next phase is about impact and visibility. Beginning in 2027, the invested capital will generate annual grant dollars that can be distributed over an extended period, providing long-term support for grassroots projects in Mulmur.

“The foundation model is that the money we raise is invested, and so we have an amount of money then to grant every year forever,” Gallaugher said. “So the amount of money we’ve raised is not going to be gobbled up in a year or two. It’s invested, and we have small amounts there over years. So there can be some very long term effects as well.”

As grants are awarded and publicly announced by the Dufferin Community Foundation, organizers expect community awareness – and further donations – to grow, helping the fund expand and increase what it can return to the township year after year.

For more information on the Mulmur Community Fund, go to https://dufferincommunityfoundation.ca/mulmur-community-fund-donation/

Readers Comments (0)