Graduate Community Development Fund

There is no single definition of community development. It means different things to different people and community groups. At the UTGSU, we consider community development to be the wide range of activities (e.g. programs, services, initiatives, etc.) either led by students or that students engage in, that meet identified community needs and contribute to the wellbeing, and/or the personal and/or professional development of others with an emphasis on graduate students in the broader University of Toronto community.

Some examples of community development activities might include activities designed to increase student engagement, expand their participation, empower them through knowledge and skills development, and/or provide support to students, among other types of activities. Community development may also include paid and unpaid work. This might include contributions in your participation with Course Unions, student groups, academic divisions, research centres and advocacy groups.

In order to be eligible for the GCDF, an applicant must:

• Be a UTGSU member at the time of application. Please note to be considered a member, a student must be registered for the academic term and have paid the UTGSU fees.
• Have not received this award before during their academic degree at the University of Toronto.
• Not be a current UTGSU staff or Director.

An applicant will not be considered for the award if their application is incomplete. It is the sole responsibility of the applicant to submit a complete application, and the UTGSU is not responsible for identifying an incomplete application before the application deadline.

If an applicant has been found to have falsified their application, they will be disqualified and ineligible from future awards by the UTGSU.

Use Rubric to submit your application online. Your application should include a personal statement and a reference letter. Please note applications can be edited until the submission deadline, and not after.

You will required to login with a Rubric account. We have set up single sign-on (SSO) with your mail.utoronto.ca accounts. If you have a society / student group login, please open the tab incognito.

When logging in via the SSO you may be redirected to the main general page. If you get redirected, revisit this page and travel to the link again OR go to the UTGSU society page.

Use your personal statement to share details about your community development experience(s) by answering the following question:

“What does community development mean to you, and how/in what ways have you contributed to community development for graduate students at the University of Toronto?”

For the purpose of the GCDF, we ask that you limit the inclusion of your community development contributions to the previous 24 months from the time of applying.

Personal statements are to be single spaced, using 11pnt font, and can be up to two-pages. You may find a Guide for Personal Statements linked here.

Please submit one reference letter from someone that is familiar with your community development contributions. The reference can be an academic, professional or community reference. The reference letter must not be provided by a friend, family member or subordinate who may feel obligated to provide an unqualified reference, e.g. an event attendee, service user, volunteer, or employee.

Reference letters should focus on your extracurricular activities. The reference letter can be up to two-pages, single spaced, using 11pnt font and should include the full name, designation and contact information of the reference. The UTGSU will not contact references to supply a letter. You may find a Guide for Reference Letters linked here.  

Please note, experiences included in the application that are unrelated to the graduate student community, and/or unrelated to community development as understood by the assessment committee, will not be considered for assessment under this framework.

The assessment process will begin once the submission deadline has passed. All applications will be reviewed for eligibility by the Vice-President Finance or their designate (a UTGSU staff member), and only applications deemed eligible will be shared with the Assessment Committee, consisting of the VP Finance, and at least two other Directors. All applications will be assessed using the Assessment Framework. Award winners will be determined based on the results of the assessment process, with consideration of the diversity of applicants’ lived experiences. Only applications receiving 34/45 points and above will be considered eligible for this award.

The UTGSU aims to finalize award winners four weeks after the submission deadline. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application through Rubric and by email. 

The Assessment Committee uses a pre-approved assessment criteria. You can view the assessment criteria in the GCDF Resource Guide linked here.

Payment will be made to award winners via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) directly to the student’s bank account provided in the initial Rubric form application. Payments will typically take two to nine business days from the date of approval.