Programs for Small Business

Indigenous Awareness Grant for BC Businesses

IBDS is happy to announce a limited-time grant for business owners across BC. This grant offers the opportunity to receive one paid self-guided training course provided by Indigenous Corporate Training Inc.

This is an excellent opportunity for your business to develop skills and expand its knowledge to work effectively with Indigenous individuals, organizations, and communities.

Choose one of the following course options:

This Self-Guided Training gives you the following:

  • Unlimited access for 30 days to ICT’s online training

  • Certificate of Completion

  • A free PDF copy of Indigenous Relations, an excerpt from Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples®, 4th edition

Course length

  • Approximately 2-6 hours. Depending on the chosen course.

  • Progress will be saved and can be picked up at a later time (within the 30-day window)

Course selection will depend on availability. This grant will run until November 30th, 2024, or until funds are exhausted.

Eligible Business Applicants:

  • Sole Proprietorships

  • Partnerships

  • Corporations

  • Non-Indigenous Businesses

  • Indigenous Businesses

  • Businesses who have been open for at least one year

  • Businesses with 50 and under employees

Ineligible Business Applicants:

  • Not for Profit Societies

  • Businesses outside of British Columbia

  • Businesses open less than a year

  • Businesses with over 50 employees

Business Training & Capacity Building

The Business Training & Capacity Building program supports organizations who wish to host business related training opportunities to Indigenous Peoples in their community. Training programs can include one time or multiple workshops and can be done on location or by online based webinar/workshop.

Eligible Applicants:

  • First Nations Bands

  • Community Economic Development based Organizations

  • Community Futures in BC

  • Aboriginal Financial Institution’s

 

Such training may include, but are not limited to:

  • Financial Literacy

  • Taxation

  • Bookkeeping

  • Cashflow

  • Accounting

  • Marketing

  • Branding

  • Management skills

  • Logo design

  • Website design

  • Social media marketing

  • Operational Planning

  • Workflow business planning

  • Office Software Training (Ex. Excel, Word etc.)

  • Leadership development

  • Staffing

  • Human Resource Management

  • Legal

  • Trademarks

  • Taxation

  • liabilities

  • Business Plan Development

 
 
 

Indigenous Internship

The IBDS Internship Program provides funding to eligible organizations to hire an Indigenous intern to work under their Business Development Officer (BDO), or similar position. 

The intern is to establish/expand their business development skills through work and projects identified by the applicant and will have a mentor to shadow and ask questions. The work/projects for the intern will be developed with three main areas of focus identified by IBDS (see below). The mentor will guide the work environment, assign tasks and check on progress of the intern. 

*Please note that it is up to the applicant to identify and provide work/project load for intern and measurable outcomes for their work. 

 

Eligible Internship Applicants:

  • AFI’s (Aboriginal Financial Institution)

  • BC CF’s (Community Futures organizations based in BC)

 

Areas of Internship focus:

Path-Finding Service - Interns will aid clients of BDO in identifying business services or resources offered by other organizations that the client may need or benefit from. This is to be a primary activity of the intern to develop their knowledge and understanding or business resources for small business owners. 

Shoulder Tapper - Interns are encouraged to develop their networking skills and will work to network possible opportunities for economic development or new individual business ideas in their community. 

Business Development Mentoring - the intern will work directly under the organizations BDO to help mentor and build their capacity in business planning skills and development 

Suggested work topics:

  • Develop a business plan from start to finish

  • Expand financial literacy skills