FAQ

Starting January 1st, 2017, grantees who apply for and receive project funding though Vancouver Foundation's Field of Interest grant making program are required to add a CC BY 4.0 open license to the materials they produce as a result of our funding. 

Examples of works a grantee might produce could include project outlines and evaluations, guides on how to scale or facilitate a project in new spaces, templates, posters, pictures, plans and processes.

In the case that this license isn’t suitable for the work in question, Vancouver Foundation requires grantees to consider and use other Creative Commons license options.

Materials that are not beneficial to share are not included under this policy - such as content required to maintain the financial sustainability of a project or charity, materials containing private participant data, works belonging to other rights holders, or traditional or cultural knowledge that is not subject to traditional copyright law.  

The Open Licensing Policy is designed to encourage grantees to intentionally consider, extend and make explicit the terms upon which others may access, share and benefit from the knowledge and innovation they create. Grantees are not required to produce materials in order to qualify for funding, nor are their applications assessed based upon any intention to share licensed works. 

Beginning in 2017, Vancouver Foundation will openly license research and datasets owned by the organization, will digitize and license information about its granting activity throughout its 75-year history, and will license and issue materials that support knowledge sharing and capacity building for other charities and community foundations across BC and Canada.

An open license is a set of legal terms attached to an original work that acts as an extension of copyright law. The license can be a symbol, text description, hyperlink, or a combination of these that defines how an original work can be used and adapted by someone who is not the original rights holder. 

In general, an open license permits others to use copyrighted works (such as reports, white papers, or videos) not only by viewing them and making copies, but also by incorporating all or parts of them in other works, changing them, and even publishing and selling them—as long as the new user attributes the creator and uses the work in the manner defined within the license terms.

An open license typically contains a license symbol, the name of the work, a hyperlink to the location of the original work or to the creator’s website, a hyperlink to the license legal terms, and any text that is required to describe whether elements of the work are excluded from the license terms. 

Vancouver Foundation uses open licenses created by Creative Commons. For more information on open licensing, please see https://creativecommons.org

A 'work' or 'material' might be text on a webpage, an image, audio recording, a script, PowerPoint presentation, video, PDF, list or compilation of multiple types of content, such as a book or multimedia project. Any original work that can be recorded into a format that can be shared or distributed can be considered a work. 

Grantees who accept funding through Vancouver Foundation’s Field of Interest Grants program are required to accept the terms outlined within our Open Licensing Policy by indicating so on their grant agreement letters. Accepting the terms of the policy means that grantees will be required to take two distinct actions: to consider what might be possible to share as they develop, enact and complete their project plans, and to add an open license to any appropriate works they produce in time for their final reports.

Acceptance of this requirement means that while grantees will continue to own copyright over the work products and materials they produce using this grant funding, they agree to add an appropriate Creative Commons open license to those works. 

Grantees are also required to make the work product publicly available (e.g. post it on their organization's website). 

Vancouver Foundation asks grantees to provide hyperlinks to any openly licensed work within their final reports. 

The open licensing policy currently only applies to Field of Interest grantees that started their application process after January 1, 2017. However, grantees are welcome to voluntarily adopt open licensing. Please let us know if you did at open@vancouverfoundation.ca
 

Some grantees already provide open licenses to their work.

The Neil Squire Society is releasing new assistive technologies open source, as well as curating other open source solutions that can have an impact for people with disabilities. By working in the open, we welcome skilled volunteers to contribute their expertise to solve access problems, make solutions that are more affordable for people with disabilities, and bring solutions to various stakeholders that may otherwise not have access. Adopting an open philosophy gives us the opportunity to embrace our mission: to empower people with disabilities through technology. We congratulate Vancouver Foundation on their open licensing work as it will encourage the creation, sharing, and adaptation of other social innovation solutions.

Gary Birch, OC, PhD, P.Eng. - Executive Director, Neil Squire Society

No, the policy does not apply to materials created previously in a project before Vancouver Foundation became a funder. Vancouver Foundation’s open licensing policy covers work or materials funded in whole or in part by Vancouver Foundation grants. It does not extend to whole projects or other work produced by an organization. When requesting funds from Vancouver Foundation, applicants can be specific about which aspects of their project will be funded with the Vancouver Foundation grant.