The 2023 Big Future Innovation Grant will be annouced this fall – stay tuned!

Innovation can
be rewarding.

The Big Future Innovation grant is an annual grant program offered by the Credit Unions of Alberta and Alberta Central. It awards two $25,000 to Alberta-based small businesses that demonstrate innovation and support for the community. The 2023 grant program will be annouced in the fall – stay tuned for more information!

Congratulations to our 2022 recipients: Bio-Agtive Emissions Farming, a Canadian innovation that recycles internal combustion emissions from any fuel source into rich plant nutrition and moovez is a Alberta-based managed marketplace that allows consumers and businesses to get a vehicle of any size, ready on-demand. Learn more at bioagtive.com and wemoovez.com

Previous Winners

Painworth

The Painworth app helps people, lawyers, and insurance professionals easily calculate, manage, and settle personal injury cases in a quick, accurate way. This lets all the parties involved (especially claimants & insurers) avoid the stress, time delays, and unnecessary expenses typically associated with taking things to court.

Painworth allows Canadians to make informed decisions as to whether or not they want to or need to retain a lawyer or if they would like to try represent themselves instead. PainWorth even gives claimants some of the tools they need to represent themselves.

Painworth
2021 Winner
Advance Harvest

Building from aeroponic systems pioneered by NASA, AerOrganic is the most advanced indoor vertical farming technology on the market. Advance Harvest’s AerOrganic system grows plants on an engineered vertical wall using advanced LED lighting technology and a patented low-pressure emitter that creates a nano-cloud (very fine mist) of water and nutrients that is applied automatically to the root and leaf zones at specified intervals. The nano-cloud penetrates the roots and leaves, providing unparalleled nutrition to the plant.

Advance Harvest
2021 Winner
Clinical Trial Hero

Clinical Trial Hero is an Alberta-born mobile app and web offering that helps people find clinical trials near them. The app is among the first of its kind in the world, with the potential to disrupt clinical trial recruitment. COVID-19 has hampered clinical research as many clinics have shut down or operated at reduced capacity for months. As a result, clinical trials have suffered. The Clinical Trial Hero app has flourished, empowering patients with a digital solution, removing the necessity for personal contact during clinical trial patient recruitment. Patients have access to Clinical Trial Hero for free, an inclusive innovation that aims to help patients no matter their gender, race, or financial status.

Clinical Trial Hero
2020 Winner
Curiocity

Curiocity is an Alberta-founded, digital-only publication providing hyper-local news, things to do and bookable experiences and adventures to its growing audience of nearly three million people across Canada.

Recognizing the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic had on mental and emotional health, Curiocity shifted its ‘Local’ content verticals to be focused on uncovering positive stories about businesses, people and communities across the country. Curiocity also offered and continues to offer businesses free advertising on their platform, to help relieve some of the marketing challenges posed by the pandemic.

Curiocity
2020 Winner

#BigFutureGrant

Alberta Central is the central banking facility, service bureau and trade association for Alberta’s credit unions. Alberta Central’s culture of innovation supports a long history of credit union innovation including being the first financial institutions to offer a loan based on a person’s character, lending to women in their own names and the first to offer online banking, amongst many others.