Mississauga, Ontario (September 20, 2013) - Mississauga, through the Advantage Mississauga Initiative, is leading the way as Canada's first smart city to partner with The Funding Portal to ensure its local businesses, universities, hospitals and other organizations can use the portal's unique tools and solutions to improve access to Canada's rich array of government incentives programs. 

The Funding Portal is an e-commerce platform built by the private sector to facilitate access to government funding and private financing for Canada's business and innovation sectors. It aggregates 7,500 sources of funding that invest more than $30 billion annually, and provisions companies with experts to assist them in securing these funds. It also provisions the market with a full range of unique new data and analytics reports on Canada's wide range of funding programs.

Under the partnership, Advantage Mississauga will host The Funding Portal's "Search Widget" to enable visitors to search, at no cost, through all of Canada's government and private sector funding on the Advantage Mississauga website, and link to the Portal for any additional services. The Search Widget instantly matches users' funding objectives with the optimal government programs and private financing sources.

Access to funding information through an easy to use portal is of tremendous benefit to Mississauga businesses, which in the past researched multiple sources to find this information. The Portal's more effective solution helps businesses zero in on the right information in minutes.    

"The Funding Portal's Search Widget saves businesses time and adds value. This is the right tool for Advantage Mississauga," said Nigel Roberts, Executive Coordinator of Advantage Mississauga.   

"Our role at Advantage Mississauga is to be a connector for business, and the portal is part of our suite of tools to achieve this goal." 

Advantage Mississauga joins other leading Canadian business websites, including MaRS and Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME), hosting The Funding Portal's Search Widget.   

More than 2,575 organizations now provide links to The Funding Portal, including government agencies and industry associations. 

About Advantage Mississauga  

Advantage Mississauga is an industry-led collaborative initiative that mobilizes talent and leverages local resources to enable innovation and stimulate enhanced prosperity in the City of Mississauga.   

Advantage Mississauga partners include industry, the City of Mississauga, University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), Sheridan College, Mississauga Board of Trade, the Research Innovation Commercialization Centre, community associations, and organizations all sharing a common interest in innovation and economic development.   

Advantage Mississauga is focused on providing the connections needed to strengthen our innovation community, building our talent advantage, utilizing our innovation infrastructure assets, all with the ultimate goal of making the City of Mississauga recognized as a top global city for creativity and innovation.  

About The Funding Portal 

The Funding Portal is an e-commerce platform that provides one-window access to all sources of government funding, including grants, tax incentives and other government incentives programs, as well as sources of private financing to support the innovation and growth objectives of companies, hospitals, universities, charities and non-profits.

Backed by some of Canada's top business brands including KPMG, RBC, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME), NACO and MaRS, The Funding Portal provides a national bilingual portal, as called for in the Jenkins Report on federal R&D and the Drummond Report in Ontario.