Some positive news this week for the group behind The Venue in downtown High River.

Lori Koehler says they've received charitable status.

That means they can now hand out charitable tax receipts for donations, which they hope will help kick start individual donors to give to their building.

"It also gives us the ability to access different grants, so now we have a whole different area that we can go looking for, specifically capital investment grants for the building and it also that we're held accountable to the objects in our charitable status so that helps us make sure that we're doing what we set out to do and we keep our processes and the projects that we're doing as inclusive and as accessible as possible," says Koehler.

Before getting their charity status they received non-profit status about three and a half years ago and have been active as a board for about four years.

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