.png){kind=spacer}
JB Music Therapy has been using music to care for patients in Calgary for over three decades. With a team of dedicated music therapists providing over 20,000 therapy sessions annually, JB Music Therapy has established itself as a leader in specialized healthcare services.
Coming out of the pandemic, founder Jennifer Buchanan and her team identified an exciting opportunity in their service offerings - they wanted to embrace health technology to continue making a meaningful difference in people's lives. The barrier? Funding. Like many established businesses looking to innovate, JB Music Therapy faced a significant hurdle: how to fund their technology development while maintaining their core services. This challenge is all too familiar for founders who have:
As Jennifer explains, "The barrier for us has been the funding. We've worked with lots of nonprofits and helped with their funding strategies, but we'd never even thought about that on our side besides just providing our services."
Get in touch to learn about how we can help!
On the recommendation of a well-connected friend, Jennifer reached out to Thin Air Labs' Funding Catalyst team. "I happened to be speaking to an incredibly well-connected friend who said you need to call Thin Air. They're going to help you. And I have always done exactly what she tells me to do," admits Jennifer. "And I called Thin Air right away. I think we were signed up within thirty days."
This decision marked the beginning of a transformative partnership that would ultimately lead to securing over $200,000 in funding from Alberta Innovates' AICE Concepts program.
The first step was developing a comprehensive funding strategy—something JB Music Therapy had never done before. The Funding Catalyst team worked closely with Jennifer and her team to:
"We looked nationally. We looked provincially. We looked locally and at different industries and at who else wants to participate in healthcare, what are the different ways, what are the pieces that we're missing, what are pieces we didn't even know we're missing," Jennifer explains.
The Application Process: Extracting Hidden Value
One of the most significant challenges for founders is articulating their vision in a way that funding agencies can understand and support. The Funding Catalyst team excelled at drawing out the full potential of JB Music Therapy's application.
"We brought a lot to the table, so we had a lot of content. We had the research. We knew how to talk about our industry, we recognized what our needs were - what we didn't know how to do was how to organize that in a page that was going to really define exactly what we needed to people who weren't us," Jennifer shares.
"What Thin Air was able to do was ask us all the right questions to extrapolate every ounce of knowledge that we didn't even realize we had because we're so entrenched in what we do. And they put it in a way that made us look at it in a whole new light."
The collaborative effort paid off when JB Music Therapy received the call from Alberta Innovates informing them they had been successful in securing funding through the AICE Concepts program. This significant investment will allow them to build a digital health technology platform that extends their impact beyond in-person sessions.
The MxApp, as it's called, will be a personalized digital music therapy-inspired platform designed to support mental health and workplace wellbeing. The application impressed reviewers with its strong evidence base, clear market opportunity, and potential for significant health and economic impact.
The impact of this success goes far beyond the financial investment. For JB Music Therapy, it represents a fundamental transformation in how they see themselves and their future.
"The first thing is a mindset shift. We have always felt, being that we're health care providers, we're service providers, we're frontline staff. Now we're seeing a tech arm of our company and building a tech team. And so just in a mindset way, we have become the company we only dreamed about within a few short months." ---- Jennifer Buchanan, Founder & President
This shift has energized their entire team, creating a renewed sense of purpose and possibility. "What it also has given our staff is a feeling of pride, feeling seen, feeling heard, knowing that there's still so much more that we can contribute."
Jennifer's experience offers valuable insights for other business owners considering grant funding:
With funding secured, JB Music Therapy is now positioned to develop their innovative health technology platform, expanding their reach and impact. The MxApp will allow them to serve more people, in more places, with evidence-based music therapy interventions.
As Jennifer looks to the future, she sees endless possibilities: "We're seeing the future client much more clearly now, and everything we're gonna have the opportunity to build is because of resources that we didn't otherwise have."
For businesses looking to navigate the complex world of grant funding, Jennifer's advice is clear: "If you want to feel like a better boss with good ideas that you're going to be able to see realized, definitely engage with Thin Air."
The partnership between JB Music Therapy and Thin Air Labs' Funding Catalyst team demonstrates how the right expertise can transform not just a funding application, but an entire business vision. By combining JB Music Therapy's deep industry knowledge with the Funding Catalyst team's grant expertise, they created a compelling case that secured significant funding and opened new opportunities for growth and impact.
As Jennifer puts it, "We couldn't be more grateful for the Funding Catalyst team at Thin Air Labs. It is transforming our business."
Get in touch to learn about how we can help!
