Frequently Asked Questions

We will ask you to sign a grant agreement. This will describe what the grant is for and how much grant we have awarded. It will explain the terms and conditions of the grant. It will also describe what information you have to send us – for example, reports and receipts – to show us you have used the grant as agreed, and to show what difference the grant has made. Depending on the size of your grant, we may pay the grant in a lump sum, or in staged payments, based on the reports you send us. If we make staged payments against reports, this will be explained in the grant agreement.

Our board of trustees, which includes people with disability, makes the final decision to award a grant.

Applications will be considered against the following filters:

• Is the grant for a new idea which will genuinely advance the opportunities for people with disability to grow authority over their own lives and actively participate in the communities of their choice?
• Does it fit with the trust deed?
• How well does the application address the needs identified by people with disability?

The board works to manage any conflicts and perceived conflicts of interest.

Our method of assessment for grants to individuals depends on the size and complexity of your application. Larger or more complex applications will be assessed independently, by an assessor with a strong background in disability inclusion.

The JFM Fund provides support to applicants whilst you are developing your application and (if you are funded) during grant management.

Our Innovations in inclusion grant for individuals with disability is an open annual grant program. Applications are considered throughout the year, subject to available funds. Grant applications are considered every two months when the Trustees meet.

We will make grants of up to $20,000 per grant. You can only have one grant at a time.

We will advise you that your application has been successful and send you our grant agreement. The grant agreement includes a schedule that describes the purpose and value of your grant, and includes the payment schedule and reporting requirements. We will discuss and agree the payment schedule and reporting requirements before we finalise and sign the grant agreement.

JFM Fund staff provide support to applicants whilst they are developing their application and (if funded) during grant management.

We don’t fund

• activities that involve segregated settings solely for people with disability or segregation by stealth (e.g. so-called inclusive groups which primarily engage people with disabilities alongside a smaller number of non-disabled people). We will only consider projects where people with disability are the sole target cohort where the focus of the project is to build the capacity of people with disability to participate as valued, contributing members of mainstream communities. For example, we have previously supported a peer-mentoring service to support people with disability to build their personal and professional capacity to engage in the activities and communities of their choice.
• standard welfare services, disability supports, or activities that should be funded by government. This includes supports that should be funded under NDIS and individual advocacy services.
• capital costs that should be funded by government (including local government) or by organisations, where these relate to meeting core accessibility requirements (e.g. ramps, accessible vehicles etc).

The JFM Fund will not award grants for:

• Standard welfare services, disability supports, or activities that should be funded by government
• Ideas that contribute to the segregation of people with disability from mainstream communities or other communities of interest
• Ideas that contribute to ‘segregation by stealth’, where people with disability are grouped together because of their disability, rather than due to shared interests with other people in the broader community.

Grants are normally made quarterly, in advance, into your nominated bank account. When we agree your payment schedule with you, you can select to have your grant paid in equal instalments, or you can set different amounts to reflect project activity, within the total grant awarded. For example, you may need more of your grant to cover increased costs relating to planned events, or to cover external costs such as marketing and evaluation.

Payments are usually linked to grant reporting, so we will release your next payment based on your progress report demonstrating satisfactory progress with grant activities and your financial report showing you are spending the grant funds as intended.

Each application is assessed independently, by an assessor with a strong background in disability inclusion.

We are interested in funding innovations in disability inclusion. We do not have fixed priorities around inclusion, but applicants will need to demonstrate their project meets a community need. You can do this by showing how people with disability have been involved in developing and designing your project. Through our own engagement with people with disability, we have identified the need for innovation in inclusion in the following areas:

• community attitudes
• accessibility – including physical access, communications and the online environment
• transport
• housing
• education
• employment
• services – including access, quality and choice
• regional issues
• intersectionality

To be eligible for a grant for individuals you must:

• Be an adult aged 18 or over
• Have a disability
• Reside in South Australia
• Have a great idea that has the potential to make a significant step forward in inclusion for people with disability
• Have taken steps to develop or implement your idea and now you are in need of additional resources, knowledge or skills to take your idea forward

Yes. As long as a project fits with our grant program, we are happy to consider co-funding projects with other funders.

We want our grants to have impact beyond the direct impact and life of the funding. We fund projects that have the potential to influence the policy and practice of other organisations – including governments, disability service providers and others – in relation to disability inclusion. Examples include research and advocacy work which informs government policy and projects that establish different ways of providing services that are more inclusive. Previous grant holders have demonstrated the potential to create impact beyond the life of the grant by:

• publishing research, evaluation and learning reports
• developing resources (such as toolkits, templates and videos) that can be used by others in planning and delivering services
• holding conferences and events
• developing educational materials

You can use our grants to fund the costs of running your project. This includes salaries and other staffing costs; set up costs; operating costs and overheads; any costs for events; payments for people who participate in codesign or advisory groups for your project, marketing and monitoring and evaluation. We will fund capital costs related to running your project (e.g. laptops for your project staff), and capital costs for innovation (e.g. building prototypes).

We will agree the reporting requirements with you as part of your grant agreement. The requirements will depend on the size and duration of your grant. We normally request a quarterly financial acquittal to show you are spending the grant funds as intended and a quarterly progress report against the agreed project activities, deliverables and outcome measures. Your scheduled grant payments will be linked to your reporting requirements.

We will also ask you to submit a final report and acquittal following completion of your grant.

For smaller grants, we will agree a lighter touch approach to reporting.

We’re interested in opportunities to partner with other organisations, for example:

• through jointly funding projects
• through referrals of organisations and projects between funders
• where different funders are suited to a project or organisation, or to the next stage of a project’s lifecycle – sharing learning regarding funded projects
• through sharing learning around different models of grant making and grant making practice
• through collective voice
• to increase our impact, particularly in relation to disability inclusion
• through capacity building for potential applicants, to support them to navigate grant programs and funding relationships

Our Innovations in inclusion grant for organisations is an open annual grant program. Applications are considered throughout the year, subject to available funds. Grant applications are considered every two months when the Trustees meet.

We don’t have a set minimum or maximum grant size. Our recent grants have varied in size from $8000 for a small research project, up to $230,000 for a two year start-up project.

We will make multi-year grants of up to three years, subject to available funding. Our focus on innovation means we will sometimes fund the same project for multiple years, but on a staged basis (rather than under single, multi-year grant). For example, we might start by funding research, then make a further grant to support a pilot project, and then another grant to scale up the pilot project.

The final decision to award a grant rests with the board of trustees, which includes people with disability. When making their decision, the board checks that applications meet the following conditions:

• Is the grant for a new idea and does it genuinely advance the opportunities for people with disability to grow authority over their own lives and actively participate in the communities of their choice?
• Does it fit with the trust deed?
• How well does the application address the needs identified by people with disability?
• Does the organisation include people with disability in its governance or workforce?

The board works to manage any conflicts and perceived conflicts of interest.

We will fund social purpose organisations (including not-for-profits, social enterprises, universities and local government). We will fund organisations who demonstrate an existing commitment to inclusion through engagement of people with disability in valued and contributing roles in governance and/or workforce. This inclusion must be in place before you will be considered for a grant.

We recognise that things will change over the life of your grant – particularly as we are funding innovation projects. We would rather our grant holders adapted their approach in response to the learning from their project than to stick to a plan that is no longer working.

If you need to make changes to your project, please contact us to discuss these. We generally look to support changes that still reflect the original purpose of the grant and can be implemented within the grant awarded. If you want to make more significant changes to your grant, we may need to consider a formal grant variation.