Frequently Asked Questions

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Conflicts of interest happen when someone involved in our grant making processes has personal, family, social or professional interests that may impact on their decision about a grant. Interests can be financial or non-financial, direct or indirect. In a grant making context, conflicts or perceived conflicts are most likely to occur when one of our board or staff is connected to a grant applicant or grant holder.

Conflicts of interest may be:

• Actual conflicts: where there is an existing direct conflict between someone’s personal interests and the interests of the JFM Fund.
• Potential conflicts that could interfere with future decisions.
• Perceived conflicts where it may appear that someone’s interest has influenced their decision about a grant, even if it did not.

Many grant applicants may already be connected to our organisation in some way. We manage actual, potential and perceived conflicts of interest through:

• Maintaining a register of interests: we record any existing interests for our board of trustees and key staff. This is reported to the board at every meeting and any conflicts or potential conflicts of interest are discussed in the meeting.
• Open access grant programs with transparent processes: anyone can apply for our grants and we publish information about our grant processes and criteria. You don’t need an existing relationship with us to apply.
• Separating grant making functions: we have different people involved in the different stages of the grant process, to ensure no single person can make a decision or a payment on a grant. Our program staff support applications through the process; grants are assessed by our team of assessors; all decisions are made by our board of trustees and grant payments are processed by our finance team.
• Reporting conflicts: we tell our board about any existing relationships with grant applicants as part of the decision making process. If a potential, perceived or actual conflict of interest comes up after a grant has been awarded, we report this to the board too.
• Grant monitoring: we ask grant holders to report on the progress of their grant and how they have spent the funds. We only release the next grant payment when the grant holder has shown the funds are being spent within the terms of the grant agreement.
• Managing conflicts: where we identify a potential, perceived or actual conflict of interest, we agree and document approaches for managing conflicts. If you are applying for a grant, or have a grant currently, and we identify a conflict of interest, we will discuss this with you and record agreed approaches to managing the conflict, as part of our grant agreement. We monitor conflict of interest arrangements and report them to our board.