Frequently Asked Questions

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.

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 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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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).

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.