For organisations

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 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.

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 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 living with disability are the sole target cohort where the focus of the project is to build the capacity of people living with disability to participate as valued, contributing members of mainstream communities. For example, we have previously supported a peer-mentoring service to support people living 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).

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 the disability community, 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

All of our funded projects need to demonstrate benefit for South Australia’s disability community, but we will fund organisations and project activities interstate. For example, if we can see that a research, policy or advocacy project has the potential to benefit South Australians with disability, we will consider it for funding. We expect interstate-based projects to have some activity in South Australia, for example by involving South Australians with disability in research interviews, codesign groups or pilot activities.

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.

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 other – 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

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.