Julia Farr MS McLeod Benevolent Fund has a new name – we are now the JFM Fund. In addition to our new name, we’ve also given our brand and website a vibrant makeover – we hope you like our new look!

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1. About our grants

 

What we will fund

We want to support South Australians with disability who have a great idea for creating new opportunities for people with disability to engage with communities of their choice. This could be a product that improves access to communities, or a new model of inclusion. Our grants will contribute towards the development, testing or launch costs of new products or services that support people with disability to take up active, contributing roles in communities and activities of their choice. This may include costs such as:

  • Professional advice, coaching and mentoring to help you develop your idea.
  • Development costs – such as design, materials or research
  • Production/delivery costs – for prototype products, or to pilot a new service or activity.
  • Launch costs such as intellectual property protection or marketing costs.

 

Your idea will set out to do one of the following:

  1. Do something completely new, that no one has done before.
  2. Scale up an innovation that you have already tested or piloted.
  3. Customise or adapt a proven model to a new context.

 

We will support innovations to address the issues experienced by people with disability. Grant applications should do one of the following:

  1. Address areas* identified by our engagement with people with disability, which include:
    • Community attitudes.
    • Accessibility – including physical access, communications and the online environment.
    • Transport.
    • Housing.
    • Education.
    • Employment.
    • Services – including access, quality and choice.
    • Regional issues.
    • Intersectionality.
  2. Describe how you have identified the need for your project. This could include your own lived experience.

* These needs may change over the period of the strategy, depending on what the disability community tells us.

Who we will fund

We will fund adults with disability who are resident in South Australia.

We also fund grants to organisations – please see our guidance and application form for grants to organisations.

How much we fund, and how long for

The maximum grant for individuals is $20,000.

We will make multi-year grants, up to a maximum of 3 years.

We don’t fund…

Under this program, we will not fund:

Our focus on inclusion means we will not fund activities that involve segregated settings 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 group if the project plans to build the capacity of people with disability to participate as active, contributing members of communities.

We will not fund 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. We will not fund 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).

2. About us

 

The Julia Farr MS McLeod Benevolent Fund (the JFM Fund) provides grant funding for projects to develop, test and grow innovations and new models in disability inclusion to advance the opportunities for people with disability to be active citizens in the life of their community.  We are part of the Julia Farr group of social purpose organisations, alongside Purple Orange and inhousing.

We are governed by a board of trustees who include people with disability.

We were originally established through a gift in the will of Murdoch Stanley McLeod. Our trustees have a legal responsibility to honour the intentions of the will; to protect the ongoing financial sustainability of the JFM Fund; and to be thoughtful and considered in making decisions on grant applications, and in managing grants that have been awarded. We are committed to making our grant programs accessible, and to meeting our legal obligations. The questions we ask in grant applications and in grant management help us to ensure we use our available funds in accordance with our legal commitments.

3. Applying for funding

 

Before you apply

We strongly encourage you to contact us before you prepare your grant application. We are very happy to discuss our grant program with you and your idea (or ideas) for a project. This can help you to focus on an initiative with a stronger chance of funding, and avoid spending time on an application with limited chance of success.

Application format

You can apply using the online form on our website. Alternatively, you can download a word or PDF version of the form. We will also accept applications via video or over the phone. Please let us know if you need any support in completing your application.

Preparing your application

Please read through these guidelines before you start your application, so you have all the information you need available.

You will need:

  • Your contact information and brief information on your disability
  • Information on your project:
    • Project name
    • Project description – including project activities and where your project will be delivered
    • The need for your project and the difference you expect it to make for people with disability
    • How your project is an innovative approach to disability inclusion
    • Your experience in delivering projects
  • Project budget:
    • A simple project budget, for up to three years
    • If you are applying for less than the full costs of the project, information on how you will fund the gap between our grant and the full project costs
  • Details of two referees

Most of the questions have word limits. Please provide brief responses. We will ask you for more detail if we need it.

Deadlines for application

We do not have fixed deadlines for grant applications. We will continue to receive and consider applications throughout the year, as long as we have funds available to award new grants.

If you contact us before you prepare your grant application, we can tell you the schedule of our upcoming board meetings and discuss a timeline for you to submit your application.

 

 

4. Completing the application

This section of the guidelines provides detailed information on completing our application form. We have explained why we are asking the questions in this application to help you prepare your answers.

Why we ask the question

This helps us to know who you are, and to decide if you are eligible for a grant.

How to answer

Please provide the basic information requested.

This grant program is intended to support people with disability. We ask for basic information about your disability to check that you are eligible for the program. A brief summary is fine. You do not need to give us detailed personal or medical information. If we need additional information, we will ask you for it.

Why we ask the question

This helps us reference the project.

How to answer

You can use a name or a brief description for your project.

Why we ask the question

We need to know what your project will do and where you will deliver your project. We use this information to check if your grant application is eligible for our funding and if it is a strong fit with our funding strategy. We also want to understand the key activities of your project and any products or outputs your project will create. This helps us to test whether the project is likely to achieve positive impact for the disability community, and if it is value for money.

If you are awarded a grant, we will use this information to monitor grant progress.

How to answer

Provide information on what your project will actually do. Describe the deliverables or outputs from your project – this could include workshops, events, digital resources (e.g. video content, podcasts, apps), publications (e.g. research reports or toolkits) and prototype or test versions of new products.

You should describe the location based on where the activity will be delivered, or where the people who will benefit from the project live or work, rather than where you are based.

Why we ask the question

We want to fund ideas that address an identified need for people with disability and have the potential to make a meaningful difference to people.

How to answer

Please provide information about how you have identified the need for your idea. This could include:

  • Issues identified through our engagement with people with disability:
    • Community attitudes
    • Accessibility – including physical access, communications and the online environment
    • Transport
    • Housing
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Services – including access, quality and choice
    • Regional issues
    • Intersectionality
  • Be identified through your own lived experience, your connections with other people with disability and research published by other organisations.

Please describe the difference you think your project will make to people with disability, in terms of disability inclusion.

Why we ask the question

We want to understand where your idea is up to. This helps us to consider how our grant will help you move your idea to the next stage.

How to answer

Describe how your project is taking a different approach to disability inclusion. It would be useful to include information on any research you have done to identify existing approaches to inclusion and to explain how your project is different. If you are scaling up an innovation you have already tested, or customising an existing approach to a new context, it would be good to explain what you’ve learned so far, and how you will be adapting these approaches to reflect that learning.

Why we ask the question

We want to fund projects that look at new or different ways of improving disability inclusion and/or changing attitudes to disability.

How to answer

Describe the work you’ve done so far to develop your project idea. For example, it might be a completely new idea, or you may have already tested the idea with others, done some design work or built a mock-up or prototype.

Why we ask the question

We have a limited grant budget so we need to ensure your project offers value for money. We also want your project to succeed, so we will check if your budget includes enough funding to deliver your planned activities. If you are applying for less than the total project costs, we also want to know you have the remaining funds, so that you can deliver the full project.

If you are awarded a grant, we will ask you to report project expenditure against this budget.

How to answer

You can ask for a grant of up to $20,000. You can ask for all of the grant to be paid in one year, or you can spread it over 2 or 3 years, depending on the planned activities for your project.

Please provide some information in the budget around what you expect to spend your grant on (e.g. professional fees, materials, marketing).

If you have used your own spreadsheet to develop your project budget, you can send us this, rather than completing the budget in the application form.

If you are applying for less than the total costs of your project, please explain how you will fund the difference.

Why we ask the question

We ask for referees so we can check you are who you say you are, and to get some other perspectives on your grant idea.

How to answer

Provide contact details for referees who know you and are familiar with your idea. These should not be members of your family or household. They might include organisations you work with.

Please complete all sections of the application form.

If you have any questions on the application form, or suggestions to improve our application form or these guidelines, please contact us at grants@juliafarr.org.au.

5. How we make decisions

 

We will review your application and let you know if we have any additional questions for clarification.

Assessment: Your application will be assessed by our team.

Decision making:

  • Final decisions on your grant are made by our board, which includes people with disability.
  • We will consider applications against the following filters:
    • Innovation in inclusion.
    • Fit with our trust deed.
    • The extent to which an application addresses needs identified by people with disability, including issues of intersectionality, where people with disability experience further systemic disadvantage.
    • The inclusion of people with disability in organisation governance or workforce.
  • Applications are considered on a competitive basis against a limited grant budget. We will consider the strength of your grant application against the following criteria:
    • Fit with our values of:
      • Personhood: The level of control and independence a person with disability has over their own life.
      • Citizenhood: How people with disability are active in the communities of their choice.
      • Capacity building considers how people with disability grow their skills and experience in pursuit of their goals.
    • Fit with our strategic objectives of inclusion, innovation and influence.
    • Identified need for your project, based on engagement with people with disability.
    • Value for money.
    • Financial sustainability of projects intending to continue beyond the life of our grant.

 

Each project is assessed on its own merits, and will be considered relative to other applications, particularly where we have more applications than we can fund.

We work to manage any conflicts and perceived conflicts of interest.

 

Informing you of our decision

We will email you to tell you whether your application has been successful or not.

  • If your application is unsuccessful, this does not mean your project isn’t a good idea or isn’t valuable. It just means it’s not a strong enough fit with our strategy. We will explain the reasons we decided not to fund you.
  • If your application is successful, we will explain the next steps in setting up the grant agreement.

6. Grant management

 

Grant agreement

If you are awarded a grant, we will send you our standard agreement and we will work with you in developing the schedule to the agreement. This is based on the information in your grant application and includes the purpose of the grant, payment and reporting schedule. Once we have both signed the agreement, we will ask you to invoice us for the first instalment of your grant.

 

Grant payments and reporting

We will agree your grant payment schedule and reporting arrangements as part of your grant agreement. The schedule will depend on the value and length of your grants. We may pay smaller grants in one or two instalments. For larger grants, you will be asked to provide progress reports and receipts for grant expenditure on a quarterly basis, to show you are spending the grant as intended. We usually pay grants quarterly in advance, linked to satisfactory progress reports and evidence of grant expenditure. We will ask you to send us an invoice for your grant payment, following our review of your progress report and receipts.

You can choose to spread your grant in equal instalments, or you can vary the amount to reflect the costs of different stages of your project.

You will also need to send us a final report and a summary of your grant expenditure, following the completion of your grant.

 

Grant variations

We recognise the reality of delivering a project usually differs from the plan. We encourage you to tell us about any changes you need to make to your project.

In most cases we will agree changes that are consistent with our values and funding objectives, within the original purpose of the grant and within the agreed amount of funding.

Acknowledgement of Country

In the spirit of reconciliation we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures today.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this website may contain images or names of people who have passed away.