Tell us about the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation funding criteria and some projects that illustrate this criteria. 

Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is committed to supporting Greater Melbourne to become a resilient, sustainable and thriving city for all people. To achieve our vision, we apply a climate action and gender lens across all our grantmaking.

When submitting a grant application, it’s important to address the criteria and outcomes proposed by the funding organisation and ensure they align with the organisation’s priorities. We look for projects that create and support opportunities for sustainable employment, such as social enterprise, access to affordable housing and projects that will build community resilience to withstand major social and health challenges created by a changing climate.

The Foundation has incredible projects underway including:

Jesuit Social Services Centre for Just Places – building resilient communities in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Launch Housing and Women’s Property Initiative – building affordable and secure housing for women.

Good Cycles and Green Collect – supporting work-integrated social enterprises to create sustainable employment opportunities.

What attributes do you look for in applications you fund?

Like all funders, we have criteria and outcomes that a successful application must meet. We are looking for effective organisations with forward-looking visions. We are often early or first funders for projects that test new ideas and look for innovative and scalable solutions to address social and environmental challenges at both a project and systems change level. We understand that many challenges faced today are interconnected and that change takes time, so we often fund effective charities with follow-on grants. 

Our grantmaking at Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and grant recommendations are presented to the board. Unfortunately, we are not able to fund all applications we receive.

What are the key actions nonprofit organisations should take before applying to ensure the best chance of funding success?

Before submitting a grant application, we encourage grantseekers to read about the Foundation and learn about the expected outcomes for the Impact Areas. We provide information on our website about our grants program, outcomes, criteria and the projects we fund.

We have researched and thought deeply about the challenges the Greater Melbourne community is facing at any time and aim to respond to the areas where we can make the most difference. 

It is important for grantseekers to read the information available to see if their project meets the criteria before contacting our program managers to discuss potential project ideas. Funding organisations require tax concession charity (TCC) status and, for the Fund, deductible gift recipient status (DGR1), as well as registration with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission (ACNC). 

Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation recently helped to fund three initiatives that will help build capacity for those working in the nonprofit sector. Why? 

Building the capacity of the not-for-profit sector is an important component of our grantmaking. Over the past two years, and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we provided grants to Infoxchange, Justice Connect and The Xfactor Collective Foundation to build and support the resilience of the not-for-profit sector to overcome the impact of the pandemic.

Infoxchange launched its Digital Transformation Hub to provide technology equipment and training for not-for-profits to upskill and transition to remote work. Justice Connect launched a series of new not-for-profit law resources and The Xfactor Collective Foundation will launch an online wellbeing hub later in the year. 

These are all essential and important resources that are being made available and I encourage everyone working in the not-for-profit sector to access these wonderful resources. Visit:

• digitaltransformation.org.au

• nfplaw.org.au

• xfactorcollective.com/foundation 

To learn more about Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation grant program visit lmcf.org.au