Five Grant Trends in 2021

Foreign. Hi, I'm Jessie Ballantyne and I love grants. I sold my house to fund the launch of the Grants Hub because I truly wanted to make grants easier to find. In the very early days, I ended up running the Grants Hub from the ICU ward of a children's hospital. Let's just say I'm committed to the cause of helping you find grants. If you're looking to get real with grants, to learn what works and what doesn't, to hear from grant experts from across the country and have some fun while we do it, then Grants Uncovered is the podcast for you. Today I'm going to share with you five key grant trends that I'm seeing happening in 2021. Now, these are reflections on what I'm seeing at the moment already. So far, we're sort of halfway through March, so this is possibly what will continue happening for the rest of 2021. Obviously, some new things will pop up as well, but so far there's a general trend happening across grants and I just want to share some of those insights with you. Ideally, this will help you plan out your year a little bit more with grants and also, to be honest, be quite reassuring that grant funding is recovering very quickly after the year that we had last year in 2020, the first piece of good news is that funders are getting back to their normal grant schedules very quickly this year. So last year we kicked off with bushfires, which threw a lot of funding into emergency relief, clearly for bushfire recovery. Then very quickly after that, we had Covid hit. So for most funding providers last year, a significant proportion of their funds or their focus went on to Covid crisis and recovery support. Now, clearly when funders are working in a space that is making a difference in the community or the environment, and when both of those were affected in 2020, we saw a massive shift happen across grant funding. Last year, giving was sort of at record numbers for Australia, corporate funding was up. Now, the trick is that some, you know, a lot of that funding went to those crisis and emergency situations. So not necessarily into the normal ongoing operations for applicants themselves on the front line, but more into that crisis recovery and support. Now, that is not unusual. That is what we expect to see when there is a big emergency or crisis hit, either nationally or worldwide. So when I was working in grants back in the tsunami time, you know, we saw that happen as well. So funding was at exceptional levels. Then when the tsunami hit across south and Southeast Asia, I was working in aid and development at the time, so saw that firsthand on the ground, but also from the funding perspective that the majority of grants went to, you know, tsunami recovery and trying to get people back up on their feet again and organisations back on their feet again after that. That's a normal response. So we expect to see those things happening. The good news is that funders this year for 2021 are already getting back into their normal funding schedules. Now what I mean by that is many foundations run on a quarterly or a half yearly or an annual funding cycle. I mentioned this last week with Lesley as well when we were chatting about getting grant ready and how that can actually help you forward plan your funding schedule a little bit. So last year clearly funders had to move a lot of their deadlines around. You know, sort of that 30th of March, even into June, people didn't really know the full extent of what was going to happen with COVID So a lot of funding programs were popped on hold and their deadlines were different. This year we're already getting back into those more standard grant deadline timeframes. So rest assured that that's happening. Number two is that Covid funding is moving from crisis and emergency, so that initial first response into recovery. So this is the next stage of funding that we're seeing rolling out now. For example, we've got Lottery west over in WA in Western Australia who have got a supporting the most vulnerable people's program. So they've taken their initial crisis funding and they're putting it into something that's a longer term support for organisations and community groups in WA to help. They say here, you know, they're supporting the prevention and early intervention programs that address the longer term impacts and support social and economic recovery from the pandemic. So it's not just the initial crisis stuff, it's getting into the recovery, the social and the economic recovery from the pandemic. Now that's only one example of many, many grants that are currently available in that space. And I think we'll continue to see that for some time in 2021. It's clearly different state by state for that as well. So states that have been harder hit, such as Victoria, we're seeing more grants available for Covid and some of that still initial crisis relief than in some of the other states. So you look at how a state is performing and responding, recovering with COVID and funding is pretty much reflective of that situation that each state is in. So definitely check your own state to see what funding you've got available in your state, because it's very different from state to state at the moment, number three is travel grants. Now this is an interesting one because clearly last year pretty much all travel grant funding was put on hold. So funders who provide grants for overseas travel, even interstate travel, essentially put their programs on hold and gave those with existing grant agreements an extension on their timeframes. This year. What I've seen so far is that a lot of funders are, if they're overseas funding, it's generally suspended. Still, we can't, you know, who knows when we're going to be able to travel overseas. Again, there's no point giving out grant funding for something that is literally impossible to do at the moment. But for national travel. So either within your own state or interstate, particularly in the areas of sport, some of those programs and the funding is being reworked or broadened if the programs haven't been cancelled. For example, in Victoria there's an athlete pathway grant. Now that's usually got a strong travel focus to it. For this current funding round, they're allowing it to include athlete development as well. Now that's for this round only. So this is where it's very important to keep track of what's currently available for grants. Funding is changing quickly and particularly in these situations where we're recovering from a bushfire and Covid, there's so many changes happening and it could be a one off change like this for one particular funding round. So instead of a funder cancelling all of their grant round like what we've seen here in Victoria with these athlete pathway grants, they're redirecting that so people can still apply and put it into something like athlete development instead of missing out on that funding altogether. So consider those when you're looking at your projects for this year, if you'd been eyeing off a travel grant, maybe just check to see whether that funder has cancelled their program altogether, put it on hold to later in the year, or have they redirected that funding and broadened it in one way so that you could still perhaps apply for grant funding from them? Number four is that there is an increasing number of funders using the expression of interest before the full application process. Now this has been happening over years, it's just getting more and more common. So look, it's very difficult to put a number on it, but I would say, I don't even want to say the majority, but there are a lot of funders that are doing it. I would say the majority of foundations are working that way. Now there's even an interesting situation where some funders are moving towards the expression of interest or an online inquiry. Then you get a phone call and then you can submit an application if you sort of pass that first stage. So. So the Snow foundation, they're our place grants, they've currently got an inquiry available on 16th April, their initial inquiry closes, then the applicant will get a phone call. If you get through the phone call stage, more a chat around, you know, is it a good fit or not? Then those organizations who are selected can submit a full application which is due on the 23rd of April. So the key message here is you've got to see what is the process for the applications that you're looking for. So if you have got in your grants calendar that the deadline is the 23rd of April, you've actually got a critical piece of information missing there. And that's for the Snowe foundation, at least. You need to have put in an expression of interest, an online inquiry form, by the 16th of April. So definitely watch out for those different application processes this year. It's more and more common. So make sure you're checking all of the information and that you've got the right deadline in your calendar then clearly, if you've got your expression of interest deadline in there, you also want to make sure you've got your application deadline in there too. So there's sort of these double whammy of application deadlines that you'll really want to keep track of, particularly as we move into 2021, when that is increasing and, you know, shifting more towards that process. The other thing I wanted to mention there with funders is funders are working really hard in general to be more accessible to grant applicants. Now, this is feedback that we got from Janine Rocks a couple of episodes ago from Cronulla Preschool, saying that it's so nice when funders are a bit more relational, if you can have a chat to someone before your application. I just saw this week that there's Feed Grants. They're very, very popular grants program. They've opened up a Facebook group so that people can ask questions and join that Facebook group to help answer some of those most commonly asked questions and also just have a little bit more interaction with applicants. That's a really great initiative. Like huge kudos to Feed Grants, the coordinators there for doing that. It's a really wonderful initiative, I think, and a lot of people ask the same questions. Why not pop it on a Facebook group so that everyone can see those answers? Leading into that actually is number five. We do see trends from year to Year. I've talked about this quite a few times, but a funding trend in particular that I'm seeing this year. I was between two, but I've gone for one here. It was either between female grants, like grants for women or grants for food. And food have come out on top when I've done the numbers. So there are more and more grants available for food this year than what I've ever seen before. So we've got. It could be the provision of emergency food, it could be food relief, it could be food processing, it could be reducing waste, it could be healthy eating options that I've seen a grant for a tuck shop, you know, sporting sports canteen, tuck shop to improve their healthy eating choices that they sell. There is so much going on in that space at the moment. I just mentioned the feed grants, that's just one example. So. So there's a lot happening there. If you're in the food space in any way, this is definitely the year for you. If you've thought about getting equipment for your canteen, possibly you'll be able to get something for you. Now, this is primarily state based funding, so you need to check what's available in your state. Some programs will be national. You really want to watch what's available in your particular area and keep track of even social media pages, different trends that are happening. Follow your, you know, your premier's Facebook page and see what they're up to. Obviously, as I say every time, jump on the grants hub, it's a 14 day free trial. Jump in and have a look at what's available for food at the moment. You can set up an alert. I just did this for an organization I'm working with last week. So they need grants for food crisis and food relief. So I popped in, I set up a grant alert. By Monday morning there was a grant in my inbox that I definitely wouldn't have heard about specifically for food. It was actually the perfect match for this organization that I'm working with. So there's a lot of opportunity there for food, food relief, food processing, waste, you know, reducing that. It's a big strong trend. Composting, you name it, think about it. So go that big picture thinking when it comes to food and how you might be able to tap into some of that grant funding that's available this year. So a quick review of those five trends that I've noticed so far for 2021. Number one, funders are getting back to their normal funding schedules. Number two, Covid funding is moving from that initial crisis and emergency funding into recovery funding. Number three, travel grants are being reworked and either postponed or broadened into broader opportunities for people who can't travel at the moment. Number four is that we've got the increasing number of funders moving towards the expression of interest to application or possibly even a phone call in the middle there as part of the application process. So make sure you're onto multiple deadlines per funding application that you're looking at. And number five is that there's a very strong increase of grants available for food. Hopefully you find all of that helpful. Look forward to hearing from you and seeing what you think about those trends and also potentially more episodes that you'd like to see in the future. Have a great week. Thanks for joining me on Grants Uncovered. If you'd like show notes, head over to grantsuncovered.com see you next time.