Elders has announced a national grant program to further support the needs of rural and regional communities with its launch of the Elders Community Giving Project, at the Regional Australia Institute’s (RAI) Regions Rising National Summit.
Run by Elders, for Elders’ communities, the Elders Community Giving Project will open applications in March 2024 offering grants of up to $20k for grassroots initiatives that will promote sustainable, focused, and long-term change in communities.
Purposely curated to have targeted impact, grants must align to one of the following pillars:
• Investing in people and regions
• Environmental consciousness
• Innovation into the future
• Healthy bodies and healthy minds
• Encouraging and celebrating diversity
• Safety first
• People’s choice, which will be voted on my Elders employees.
The new grant scheme will complement the existing work been done by Elders branches which gave over $2.69 million in sponsorships and donations in FY22.
The announcement comes on the back of the Regional Australia Institute’s progress report on the Regionalisation Ambition, released this week which demonstrates several concerning disparities between country Australians and their metropolitan counterparts, particularly in the areas of housing and workforce.
The Project is purposely aligned to the RAI’s pillars to ensure synchronicity and targeted efforts towards identified areas of focus. Elders CEO Mark Allison said the grant program aims to kickstart innovative initiatives and projects which may begin to start addressing some of these challenges.
“The Elders culture is true to the value of community spirit, it’s something our people embody, and this program will help both strengthen and spotlight this,” Mr Allison said.
“This initiative is one way we will give back and invest in initiatives that will support in building further connections and capability in our towns.
“There is much creativity and ingenuity in our regions, and I am so pleased that we can play our part to bring these to life, alongside our village of people and partners.”
Elders recently signed a three-year partnership with the Regional Australia Institute to advance its work to ‘rebalance the nation’ and create a more equitable future for the 9.5 million Australians who live outside of city bounds.
Grant applications will open in March 2024 and are open to all not-for-profit organisations in regional, rural, and remote communities (please note additional application criteria will apply).
More information is available on the Elders website.
