Celebrating 15 years of funding best practice

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Can you share any specific success stories where GEMS played a key role in securing funding?  

Strategic Grants and GEMS assisted us in securing an opportunity that we would not have otherwise come across, that being the Westpac, Safer Children, Safer Communities work program. We were successful in two $50k grants. These grants enabled us to produce a professional learning course for educators about teaching consent to children and other resources about online safety that enable students to keep themselves safe online. More than 500 educators have enrolled in the course, making it our third most popular course. The online safety lessons have been taught to more than 233,000 Aussie kids. 

This program, which would not have occurred if we hadn’t partnered with Strategic Grants, has had extensive impact in the area of children’s safety.

How has the funding you received impacted your organisation’s projects / programs and overall mission?  

Strategic Grants support over the last five years has resulted in many successes. GEMS has highlighted a breadth of opportunities that we would not have otherwise known about, and SG’s suggestions and guidance on best practices and project proposals that would likely be in high demand have been invaluable. These successes have assisted us in progressing toward our mission.  

Naomi Nicholas, Head of Community Engagement

National Centre for Childhood Grief

Can you share any specific success stories where GEMS played a key role in securing funding?  

GEMS led us to identifying Impact 100 Sydney North as a potential funding partner. Impact 100 Sydney North were focused on supporting grassroots charities in Northern Sydney receiving minimal government support, who were supporting vulnerable local communities. GEMS provided valuable data on their funding interests, exclusions, data requirements, exhaustive selection process and more. The NCCG successfully navigated a series of assessments, including both detailed documented submissions and presentations. We received a wonderful grant of $100,000 to enhance our online telehealth counselling services for regional and isolated families. 

Critically, after this success, GEMS also allowed us to also identify additional grant funders who could join in funding our online counselling enhancement project, inspired by the cornerstone funding provided by Impact 100 Sydney North. To-date we have secured three additional grants for this project. 

How has the funding you received impacted your organisation’s projects / programs and overall mission? 

The care services provided by the NCCG have tripled in scale in the last 5 years, driven by ever increasing community demand. We have been able to support this strong growth particularly with support from philanthropic grant funders. Specialist bereavement care for children and families after the death of a close loved one is rare, expensive and hard to access in Australia. The NCCG’s free services for bereaved children now care for more than 490 children across Australia each year.

Chris Waugh, Head of Development

Parkinson’s NSW  

How has engaging Strategic Grants for monthly tailored grants management supported PNSW’s overall approach to grant-seeking, and getting the organisation ‘grant ready’?  

With a very small fundraising team of two with no dedicated grants writer, our approach to applying for grants was ad-hoc at best. We had access to opportunities, would see one that was applicable and send in the application. Working with Strategic Grants has been an extremely rewarding experience. We now have access to apply for grants that were never on our radar before thanks to GEMS, plus we have worked closely with Strategic Grants to tailor our approaches. We have developed strong templates and have delved deeply into outcome and impact reporting, something that needed attention. By working together and diving deeper into our programs, we have engaged the whole Parkinson’s NSW workforce (not just the fundraisers and executive team) to also start thinking deeper about impact reporting. 

Would you recommend Strategic Grants to other for-purpose organisations looking support in establishing, and implementing, a grant-seeking program? If so, why? 

I would 100% recommend Strategic Grants and GEMS. This is a great option for organisations with small fundraising teams who wish to explore grant opportunities without recruiting new staff, or for those larger organisations looking to improve their programs. 

Fiona, former Fundraising Manager