Diverse Communities Grants Program in Australia

Deadline: 24-Aug-22

The Victorian Government is delivering a grants program for community-led organisations from diverse communities to support the mental health and wellbeing of culturally and linguistically diverse communities, LGBTIQ+ people and people with disability.

Diverse communities, as defined by the Royal Commission, are:

culturally and linguistically diverse communities
LGBTIQ+ people
people with disability.

Focus Areas

Projects will focus on one or more of the follow streams:
- Fostering leaders among people with lived experience from diverse communities
- Building capacity and capabilities of community-based organisations, their leaders and members
- Promoting mental health concepts and building mental health literacy for diverse communities
- Improving the responsiveness of mental health services through community-led partnerships.

Priority Areas

Priority will be given to projects that focus on:
- people from diverse communities that have lived experience of mental illness (consumers or carers)
- regional or rural diverse communities
- newly arrived or newly settled communities
- people on temporary visas, including international students
- older people from diverse communities
- children and young people from diverse communities
- people who are part of multiple diverse communities (e.g. who are members of multicultural communities and/or LGBTIQ+ communities and/or have disabilities)
- people who face other intersecting forms of disadvantage or discrimination (e.g. from low socioeconomic status areas, on low incomes, women or girls).

Funding Information

In 2022–23, they will fund one-year projects from $40,000 or up to $120,000.

Eligibility Criteria

In most cases, your organisation must be led by or have a primary focus on diverse communities, defined by the Royal Commission as:
- culturally and linguistically diverse communities
- LGBTIQ+ people
- people with disability.
Your organisation must fall under one of the following entity types:
- Incorporated associations registered under Consumer Affairs Victoria – these commonly have ‘Association’, ‘Incorporated’ or ‘Inc.’ in their legal name
- Incorporated cooperatives registered under Consumer Affairs Victoria – these commonly have ‘Cooperative’ in their legal name
- A not-for-profit entity registered under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) or the Associations Incorporation Reform Act 2012 (Vic)
- A social enterprise incorporated under the Corporations Act 2001
- A Local Government Authority, but only in support of another organisation.
In addition, your organisation must also have:
- a current Australian Business Number (ABN)
- an Australian bank account that corresponds to your ABN
- no overdue or final reports from previous grants funded by Department of Health.