Deadline: 13-Mar-23
The Mercy Foundation’s Social Justice Small Grants Program is now open for applications to assist communities and organisations to build capacity that will help create structural change and bring about greater social justice in Australia.
Focus Area
- The focus of the 2023 Social Justice Small Grants Program is Respect – Confronting Violence and Abuse, based on the Social Justice Statement by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
Domains
- The National Action Plan identifies four domains for action:
- Prevention – working to change the underlying social drivers of violence by addressing the attitudes and systems that drive violence against women and children to stop it before it starts.
- Early intervention – identifying and supporting individuals who are at high risk of experiencing or perpetrating violence and prevent it from reoccurring.
- Response – providing services and supports to address existing violence and support victim-survivors experiencing violence, such as crisis support and police intervention, and a trauma-informed justice system that will hold people who use violence to account.
- Recovery and healing – helping to reduce the risk of re-traumatisation and supporting victim-survivors to be safe and healthy to be able to recover from trauma and the physical, mental, emotional, and economic impacts of violence.
- Projects that address one or more of the four domains will be well regarded.
Funding Information
- Funding under this program ranges between $1,000 to $10,000 per organisation.
Ineligible Projects
Social Justice Small Grants are not available to fund:
- Core (normal) operating costs of applicant organisations
- Vehicles
- For-profit organisations
- Private individuals
- Projects that require recurrent funding
- General fundraising appeals
- Research
- Deficit funding
- Duplication of existing services
- Organisations that have, or have access to, significant government or other funding
- Government entities
- Projects that do not meet the identified goals and priorities of the Mercy Foundation.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applications are invited from Not for Profit organisations in Australia only.
- Priority will be given to projects that address the growing epidemic of family and domestic violence, particularly where it concerns women and girls, and/or groups in the community that experience inequality, discrimination or marginalisation.
- Innovative projects that require seed funding to increase social equity and inclusion and challenge unjust structures and systems will be prioritised.
- The Mercy Foundation prioritises projects that target disadvantaged women and/or women with children, regardless of the annual social justice focus issue.
- Applications are accepted for projects that are run wholly within Australia, by community-based groups or organisations based in Australia.
- Organisations applying for funds must be a legal entity (or auspiced by a legal entity), not-for-profit and therefore exempt from income tax, but are not required to have Deductible Gift Recipient status.
- Small to medium organisations with a turnover of less than $3,000,000 with limited access to other funding sources are prioritised.
For more information, visit Mercy Foundation.
