Gardiner Foundation Community Grants Program

Between 2003 and 2024, FRRR partnered with the Gardiner Foundation to strengthen the sustainability of dairy farming communities in regional Victoria. This resulted in $2.3 million being invested in 574 community organisations, leaving a strong legacy of revitalised community facilities and enduring program outcomes that have boosted wellbeing and social connection across Gippsland, Southern and North Eastern Victoria.

In 2024, the Gardiner Foundation made a strategic commitment to serve the needs of regional Victorian dairying communities with a view to the future and enabling enterprises to sustain community development. In this new chapter, the Gardiner Foundation will be working with new partners to support their initiatives in communities in future.

Learn more.

Further information

To explore other grant options, please go to Find Funding Now.

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This program has now ended.

About the Program

This program has now ended.

If you want to explore other grant options, please go to Find Funding Now.

I have a question, who can I talk to?

Danielle Griffin

Ph: 1800 170 020 or Email: [email protected]

Projects were measured against one or more of the following outcomes:

  • Stronger community resilience
  • Greater community participation and engagement
  • More friendly and inclusive community
  • Build a creative / culturally vibrant community
  • Innovate or respond to local opportunities
  • Give children the best start in life
  • Strengthen the ability to respond to community / individual challenges
  • (Re)build community identity and sense of pride
  • Strengthen the local economy
  • Increase engagement in learning and strengthen educational outcomes
  • Promote environmental health / sustainability

This program was open to not-for-profit community-based organisations from communities in a recognised Victorian dairy region – either Gippsland, South-Western or Northern Victoria. Preference was given to communities with a population of 5,000 or less.

The Gardiner Foundation Community Grants Program made available $120,000 in grant funds for innovative, community-driven projects up to the value of $5,000.

Grants of up to $5,000 were available to not-for-profit organisations in a recognised Victorian dairy region – either Gippsland, South-Western or Northern Victoria – to support projects that focussed on one of the following activity areas:

  1. Building Community Resilience
    (for example, projects that facilitate community connectedness, develop leadership capacity within the community, improve local community infrastructure and meeting places, or support and develop volunteer community groups).
  2. Enhancing Environmental Sustainability
    (for example, projects that increase awareness of local environmental issues, provide opportunities for local residents to care for the local environment, and projects that work to restore, protect and promote the local natural environment).
  3. Fostering Cultural Vibrancy
    (for example, projects that celebrate, preserve and promote local culture and identity, creative projects that foster the arts, and support for local artists and the arts community).
  4. Lifelong Education & Training
    (for example, projects that provide local residents with access to opportunities that enrich their learning and skills development, from cradle to grave).
  5. Economic Strength
    (for example, projects that create local employment and training with an employment outcome, stimulate new spending within a community or region, events that attract visitors and which can demonstrate an economic benefit as a result, and projects that attract new residents to a community or region and improve economic prosperity).
  6. Improving Community Health & Social Wellbeing
    (for example, projects which address physical health, improved nutrition and access to fresh food and sustainable local food systems, projects that enhance mental health, and those which assist vulnerable members in communities to improve their health and wellbeing).

There were several areas that we couldn’t fund through this program.

  • Projects that were not in proximity to a recognised Victorian Dairy Community;
  • Individuals, private or commercial businesses were ineligible;
  • Projects that supported core business and areas of responsibility of Federal, State and Local Governments were ineligible.
  • Ongoing core organisational operational costs (e.g. rent, utilities, regular wages, loan repayments);
  • The encouragement or advancement of sport, recreation and social activities were not considered charitable activities under Australian law. Applications from sporting organisations needed to clearly demonstrate charitable outcomes and benefit to the wider community that are above and beyond the sporting activities of the club;
  • Overseas travel and overseas projects;
  • Prizes, gifts, trophies or awards;
  • Projects that had already occurred or would have occurred before the grant was confirmed;
  • Political lobbying;
  • Projects solely focused on animal welfare could not be considered;
  • Not-for-profit community-based organisations from communities in a recognised Victorian dairy region – either Gippsland, South-Western or Northern Victoria – could apply for funds to support projects and activities that offered clear public benefit (i.e. are for a charitable purpose) and clearly addressed a need in the community in one of the areas listed above.
  • Applicant organisations must have been a not-for-profit organisation with either an Incorporation Certificate and/or an ABN. If you are unsure if your organisation is a registered not-for-profit (for example, if you are a Co-operative, Other Unincorporated Entity, Public Company or Trust), please contact FRRR;
  • Not-for-profit organisations with or without DGR-1 endorsement were eligible.
  • Organisations and/or projects demonstrating community partnerships were preferred to multiple applications from one community (please submit only one application per organisation).
  • Projects had to be undertaken between July 2024 and June 2025, as projects cannot be funded retrospectively.

NOTE: Previous FRRR grant recipients who have not completed final reporting requirements were ineligible.

Who couldn’t apply?

  • Individuals, private or commercial businesses were ineligible;
  • Projects that supported core business and areas of responsibility of Federal, State and Local Governments were ineligible.

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