We are here to support principles and purpose-aligned organisations that partner and collaborate with the community in South Australia. Our goal is to make our grant processes and programs accessible and beneficial to the full diversity of the community. Previous and current partners have included organisations that are representative of First Nations, LGBTQIA+, Lived Experience, Ageing, and Multicultural communities, in both metropolitan and regional areas.

We welcome applications from grassroots and community-led groups, as well as new organisations, and organisations working in equitable partnership with the community. 

When considering potential partners, we prioritise organisations with shared intentions and aligned ways of working. We value organisations that actively partner with or are representative of the community, adopt open and iterative approaches, and contribute to the growth of sector knowledge through collaboration for positive change. Our aim is to establish true partnerships of support that provide more than just funding.

While the core business of your organisation or group does not need to be focused solely on mental health and wellbeing, we do require that the primary objective, outcome, or aim of the work contributes to improving the preventative mental health and wellbeing of members of the South Australian community. 

Our funding areas and opportunities are responsive to shifts in community priorities and funding gaps and will evolve over time in alignment with our purpose and vision. Our current initiatives and broader strategy have been informed by active learning and listening with our community, sector, and partners and research into the Health Needs and Priorities of South Australians.

As we are committed to ensuring that our funding is accessible and that we are supporting a broad range of community groups and approaches, we don’t fund ongoing program implementation or service delivery. Our funding opportunities are designed to support:

• Proposals that are inspired, informed, or identified by community voice and experience, that will strengthen the diversity of community based and contextual approaches to support preventative mental wellbeing.

• Exploration and development of opportunities, with a focus on process and ways of working over outcomes or deliverables.

• The conditions to learn from and with people to prototype an idea through testing and trialling, in ways that wouldn’t be supported by traditional funding that requires these stages to be completed and outcomes to be predetermined.

• The building of evidence, capability, networks, and support.

To create the conditions for what we hope to fund, we work to ensure our funding practices and opportunities are:

• Embracing the ability for philanthropic funding to be responsive, flexible, and open to learning through both success and failure.

• Investing in creating and capturing learnings and knowledge to be made widely accessible and translatable.

• Contributing to capability development within the sector and the broader community. We hope to empower individuals and organisations to be actively engaged in this work and contribute to the co-creation of new approaches.

Our different types of grants will have different eligibility requirements that will always be made accessible prior to the grant round opening. However, some general eligibility parameters are included below:

For charitable purposes
We invite any type of organisation to apply where their work is for charitable purposes and for the benefit of community.

South Australia Focussed
The Foundation was established with a remit of improving the health and wellbeing of the South Australian community. With the prevalence of large philanthropic foundations in the Eastern States and only a small percentage of national philanthropic funding being directed to South Australia, we continue to see a value in retaining this focus. 

This does not mean that your organisation cannot be based interstate or nationally, rather we assess this based on whether or not the primary community group that will be engaged and benefit from your proposed idea is South Australian. We are always supportive of ideas, knowledge and evidence created through your work in South Australia being shared broadly.