Spark Grants are designed to support individuals and organisations to work together with community in ways that centre community's needs, experiences, approaches and values. Focussing on preventative mental health, Spark Grants enable communities to sit in a space of possibility when exploring ideas around what might support the conditions for their wellbeing. The opportunity is different to many others available, as it seeks to encourage an open, iterative way of working rather than one that is focussed on outputs and the delivery of services. This approach to funding aims to provide time and space for deep listening, learning, testing and developing to occur in and with community.
To support these intentions, we aim to make the Spark application process straightforward and accessible for all who wish to apply and we welcome questions and conversations in the lead up to submission. This Spark round, we received proposals from 63 individuals or organisations and had conversations with a number of these applicants, as well as more than 10 others who chose not to apply. It is worth noting that two eligibility requirements changed this round, and the impact this has had on the diversity of applicants and proposals.
The Foundation no longer has a tax deductible status requirement, and any type of organisation was eligible to apply where they could demonstrate their process and outcomes would be charitable in nature and to the sole benefit of community.
Research-driven organisations could only apply where they were a supporting partner to an established community group or organisation.
The applications that we received represented a wide range of ideas around what might support the mental health of different communities in South Australia. The applications were also diverse in their scale, scope, stage of their ‘idea’ and level of community engagement and activation. In particular, we noticed that many of this year’s proposals were around larger community activation and development projects. We have shared more about the themes and insights represented across the applications and reflected on these noticings within our process learnings below.
Themes and trends
Some of the trends and themes that stood out from the applications we received this Spark round were:
Systemic issues, such as racism and discrimination, that are impacting the conditions for community wellbeing for specific groups, were the driving force behind many of the proposals we received this round.
There was a strong focus on advocating for systems change and building community connection and responses to improve mental health outcomes.
The impact of climate change and natural disasters on community mental health was the impetus behind a number of proposals seeking to drive community-led responses to environmental upheaval.
For those applicants engaged in service delivery, there was a strong focus on improving service offerings by engaging deeply with the people that receive their support to ensure services are informed by lived experience.
Organisational Sector
The various sectors from which we received Spark applications demonstrated the intersectionality of mental health, and the variety of social determinants that impact wellbeing. While the below broadly captures the sectors represented by applicants, it does not show the full range of sectors from which applications were received, as many sat across more than one sector or focus area. For example, advocacy and education formed a significant component of many of the applicants’ work, while a focus on arts and the environment also intersected with a number of the organisational sectors represented below.
Community Groups
We asked applicants to describe their communities in their own words and have synthesised their responses below. While this data cannot capture the nuance that came through in every application, we hope that it provides an insight into some of the experiences and identities of the communities represented. Given the intersectionality of communities, there were many identities and experiences that the data could not capture. Some of these were refugees and migrants, advocacy groups, men’s groups and parents and carers.
Location
The below data gives a broad indication of the different areas and scales across which this year’s Spark applicants proposed to work. What this data does not capture is that, while almost a quarter of applicants proposed to operate at a State level, there was also a strong focus on local initiatives where a large number of those working at the regional or metropolitan level were engaged in small-scale, place-based projects.
Type of Proposal
There are many different ways to support and build the conditions for wellbeing, and our Spark Grant applications represented a variety of ideas and approaches. The graph represents a synthesis of these approaches based on how applicants described their proposals. Ideas ranged from community wanting to spend time identifying their own solutions by activating and coming together, or engaging in specific activities to support their own wellbeing, to developing services, networks and resources, or engaging in advocacy around a given focus area. The proposals represented by the ‘other’ category were generally specific applications that fell outside of the intentions of Spark Grants and were looking for funding to either run, expand or design a specific program or response associated with wellbeing.
Process learnings and observations
After each grant round, we reflect as a team on our process to surface any observations or learnings that can be integrated into our practice moving forwards. This year we identified the following insights:
With a growing collective of past and present Spark partners, there is the potential to explore opportunities for mutual learning between partners to support processes and approaches to unfolding ideas.
The Foundation has developed deep relationships and a reputation for supporting specific community development approaches and there is a growing need to identify additional funding pathways to support these approaches.
Spark grants represent a considerable sized grant and explorative untied funding in comparison to many other opportunities currently available. This may have influenced many of this year’s applicants whose proposals were much larger in scope than the funding and time available would allow, especially in tackling systemic challenges.
There was a stronger representation of values-aligned organisations and groups than our previous rounds, particularly in regards to working openly, and valuing community-determined responses. This made the decision incredibly challenging, and the differentiation was predominantly driven by proposals that were looking to surface new learnings into prevention that would otherwise not be supported, and that were strongly aligned to the intentions of this grant program.
These observations and learnings will be contributing to our ongoing discussions this year about the evolution of our strategy, and what this might mean for the type and structure of the funding opportunities we have available.
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