Funding for bushfire recovery and resilience projects in 2019–20 bushfire affected areas

You are not eligible to apply if you are:

• an individual
• a partnership
• a trust (however, an incorporated trustee may apply on behalf of a trust)
• a Commonwealth or State government agency or body (including government business enterprises) except entities referred to in Section 5.1 of the grant opportunity guidelines
• a Regional Development Australia Committee
• an organisation, or your project partner is an organisation, included on the National Redress Scheme’s website on the list of ‘Institutions that have not joined or signified their intent to join the Scheme’
• an organisation named by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency as not complying with Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012.

We assess your application against the eligibility criteria and then against the assessment criteria. Only eligible applications will proceed to the assessment stage.

The amount of detail and supporting evidence you provide in your application should be relative to the project size, complexity and grant amount requested. You should define, quantify and provide evidence to support your answers. The sample application form has character limits.

The Minister for Emergency Management decides which grants to approve, taking into account the recommendations of the Committee, the availability of grant funds and geographic spread of projects.

To be competitive you must score highly against all of the assessment criteria.

Assessment criterion 1: How your project will assist in community recovery from the 2019–20 bushfires (50 points)

Assessment criterion 2: Capacity, capability and resources to deliver the project (50 points)

We will only consider funding applications that score at least 50% against each assessment criterion, as these represent best value for money.

When assessing if the application represents value with relevant money, we will regard the:

• overall objectives of the grant opportunity
• evidence provided to demonstrate how your project contributes to meeting those objectives
• relative value of the grant sought.

If your application is successful, you’ll receive a written offer. We will advise you of any specific conditions attached to the offer of grant funding. 

If you are unsuccessful, we’ll notify you in writing and give you the opportunity to discuss the outcome with us.

You must submit reports in line with the grant agreement.

We will make payments according to an agreed schedule set out in the grant agreement. Payments are subject to satisfactory progress on the project.

For grants over $50,000, we set aside 10% of the total grant funding for the final payment. We will pay this when you submit a satisfactory end of project report showing you’ve completed outstanding obligations for the project.

Payments will be made by direct credit into a nominated bank account.