resourcesmart schools
Funding, Grants & Awards
Learn more about different grants and awards that may support your school’s sustainability aims.
Grants
These grants may support your school’s sustainability aims. When applying for a grant we suggest that you carefully check each grant’s eligibility criteria before starting your application. Also, please note that eligibility for some of these awards may be restricted to not-for-profit or other organisations partnering or supporting your school to deliver a project.
The Community Enterprise Foundation™ administers community grants and scholarship programs on behalf of a wide range of individuals and businesses. Most school grant applications will require the support of a community partner to meet the Foundation’s eligibility criteria.
Application Deadline: Ongoing
The bank works with not-for-profit and community organisations collaboratively, as partners, through its dedicated community development team.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
Bunnings provides a wide range of support to a cross section of local community groups including schools and kindergartens. Bunnings’ preference is to support local community groups by providing hands-on assistance with their projects. Wherever possible, their teams take the opportunity to get out into the community and help with grassroots projects, like assisting with garden makeovers and providing DIY support. They also regularly donate products for community activities including raffles and fundraising events.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
Non-government schools may be able to get Australian Government funding to improve school infrastructure through the Federal Government’s Capital Grants Program.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
CORENA provides interest-free loans to help fund climate projects anywhere in Australia in cases where the up-front capital cost is a barrier. Their knowledgeable team offer independent technical advice to overcome barriers to implementing cost-effective climate projects.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The Damien Greer Lawyers Community Grant program recognises and celebrates organisations that strive to make a positive impact within their local community.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
IGA Community Chest raises funds to support local communities, charities, and worthwhile causes. Because IGA stores are independently owned, each store will choose the local causes that they would like to support. Please find your local IGA and approach them directly.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
Life Ed’s Growing Good Gardens Grant program offer grants of $1000 each to primary schools, preschools, and ELCs for building gardens and learning healthy habits.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
Melbourne Water’s Liveable Communities, Liveable Waterways program is designed to respond to emerging challenges and foster new partnership opportunities on initiatives that create healthy people, healthy places and healthy environments.
Melbourne Water are looking for projects and longer-term partnerships that provide value to Melbourne Water, its customers, partners and community by aligning with at least one of the following themes: 1). connected habitat and catchments, 2). integrated water management (IWM) enablers, 3). science, innovation and technology, and 4). liveable cities.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The Nature Fund provides matched funding (minimum $20,000) for the purpose of driving non-government investment into projects that benefit biodiversity by improving habitat or benefiting threatened and/or culturally significant species. Funding must be matched by equal contribution from non-government funding.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Likely to return in 2024
The PACER program provides travel rebates for students across Australia to visit national institutions as part of their civic and citizenship education.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The Port Phillip Bay Fund program supports community driven projects with a focus on protecting and conserving the Bay’s unique coastal habitats and marine ecosystem. Grants of up to $100,000 are available for innovative, large-scale projects and up to $25,000 for smaller projects.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Returning in 2024
Purves Environmental Fund supports proposals that focus on species loss from habitat destruction, landscape and water management, and climate change and solutions. Submissions must meet the fund’s core objectives, charitable purposes, and current focus areas.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
This grant is offered annually to one school and/or school group/committee. The value of this grant is up to AUD $5,000 (total amount). This amount is paid as a one off payment to the winning school/school group.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now open, entries close 31st Oct
The Wettenhall Environment Trust aims to support grassroots organisations, individuals, and academics who are working with on-ground community groups targeting Australian flora and fauna conservation or threatened mammal conservation in particular. They do not fund school projects, but may support multi-organisation collaborative work.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The objective of the Small Grants Program is to provide funding for small recreational fishing projects which benefit public recreational fishing in Victoria.
Funding is available for education projects that promote responsible and sustainable recreational fishing practice
As a guide, education projects could include the preparation of educational material such as brochures, reports, digital and social media, DVDs, radio programs.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The South East Water Community Grants program funds local projects that make our communities better places to live.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
Bank First has been supporting innovative teaching ideas and programs at the grassroots of education with its Teaching Initiatives Program since 1993.
The funding program regards teaching initiatives as new ideas, programs and methods of teaching that support enhanced student learning outcomes. Ideas must fall under one of the following categories: General Curriculum, Diversity, Sustainability or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The Trust accepts applications from kindergartens and schools (primary and secondary) for projects of building or equipment and innovative programs that will assist students. The Trust gives priority to projects which are designed to enhance the educational and social needs of young people; designed to develop, test and implement creative solutions to persistent, difficult social and environmental needs and problems.
The Trust supports selective projects for assisting in dealing with environmental needs and problems. These needs include rehabilitation of land and monitoring of land at risk.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
Each fully autonomous chapter of the Foundation supports awesome projects through micro-grants, usually given out monthly.
The Funders love innovative, exciting and unusual ideas that other foundations won’t support.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing – awarded monthly
The Catalyst Fund makes grants between $2,500- $15,000 to anyone, anywhere in the world who has an idea or early-stage project that has a high potential for large-scale impact and sustainable change. The funders are looking for a well-thought-out plan with clear goals, specific metrics, and measurable impact.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The Reece Foundation works with volunteer tradies and its project partners to fund and initiate projects locally and abroad to provide clean water and sanitation where it is needed to create long-lasting change.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing – awarded quarterly
The Ross Trust Smart Grant provides funding for strategies which focus heavily on educational equity and biodiversity conservation and working in ways which are most likely to achieve positive differences in both areas. The Trust’s Smart Grants program offers funding of up to $40,000 per year for up to three years.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
Grants of up to $1,000 each inspire children from across the country to get hands-on with the natural environment through projects that focus on sustainable food production, improving waste management practices and recycling, enhancing native habitats and deepening connections to First Nations perspectives.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing – awarded annually
Junior Landcare grants help bring sustainability into classrooms across Australia to teach children how to care for their local environment. The Junior Landcare grants program offers both funding and in-kind support for schools, early childhood centres, before and after school centres and youth groups.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
The VSGP Grants program is designed to provide seed funding to schools to establish new gardens or repair existing gardens in their schools. There are a variety of grant categories to enter with nursery vouchers and garden product prizes for schools to receive, and the grants are open to all state government, Catholic and independent schools across Victoria.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
Raise money for your school with Victoria’s new Container Deposit Scheme!
This program is great for the planet, but it’s also a wonderful fundraising opportunity for your school! By working together with staff, students, and your local community to collect and recycle eligible containers, you can convert cans to cash and use the proceeds to fund sustainability initiatives at school.
You can earn 10c per container while helping with the State Government’s goal of reducing the amount of recyclable items going to landfill by 80%. Win win!
Awards
Applying for awards for your sustainability work is a great way to build your allies and partners, celebrate your successes and drive student engagement and ownership of projects at your school.
Australian Wildlife Society provides two annual awards of $500 each to one young individual and one small group contributing to Australian wildlife conservation. A trophy and certificate will accompany the award.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing
The ResourceSmart Schools Awards acknowledge and honour ResourceSmart Schools that are achieving great things. This years theme is “Legendary Legacies – What will you leave behind?”. The awards celebrate our young people and schools leading the way on sustainability, creating real impact for Victorian communities beyond the school gate. There are twelve award categories, including the ResourceSmart School of the Year.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
The VSGP Awards recognise and celebrate the gardening achievements of students and their school communities in existing and newly established gardens. You don’t have to be big or beautiful to enter. The awards are all about recognising schools that use their outdoor spaces to promote the engagement of students in practical activities which foster learning, wellbeing, and community pride.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
The purpose of the 7NEWS Young Achiever Awards is to acknowledge, encourage and most importantly promote the positive achievements of all young people throughout Victoria, 30 years of age and under as of the 31st December each year.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
Competitions
Applying for awards for your sustainability work is a great way to build your allies and partners, celebrate your successes and drive student engagement and ownership of projects at your school.
Sponsored by the University of Sydney, the Sleek Geeks Science Eureka Prize encourages students to communicate a scientific concept in a way that is accessible and entertaining to the public while painlessly increasing their science knowledge or, as prize patrons Dr Karl and Adam Spencer like to say, “Learn something without even noticing”. It is intended to support budding young scientists across the nation, who will be our future leaders in research, discovery and communication.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: 2024 round now closed
MobileMuster’s annual competition seeks to educate students about the lifecycle of mobile phones and encourage them to use creative ways to motivate their local community to recycle old mobile phones. This year’s theme is “What’s in a phone?”. Students can create an artwork or short film that shows what materials are in a phone, and what they can become when they’re recycled! MobileMuster also encourages entrants to recycle a phone (or a few phones!) with their entry.
Enter Now | Application Deadline: Entries close 1st November
The Westpac Youth Impact Challenge is a nationwide initiative open to all young people around Australia aged 7 to 21 years. The Challenge aims to help young Australians solve problems in their local or global communities.
Apply Now | Application Deadline: Ongoing