News

The value of exploring

Through historical experience from the VFFF Grants Committee and more recently the Decent Work Exploration Grants, VFFF has witnessed the value of the type of funding that would be enabled through the establishment of an Exploration Grants initiative.

VFFF has seen how an exploration grant when timed well, can make a significant contribution to generating future impact by providing aligned organisations with the necessary time, dialogue and resourcing (potentially external) to explore and progress their thinking on specific opportunities or challenges.

Since 2012, the Grants Committee has brought younger Fairfax family members together to participate in grant making. Historically the Grants Committee was responsible for assessing and making decisions on one-off grants of up to $50,000, including funding for organisations to progress ideas that respond to challenges or opportunities they are facing. In recent times, the focus of the Grants Committee has shifted to the innovative Backing the Future program. With the shift in focus of the Grants Committee, VFFF wanted to ensure there was a mechanism to support organisations in exploring this type of work.

This motivation, along with the successful implementation of VFFF’s Decent Work Exploration Grants in 2022 has led to the Board expanding this type of support to organisations across all four focus areas.

Exploration Grants are one-off grants of between $25,000 and $75,000 to enable aligned organisations to undertake a discrete piece of work that has the potential to significantly contribute to their impact by progressing thinking on an opportunity or challenge they face.  Exploration Grants are available by invitation only, with the VFFF team proactively initiating discussions with strategically aligned organisations.

VFFF is delighted to have awarded Exploration Grants to the following organisations:

Australian Land Conservation Alliance
$75,000 to support the work of the peak national body representing organisations that work to conserve, manage and restore nature on privately managed land, in developing the learning and development component of the soon to be launched sector wide early careers platform.

Greening Australia
$60,000 to support work with three First Nations organisations to co-design a new seed collector training program that will build knowledge, skills, networks and employment pathways of First Nations young people.

The Shepherd Centre
$75,000 to support a co-design project in NSW enabling deaf and hearing-impaired young people to shape program design and delivery.

Youth Enterprise Trust (YET)

$75,000 to engage Sefa Partnerships to refine YET's social enterprise business model.