The RAD Grants offer financial support for projects that will help Care Leavers and relevant Support Services find and access records created by non-government past providers of “care” from 1920 to 1989.
Each project can apply for funding up to $15 000.
Organisations can submit multiple applications, providing each application is for a discrete project.
Applications to be lodged online at www.RADGrants.smartygrants.com.au.
Australian not-for profit organisations that hold or have created records relating to children in ‘care’ during the period 1920-1989 are eligible to apply. These include, but are not limited to:
Your project may be eligible even if your organisation is not, as long as you partner with an eligible organisation – see the FAQs for more information
Funded activities can include:
Late applications will not be considered. Applications must be received through the SmartyGrants submission system by 9am AEST, Monday 22 October 2018.
All organisations will be notified of the outcome of their application. Successful applicants will be required to sign an Agreement setting out the responsibilities and obligations of the funds; and to provide an invoice for payment.
Organisations may apply for any amount to fund their projects up to the maximum $15 000. Ask for what is needed to complete the project successfully. Your application is more likely to succeed if your budget is realistic. Priority will be given to those who have costed their project appropriately and realistically, and not necessarily the lowest-cost project.
Include quotes and estimates to support your budget where possible.
Include staff and volunteer costs for: project management; cataloguing or indexing records; and any other project activities identified on your application. NOTE THAT IN-HOUSE DIGITISATION WILL NOT BE FUNDED.
Staff assistance should be calculated according to the intended time commitment and actual salary of the staff member. Include staff costs as a budget item (either grant funded or in-kind support) at the relevant salary or hourly rate.
Volunteer assistance should be included as an in-kind contribution calculated at $30.00 per hour.
For work that is to be completed by contractors or other suppliers outside your organisation, you will need to include a written estimate or quotation based on your project requirements.
The time required for a person with basic records/archives experience to catalogue archival material can be estimated at a rate of 3-4 record boxes per day. Additional time allowance should be made if the records need any additional work to ensure they are better protected such as unfolding paper documents or moving to better quality (acid-free) folders.
Indexing may be far more time consuming than originally estimated. To budget for indexing, please estimate the number of staff hours that will be employed to develop the index, and cost as you have for staff costs (above).
For typed material that is well set out and easy to read, a rough estimate is that 50-70 index entries can be completed per hour (around one index entry per minute).
If the document is handwritten or is difficult to follow, the time will increase dramatically, particularly if the writing is difficult to read and needs some deciphering. In some cases, it may take 5-7 minutes per index entry, which will reduce the number of entries completed per hour to 10-12. Your budget will need to be adjusted accordingly.
If your organisation will be contributing to the project, include those contributions as in-kind support.
In-kind and other funding sources for your project might include: purchased items, volunteer assistance, donations, other grants, and any in-house staff costs relating to the project which are not intended to be funded from the RAD grant.
If your project costs are more than the $15 000 available under RAD grant allocations, you must clearly show other sources of funding or financial support that demonstrate how you will meet the full cost of the project.
The assessment process will first determine that organisations are eligible for funding. Applications will then be assessed by a panel of experts comprising representatives from Find and Connect, Care Leavers, and people with archival expertise.
Applicants must meet the following criteria to be eligible for funding. All criteria are equally weighted. Applications must demonstrate that the project:
The assessment criteria are mandatory and equally weighted.
The decision of the assessment panel is final. For feedback regarding the decision of the assessment panel, or the application process, please contact rad-grants@unimelb.edu.au.
Grant recipients will be required to attend a workshop which may involve interstate travel. In the case that travel is required, funding will be provided for one person from each successful organisation to attend the workshop. The workshop will be held in 2019, at a time and place to be confirmed.
YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ATTEND THE WORKSHOP PRIOR TO STARTING YOUR PROJECT. It is anticipated your project will be underway by the time the workshop is held.
The workshop will be an opportunity to increase your knowledge and skill-base on supported records access, network with other organisations from around Australia working in the field, and to report on your project to date. Find & Connect staff will be available to assist with any difficulties you may encounter in completing your projects.
At the conclusion of the project, successful applicants must provide the following information for publication on Find & Connect:
Note: Not all of the information documented in your project can or should be public. The Find and Connect website publishes information about what type of records an organisation holds, not the records themselves.
To acquit the grant, your organisation will need to provide an evaluation of the project as well as a financial acquittal. Both are completed on SmartyGrants.
The evaluation allows you to respond to how you performed the activities & and achieved the outcomes you planned in the application, how successful you were, and how your project benefits Care Leavers.
For the financial acquittal, you need to report on your budget line-by-line.
We will need proof of expenditure of the $15 000 grant money to ascertain that it was spent how it was approved to be spent (ie matches the budget in the application); and also to know that any in-kind support detailed in the application was provided as that may have been a factor in deciding which applicants were successful.
For external services, such as digitising, please provide receipts. You don’t need to provide evidence (ie receipts) of in-kind support.
If you have included staffing in your budget, you will need to clarify how the grant funding was spent (ie, how many staff/contractors, the total hours worked they worked, and at what level & rate). As you will sign off on that information being true & correct, you don’t need to provide any other proof of expenditure.
You only need to acquit the actual grant amount (up to $15 000).
CONTACT US : rad-grants@unimelb.edu.au