What we learned from Round 2: insights for future applicants.

Round 2 closed with 42 applications seeking $318,333. We awarded $50,612 across 13 grants. That means roughly one application in three was successful, and around 16 cents in every dollar requested was funded.

We'd rather be open about how those decisions get made than leave applicants guessing. Here's what the data from this round shows, and what it means if you're thinking about Round 3.

Eligibility, not quality, stops the most applications.

Ten of the 42 applications never reached the assessment committee. They were screened out earlier, most commonly on remoteness.

Our grants are for communities classified MM6 and MM7, remote and very remote, under the Modified Monash Model. Two individual applicants this round were classified Outer Regional, which sits outside our scope no matter how strong the application. Several organisational applications described work in regional centres rather than remote communities.

Before you write anything, check your location, or your project's location, against the Modified Monash Model. If you're not sure, contact us. A five-minute conversation is better than a wasted application.

Almost everyone asks for the maximum. The most successful grants didn't.

Sixteen of the 32 assessed applications requested exactly $10,000, our maximum. The median request was $9,992.

Yet the five applications funded in full were all for smaller, precisely costed amounts: $10,000, $2,711, $2,500, $1,500 and $1,231. Our smallest grant this round was $450.

We don't reward small asks for their own sake. But a request built from an actual budget, flights at this price, a course fee at that price, this many participants, is far easier to fund than a request rounded up to the cap. If your project genuinely costs $10,000, tell us how. If it costs $1,231, ask for $1,231.

Partial funding is normal. Plan for it.

Eight of our 13 grants were for less than the amount requested. A $10,000 request became $5,000; an $8,000 request became $2,520.

The applications that made this easy were the ones that showed a broader budget with other contributions in it, or made clear which component our funding would cover. If a partial grant would still let your project proceed, in a reduced form, for fewer participants, in one location instead of three, say so in your application. If it wouldn't, say that too.

Specificity scored. Breadth didn't.

Assessment scores this round ranged from 35 to 81. The pattern at each end was consistent.

The highest-scoring applications named a defined group of people, in a named place, doing a specific thing, at a costed price: eleven students, one camp, these dates, this outcome.

The lowest-scoring applications proposed broad, multi-site programs with general benefits and outcomes described in language that could have applied to any community in Australia.

Tell us about the eleven students. We can extrapolate the significance ourselves.

Proximity to community shows in an application.

The strongest applications this round came overwhelmingly from remote-based schools, parent associations, and community-controlled organisations, groups writing about their own community.

This isn't a rule, and we do fund organisations based elsewhere that deliver into remote communities. But if that's you, your application needs to show the local relationship: who invited you, who is delivering alongside you on the ground, and what happens after you leave. Applications that couldn't answer those questions scored in the bottom third.

Tell us how you'll know it worked

The best measurement sections in this round contained numbers: 90% of eligible students participating, 80% of participants reporting improved confidence, a Statement of Attainment obtained, a count of jobs delivered locally in the following twelve months.

The weakest simply restated the project's aims as its outcomes. We're not asking for an evaluation framework, we're a small trust and we know you're busy. We're asking what you would look at, twelve months from now, to tell whether it worked.

Score isn't everything

One point of honesty: the assessment score is a guide, not a formula. The highest-scoring application we did not fund scored 64.5. The lowest-scoring application we did fund scored 57.5.

The committee weighs remoteness, the depth of need, and whether a project reaches people that other funding simply does not. A very good project in a well-served location will sometimes lose to a solid project in a place where we are the only realistic source of support.

Round 3 opens 1 September

If your Round 2 application was unsuccessful, you're welcome to apply again and if you'd like feedback on why it didn't get up, ask us. We'll tell you.

And if this is your first time: contact us before you apply. We'd much rather help you get an application right than see good work miss out on a technicality.