Funding to improve community capabilities in drought affected areas

Your project must:

• be taking place in a drought-affected location in Australia, as outlined under 2.1.2 of the grant opportunity guidelines
• be seeking a grant of at least $20,000, and up to a maximum of $10 million
• be aimed at the construction, upgrade or extension of infrastructure that provides economic and social benefits to regional and remote areas
• comprise one of the following activitie
  • the construction of new infrastructure
  • the upgrade to existing infrastructure
  • the extension of existing infrastructure
  • the replacement of infrastructure where there is a significant increase in benefit
• be considered an investment ready project (refer to Section 2.1.1 of the grant opportunity guidelines)
• not have started construction
• be completed by 31 December 2022

You are not eligible if you are:

• a for-profit organisation
• an individual, partnership or trust (however, an incorporated trustee may apply on behalf of a non-for-profit trust organisation)
• a Commonwealth, state or territory government agency or body (including government business enterprises) with the exception of those organisations referred to in section 4.1 of the grant opportunity guidelines
• a university, technical college, school or hospital
• a Regional Development Australia committee

Infrastructure activities as defined in Appendix C of the grant opportunity guidelines are not eligible for the Community Investments Stream. If your project involves infrastructure activities you should apply under the Infrastructure Projects Stream.

Your project must be in an eligible area. You will need to show this in your application by providing the latitude and longitude of your project location.

Our mapping tool will help you determine your project location and its eligibility.

Use the Building Better Regions Fund map tool.

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

• Assessment criterion 1: Economic benefits of your project for the region (15 points).
• Assessment criterion 2: Social benefits of your project for the region (15 points).
• Assessment criterion 3: Capacity, capability and resources to deliver the project (5 points).
• Assessment criterion 4: Impact of funding on your project (5 points).

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 displays character limits.

We provide recommendations to the Ministerial Panel on which projects to fund. The Ministerial Panel will make the final decision. 

If your application is successful, you'll receive a written offer. If you are unsuccessful, we will notify you in writing and give you the chance to discuss the outcome with us.

Successful applicants must enter into a grant agreement with the Commonwealth. You must do this within 60 days from the date of the written offer.

The grant agreement will specify:

• the reporting requirements
• payment schedule
• milestones necessary to receive payments

We may make an initial payment when the grant agreement is executed. We'll then make payments after we have received and accepted the required report. We set aside a minimum of 10% of the total grant funding for the final payment. We will pay this when you submit a satisfactory final report.

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