A local approach to employment projects

The 10 Regional Development Australia regions eligible are:

New South Wales

• Northern Inland
• Far South Coast

Victoria

• Western Melbourne and North Western Melbourne Employment Regions
• Gippsland

Queensland

• Townsville Employment Region
• Wide Bay Burnett

South Australia

• Murraylands and Riverland
• Yorke and Mid North

Western Australia

• Peel

Tasmania

• North and North Western Tasmania Employment Region

The eligible regions are also available in key documents:

• appendix D of the grant opportunity guidelines 
• Regional Development Australia Regions and Contacts

You are not eligible to apply if you are:

• a Commonwealth, State or Territory government body (including government business enterprises) unless acting as the legal entity for an unincorporated RDA committee
• a trust (however an incorporated trustee can apply on behalf of a trust)

Before you apply, you must submit information about your project to your local RDA committee using the RDA project proposal template under Key documents.

We strongly encourage you to contact your local employment facilitator to discuss your proposed project with them. Your employment facilitator will help guide you through the RDA assessment process to ensure your project aligns with local employment priorities.

The RDA committee will score your proposal out of 30, taking into account how the project aligns with local employment priorities. The RDA committee will provide you with written feedback using the template on the final page of RDA project proposal. You must attached this document to your full grant application.

We'll only accept the following documents with your application:

• evidence from your board (or chief executive officer or equivalent if there is no board) that the project is supported, and that you can complete the project and meet the costs of the project not covered by grant funding
• your RDA committee project proposal assessment
• letter of support from project partner organisations
• trust deed (if applicable)

You don't need to provide the RDA committee assessment if you are an RDA committee or if an RDA committee is a project partner.

When you attached supporting documentation, make sure you only provide requested documents. We will not consider information in documents that we haven't requested.

We assess your application against the eligibility criteria. Only eligible applications will proceed to the merit assessment stage. During the merit assessment, we also take the RDA assessment into consideration.

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.

Individual state managers within the Department of Education, Skills and Employment decides which grants to approve in their state. They take into account the application assessment and the availability of grant funds.

To be competitive, you must score at least 50% against each merit criterion:

• Merit criterion 1: The extent to which the project will deliver employment outcomes in your region (30 points).
• Merit criterion 2: The impact of grant funding on your project (20 points).
• Merit criterion 3: Capacity, capability and resources to deliver the project (20 points).

If your project has an RDA committee project proposal assessment, the first merit criterion is worth 60 points.

If your application is successful, we'll email you and include any specific conditions attached to the grant offer.

Successful applicants must enter into a grant agreement with the Commonwealth. The grant agreement will specify the reporting requirements, payment schedule and milestones necessary to receive payments.

We'll make payments by direct credit into your nominated bank account.

If you are unsuccessful, we'll email you and give you an opportunity to discuss the outcome with us.