Funding Principles

The Foundation has a number of areas of interest and within these areas we look to support causes/organisations and projects that possess the following principals and/or criteria:

Innovation and Pro-activity
We seek to support programmes that respond to an identified area of need in the community that are presently not being addressed or that take a new approach to problems.  Ideally such programmes, if successful, should be able to be replicated in other locations or contexts.

Change not Charity
A focus on prevention is one of our main criteria.  We endeavour to fund projects that address the causes of problems, rather than treat the symptoms.

Longevity and Sustainability
We support projects and programmes that will continue to have an impact over the long-term and beyond our period of support.  We also encourage programmes that are able to become financially self sustaining.

Project based and goal orientated
The programmes that we choose to fund must have strong and identifiable outcomes and key performance indicators for both short and long term.

Partnerships
To maximise the impact of our grants, we look towards organisations that are able to combine our funding with other sources.  The ability to leverage financial support from other trusts, foundations, government, business and volunteers is seen as an important criterion.

Administration
We look to make grants to organisations that have low administration costs and that have a solid and proven administrative backing.  Organisations with a strong volunteer programme are highly regarded.

Low government or institutional support
Our preference is to assist organisations that receive little or no government funding and that are not currently the benefactor of substantial philanthropic support.

Bennelong Foundation involvement
We try to support organisations that have the capabilities to allow our staff to become involved in their organisation/projects, should they choose.

Exclusions