• How to Qualify
• How to Apply
• Grant Agreement

How to Qualify

Before your application can be considered by our Foundation your organisation must fulfil a number of eligibility requirements, meet our project funding criteria and understand its obligations should you be successful in receiving project funding.

Once your application is assessed as fulfilling these qualification steps the Foundation’s Board will consider your application within a funding round.

Eligibility

1. Australian Taxation Office Endorsements

The Harold Mitchell Foundation is bound by Australian taxation laws and its Trust Deed in terms of to whom grant funding can be legally provided.

Organisations seeking consideration of funding must be endorsed as both:

1. a Tax Concession Charity or TCC (formerly ITEC – Income Tax Exempt Charity); and

2. a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) to be eligible for consideration.

Organisations can determine their Australian Taxation Office (ATO) status by going to the Australian Government’s site www.abr.business.gov.au and entering their ABN or organisation name. Please note that some organisations are specifically named in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1977 as being a DGR.

If you confirm that you are endorsed as a DGR you will need to sight the actual physical copy of your ATO endorsement to clarify whether your provision for gift deductibility is item 1 or item 2 of the table in section 30-15 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. If you are endorsed under item 1 you are eligible to apply. If endorsed under item 2 you will be an organisation categorised as an ancillary fund and therefore in-eligible as your fund is not legally able to receive grants.

If your organisation has DGR status only in respect of a specific fund, authority or institution any application to the Foundation must relate specifically to a project or activity for which DGR status has been granted by the ATO.

2. Exclusions

A number of exclusions apply to the types of applications that can be received by the Foundation.

Applications can not be accepted from any of the following organisations or for any of the following categories:

• For-Profit bodies and commercial/business entities
• Political Parties
• Private Schools
• Sports clubs
• Organisations outside Australia
• Requests for retrospective funding
• Requests for capital works (although projects for capital fit-out requirements can be considered)
• Fundraising, public appeals or loans
• Contributions to the corpuses of other foundation trusts or not-for-profit organisations.

The Foundation can only accept applications from individuals where they have a confirmed auspice or funding partner. The auspice must have the appropriate ATO endorsements as described previously (TCC and DGR) and your project will need to be equivalent or similar to their field of activity or business.

Project Funding Criteria

Your project or activity must pertain to the field of either the arts or health or a blend of both of these areas of interest. Please note, applications that combine both arts and health are not necessarily ranked higher than applications that are confined to one of the disciplines. Your project must also fulfil one or more of the following criteria to be deemed eligible for consideration of funding.

• create DISCOVERY in the arts and or health fields to break new ground and set up opportunities for the future.

• increases the CAPACITY of communities to foster their arts and health activities and/or the CAPACITY of talented individuals working in the arts and health to advance their knowledge and skills.

• initiates the ESTABLISHMENT of arts or health activities with real potential to take off and be ongoing.

Obligations

Should the Foundation’s Board have an interest in your project they may seek further information from you such as a detailed project budget, a statement of your organisation’s financial position and references. If you go on to being successful in receiving grant funding you or your funding auspice or partner will be required to:

• Provide hard copies of your ATO endorsements for TCC and DGR status;
• Sign a grant agreement which outlines the terms and conditions of the funding arrangement;
• Provide a letter or email, from your funding auspice, that formally confirms their agreement to administer the grant funding; and 
• Please also note that if you make an application and you are not the head of your organisation, we trust that you will have the full support from your organisation to make the application and to also proceed with your project should funding be granted.