2015-01-12 General Committee Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                                  12 January 2015


16                        COMMUNITY GRANTS REVIEW
DOCUMENT IN FOR MATI ON




Author                               Community Development Coordinator, Alison Hamblin
                                     Community Services Department

Index                                ECM / Subject / Branch Management Community Services Section

Attachments                          1.    Community Grants Policy
                                     2.    Community Grants framework and criteria


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Not applicable

RECOMMENDATION
That Council note the report by the Community Development Coordinator to the General
Committee Meeting dated 12th January 2015 and:
A.                        Repeal the existing Community Grants Policy and adopt the revised Community Grants
                          Policy (Attachment 1);
B.                        Repeal the exising Communtiy Grants Framework and Criteria and adopt the revised
                          Community Grants Framework and Criteria (Attachment 2); and
C.                        Delegate to the Chief Executive Officer the development of a Festive Season Strategy.


REPORT
In April 2014 the new Noosa Council adopted a Noosa Community Grants Policy. Since then
there have been two rounds of the Noosa Community Grants program. Following the second
round of these grants Cr Wellington and Council officers undertook an internal review of the
Community Grants program to ensure that it was meeting its stated objectives and to identify
areas for improvement.

Overall the review found that the grants program has been well received by community groups
and is acting as a strategic investment tool to build community infrastructure and social capital
and enhance community skills, resilience as well as helping meet Council’s vision and priorities.

The strategy of Council officers encouraging and assisting community organisations to identify
external funding where available, rather than having these groups simply rely on Council funding
was also deemed to be successful. Furthermore there were a number of instances where Council
financial assistance had been used to leverage funding from other sources.

The review highlighted a number of areas for improvement including:
•    Greater transparency;
•    The potential to improve equity by capping the maximum amount of funding to particular
     grant programs;
•    Clearer definitions of eligibility;
•    The small number of economic development application;
•    The potential to improve the application form to better reflect the type of information that
     Council was seeking from applicants; and
•    Potential administrative efficiencies through multi year funding agreements.




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