2026-2027 Community Grants Program - Community Project And Signature Community Event Grants - Summary

Brian Stockwell162:14

So welcome back. We're about to start item 7.2 which is the 2026-2027 community grants project, community project and signature community event grant summary and we have with us Director Kerri and also community connections manager Alison. I presume Alison you're going to give us the summary.

Thank you very much Councillors. So first report today. The purpose of today's report is to provide a summary of the 26-27 community grants and three year signature community event grants. And to seek council's endorsement of the proposed funding allocation across the four categories. And those categories being projects, equipment, facility development and events. The grant program as you are aware is a really key driver to our situation. Strategic goals for Council and supporting our community organisations and our most valuable volunteers in the community as well. The demand continues to exceed. So the demand that we get for our grants continues to exceed what we have in our budget and we've had over 626. Six hundred and twenty six thousand dollars worth of requests coming through from 42 community organisations for our community project grants. This really highlights what the reason why we need to do a very robust and transparent assessment process as well grants. For this particular round we're recommending 22 projects for funding to the value of $258,466.82 with a total project value of $862,000. So what I'd like to let you know is every dollar that we provide to our community project grants and subject to endorsement we're actually getting $3.33 in return so it's a great investment. So again for our three out-of-round signature grants recommended funding for $27,000 we're leveraging a total project value of over $95,000. So if we put that into a dollar investment it is every dollar we put in we're getting $3.55 in return. So again a great investment. So the outcome being sought in this particular report is council's agreement to endorse the recommended distribution of grant funding and the allocation of remaining funds to community respond to needs through the quick response grants throughout the year subject to sufficient funds being allocated in council's adopted budget in 26-27 community grants program. Thank you very much.