Financial Literacy Australia Grants
Help Guide -
Filling out the Expression of Interest form
Background
This is part of a suite of information available to help applicants:
- The grants section of the FLA website has eligibility criteria, FAQsand other useful information.
- This Help Guidegives extra information on answering each question in the Expression of Interest form [download here].
- A Word Template[download here] of the Expression of Interest form can be used if you want to do a draft before you work on the online form.
INTRODUCTION
This document gives additional instructions and tips about filling out the Expression of Interest form for a Financial Literacy Australia Grant.
Projects covered by this Help Guide may be research projects, education projects or a mixture of both. If you find that the form is not working well in helping your explain your research component, please contact the Grants Manager.
Your feedback is welcome so we can improve the Help Guide. Please email any comments to
Adding text to the form
There are two ways you can fill out the form:
- You can type text straight into the online form on SmartyGrants. You can save as you go, and come back later to add or edit.
- You can write and edit your text in a Word document (see template). When you are happy with it, you can copy and paste each section of text into the online form. Note: The word count in Microsoft Word may be slightly different from SmartyGrants.
CONTACT DETAILS
Q. Organisation’s ABN
If your organisation does not have an Australian Business Number, leave blank.
ORGANISATION DETAILS
Q. What does your organisation do?
We are seeking information that is relevant to the proposed project. Itgives context to your goals and background information on your capability to achieve the project goals. Activity from more than 10 years ago is unlikely to be relevant.
Q. Organisation’s annual budget
An estimate is fine. This information lets FLA see the scale of the project compared to the whole organisation.
PROJECT OUTLINE
Q. Project Start Date
As grants are announced in early December, the start date will usually be some time after that. A delay of at least 1-2 months would be typical.
Q. Project End Date
This is the date of the FLA-funded aspect of the project. There may be other phases afterwards.
FLA grants are for projects, not just for a year. A project may take 3 months or 3 years. FLA is happy to fund projects in stages. For example, we have funded several pilot projects, and may fund the next phase if the pilot is successful.
FLA does not provide on-going funding for service delivery.
Be realistic about how long it will actually take you to complete the project, including evaluation and reporting.
Q. Amount requested from FLA
This is the total amount over the funded period.
Q. Total project cost
The amount sought from FLA may be only part of the project funding. For some projects, the host organisation, partners or other funders will be contributing to the project with cash, significant staff time or in-kind resources. The total cost reflects all this. The total cost does not need to be precise, but is used to reflect the overall scale of the effort.
FLA prefers for the applicant organisation to be contributing to overall cost of the project in some way, if possible.
Q. Project goals
This gives a quick overview of what your project is aiming to achieve. We are interested in the benefits for consumers and investors rather than the project’s activities and outputs.
Most projects will not need much detail to convince FLA that there is a problem to be fixed – we are well aware of shortcomings in people’s financial literacy. The key is to show how you will provide a solution to a problem.
For research projects, consider its potential impact in advancing financial literacy. The impact of applied research will generallybe on people who run financial literacy programs (or control them via funding, curriculum, training, etc). How does this research hope to impact financial literacy practice? It is not sufficient to just say that research adds to the body of knowledge or impacts academia.
Q. Project description
This is the main section where you describe what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, to deliver a successful project. You can add insights into how you will overcome key challenges. Mention steps or aspects of the methodology that will be critical to the project’s success.
Evaluation will be a key part of many projects. The FLA website has useful resources and links on evaluation
Q. Who will benefit?
Specify the target population you are trying to reach, e.g. women, an age group, a specific vulnerable group, etc. If you are aiming to reach a general audience, say so.
For projects with a specific audience, it is important to estimate the number of people who will participate or benefit over the project period. (100? 1,000? 20,000? 100,000?)
Q. Gender split
Of the people who will directly benefit from this project, what percentage do you estimate are female? eg 20% or 60%. FLA can calculate the male % from this.
Q. Geographic area/s that will benefit
Summarise the areas covered. Can be "National" or name the state/s or regions or cities or suburbs. If a geographic area is not relevant to your project, just say “not applicable”.
Q. Wider benefits
Apart from the direct audience, does the project have side benefits that will advance financial literacy in Australia? Eg:
- making educational content resources available to other organisations,
- inspiring others to be more active in financial literacy work,
- sharing candid results from a pilot project so other organisations can learn from it,
- providing evidence (via evaluation and research) that will help future financial literacy projects (your’s and others).
FLA puts considerable emphasis on wider benefits as they often mean a project has much greater impact.
We often fund pilot projects, so we are interested in the potential to scale-up if the pilot is successful.
Q. Partnerships
A successful project will often require skills, knowledge and resources from a range of different areas. Partnerships are one way to achieve this.
Mention partnerships directly relevant to this project, and how firm the commitment is at this stage (eg definite, in principle or positive initial discussions). Partners may be organisations or key people who will contribute cash, staff, in-kind resources, intellectual property or distribution channels.
Do not include people you merely consult with.
Q. Evidence base
A project proposal is more compelling if it is based on firm evidence and research. If your project builds on specific research or an evaluation, please tell us where we can find it and how it is relevant to your project's chances of success. The evidence might be:
- an evaluation of a pilot phase
- an evaluation of a similar project
- research that has tested the link between your proposed activities and outcomes
- an earlier step in a chain of research.
Supply relevant evidence or research via a weblink or file upload. SmartyGrants can accept attachments up to 25MB, but internet connections (yours and ours) will often struggle with attachments over 5MB.
You can also use the text box to explain how evidence you mentioned is relevant to your project. If your project is built on a broader body of evidence that is not written up in one place, you can also use the text box to tell us about it.
Q. Other key project information
This is entirely optional. This is the place to put some key information about the project that has not been covered elsewhere.
- how the project builds on or complements existing programs.
- how your project fills a gap
- how your research fits within the existing body of knowledge.
DECLARATION AND PRIVACY STATEMENT
Financial Literacy Australia respects personal and confidential information received and complies with privacy laws.
As part of the application process, you consent to your proposal being referred to third parties, who may remain anonymous, for assessment purposes.This may include due diligence on your organisation or project. This may include talking with organisations that are conducting projects in the same field. If there is some aspect of your application that is highly sensitive, please let FLA know.
AFTER SUBMITTING YOUR APPLICATION
As you fill in your application on SmartyGrants, you can save and re-edit. However, after you press the “submit”button on your application, you cannot edit the application. If you really need to correct a mistake, please contact . FLA may be able to “re-open” your application to allow editing.
You will receive an acknowledgement email from SmartyGrants to say that your submission has been successfully received.
If you need to change or access your contact details at any time, please email .
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