Organisations working to tackle key social problems in the Orange community are being invited to apply for a grant from Orange City Council.
COMMUNITY: The Orange community will benefit when local charities and service groups are awarded 'Social Impact' grants.
In short: Community groups with 'social impact' projects can apply for Council grants.
$84 thousand will be allocated
What's next: Applications close on 31 October,
The Council is asking for applications to allocate a total of $84,000 to local groups under the new Social Impact Funding Grant' program.
The funds for the program came from the one-off sale of Biodiversity Offset Credits from the Council biobanking property 'Girralang' in October 2023.
The credits were bought to offset the environmental impact of building the Macquarie Pipeline. The number of credits was more than was needed for that project and they were sold for $336,000.
The Council meeting on 9 July 2024 allocated $252,000 to Council sustainability projects, and the allocation of the remaining $84,000 would be determined by a workshop to identify local charities that would benefit from the funds.
The councillor workshop decided to make the money available under a one-off 'social impact' grant program.
Orange City Council CEO David Waddell says the grants are an opportunity to support local organisations doing valuable work for the community.
"This money is from a one-off windfall benefit, and the Council decided to allocate it where it could do some good to tackle significant problems facing the community," Mr Waddell said.
"It's not a huge amount of money but there's enough that it could make all the difference to local groups who want to do something important for the Orange community, to tackle key issues. It might be something like a shortage of food or housing for example."
"It will be up to the Council to decide whether to spread the money around by granting small amounts to many groups or making more money available to a smaller number of organisations."
Application Forms are available on the Council website.
Applications open on 18 September and will close on 31 October.
It's expected the applications will be assessed and a report with recommendations will be brought to a Council meeting in late November.
