2026 Grants for Collaboration

Grants for Collaboration is the second stage of our two-year pilot grants program — a direct result of what the community told us matters most in our 2025 Grants for Conversation. 

We’re delighted to support eight initiatives with the transfer of $75,000 to the community through our 2026 Grants for Collaboration.

Our intention with this grant round is to strengthen the resilience, sustainability, and advocacy power of local community organisations and leaders in a tough environment, while engaging the community in solving local problems and backing bold, innovative ideas.

Our 2026 Grants for Collaboration partners are:

  • City of Port Phillip Arts Collective (COPPAC): Building the Infrastructure for Collaboration 

  • Artists for Kids Culture + Balert Yirramboi: Culture and Creation: Young Artists, Big Stories

  • Port Phillip EcoCentre: Collective Capacity-building for Reconnection and Resilience

  • Heartscapes: Expanding Melbourne Pollinator Corridor Volunteer Program

  • Port Phillip Community Group: Sustainable Food: Port Phillip Grocer

  • St Kilda Community Housing + Cultivating Community: Growing Together: Activating Community Through Shared Gardens

  • Southside Justice: Partners in Place: Collective Voice

  • Jewish Museum of Australia + Jewish Care: Jewish Museum to You (Funded in collaboration with Wicking Trust Weaving Connections)

Read more about our partners

2025 Grants for Conversation

In 2025, we offered ‘Grants for Conversation’ aimed at bringing together agencies and stakeholders in key areas identified in our 2024 Vital Signs report. 

Our objective was for these conversations to lead to a stronger understanding of our community’s current and future needs. Our grant partners and Southside brought together up to 60 organisations to talk honestly about what our community needs to feel connected, to belong, and to flourish together. Those conversations shaped five detailed reports and our Roadmap that point the way forward. The outcomes inform our current grant-making ‘Grants for Collaboration’.

Our Grants for Conversation partners are listed below.

Grants for Conversation Partners

    • Grant Partner: City of Port Phillip Arts Collective (COPPAC)

    • Focus: As part of our Grants for Conversation, a $5,000 grant has enabled a collective of Arts organisations from across the City of Port Phillip to come together and participate in collaborative dialogue to explore how to deliver the best possible outcomes for artists and audiences in our community.

    • Grant Partner: Port Phillip EcoCentre Inc.

    • Focus: As part of our Grants for Conversation, a $5,000 grant has enabled 15 environmental organisations from across Southside to come together and participate in collaborative dialogue. Through a series of workshops and facilitated conversations, the group began mapping regional strengths and identifying shared challenges — including biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution and nature disconnection.

    • Grant Partners: Port Phillip Community Group and Christ Church Mission Community Centre

    • Focus: A $5,000 grant from our Grants for Conversations program to further understand the scale of food insecurity in Port Phillip and ways the community can be engaged to ensure no one faces hunger or food insecurity in our community. Facilitated by Sustain, the Australian Food Network, 14 organisations came together to understand challenges, what is working well and opportunities to create change.

    • Grant Partners: South Port Community Housing Group and St Kilda Community Housing

    • Focus: A $5,000 grant to support the important work being done to address housing and homelessness. More than 40 leaders from the housing, health, community, and justice sectors came together at the St Kilda Town Hall to explore collaborative and actionable solutions to the growing housing crisis. A powerful reminder of what’s possible when passionate local voices unite for long-term change.

    • Grant Partners: First Step, SouthPort Community Group Voices of South Side

    • Focus: A $5,000 grant from our Grants for Conversations program to focus on Mental Health and Well Being led by SouthPort Community Group in partnership with First Step. It includes conducting a number of focus groups and conversations with Voices of the South Side (participants with lived experience of mental health), First Step participants with lived experiences, clinicians and others. Desired outcomes include gaining an understanding of current wellbeing and mental health service provision concerns in our community and capturing a range of local voices including those with lived experience to explore local solutions and actions.