Grants and Funding Finder helping the people of NSW to discover funding opportunities

Whether it be for arts and culture, disaster recovery or sport and recreation, the Grants and Funding Finder brings together NSW Government grants and funding opportunities in one place for the very first time, on nsw.gov.au. Based on extensive customer research over the last 18 months, the Finder is making it easier for customers to find the funding opportunity they’re looking for. 

nsw.gov.au grants strategy

The overarching grants strategy centres on ensuring the people, organisations and businesses of NSW can focus on delivering projects and spending less time discovering grant opportunities.

The strategy focuses on three key areas, ensuring grants are:

• Discoverable
  • Provide users with the tools to find grant opportunities that are suited to their organisation or project from a single, centralised location. 
• Informative
  • Provide users the grant content that they want, in the order that they want, when they want it.
• Contextual
  • Display relevant grant opportunities at relevant points in a user’s nsw.gov.au journey.

How did the Grants and Funding Finder come about?

The OneCX program aims to create a customer-centric digital experience based on customer needs, rather than the structures of government. It was identified very early on that there was an opportunity to improve the experience for customers searching for grants and funding for themselves, their community or business. 

As it stood, there was no central location to provide customers awareness of the opportunities available to them. This meant it was difficult and time consuming for customers to navigate and locate all the relevant grants available to them, across the hundreds of government websites. As part of the OneCX program strategy to deliver content based on customer needs, work commenced in November 2020 to create a central grants and funding finder. The aim, to deliver a single location to find and navigate all available NSW Government grants. 

In 2021, NSW was struck by some of the worst flooding on record. A key element of the NSW Government’s disaster recovery response was offering a range of grants to assist people and businesses get back on their feet during their time of need. These grants, provided by various agencies across NSW Government, proved to be an effective way to directly assist the people of NSW. It demonstrated how important a central grants portal was for our customers. This was also evident through the extensive research already underway on the need for a grants and funding finder. 

We knew customers needed to be able to easily locate and apply for grants, especially during times of distress and natural disasters. Key to ease-of-use, customers told us that they needed to be able to access grants and funding opportunities on their mobile.  This became more of a necessity during flood events, when people were displaced from their homes. 

As a result of the research, in December 2021, we launched the beta version of the Grants and Funding Finder. 

We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from agencies, customers and grant seekers. They told us this type of centralised tool was necessary to make finding relevant grants easier. Along with our user research, this provided a strong case to push ahead with the development and rollout of the Finder across all NSW grants. 

In May 2022, a new lightning-fast search and filtering experience was applied. This enabled customers to quickly find, filter, sort and search for the grants that may be applicable to them and their needs. Grants announcements were added to the Finder in June 2022. This filled an important gap for customers, between hearing about new “funding” being announced, and the detailed grant guidelines being available.

In October 2022, the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) mandated all NSW Government agencies list their grants on the Finder. The release of the Grants Administration Guide outlined a range of principles and mandatory requirements for all government grants.

The journey to build and list all grants on Finder, is in response to address customer needs whilst focusing on customer centricity, rather than aligning to the traditional structures of government.
 

Making grants content discoverable and informative

Since the beta launch, we have continued to improve upon the functionality and usability of the finder, to ensure we’re delivering upon its intended purpose. 

The centrepiece of our discoverability strategy has been the Finder itself. Centralising all NSW Government grants has made it infinitely easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. 

During our user research, customers told us what they look for when assessing a grant opportunity. With customer-centricity at the heart of our program, we designed both the Finder and the individuals grants listing template, to address and extend upon their feedback. 
 

It was important to be extremely respectful of our customers’ time, and that we give them the tools they need to efficiently achieve their goals. 

Within each grant and fund listing, we made sure to clearly address the key information, relevant to the grant., The feedback we’ve had from users to date has been extremely positive.
 

Benefits and results

The Grants and Funding Finder has been live for just under 12 months. During that time we’ve continued research, collaborated with agencies and helped tens of thousands of users discover grants relevant to them in a single, user- friendly location. 

Key customer benefits include: 

• Centralised location to discover all NSW Government grants and funding opportunities.
• Accessible and mobile-friendly interface, with easy-to-use search options and filters.
• Clear view of grant or funding application dates for all opening rounds. 

Key agency benefits include:  

• Further promote agency grants and funding programs, with exposure to 3 million+ nsw.gov.au visitors per month.
• Access to grant communication templates, based upon customer research and best practice. 
• Setup multiple opening rounds in one go, with each automatically displaying as open/closed/opening soon.
• Simple, automated management of essential probity content, such as past recipients and funded projects.
   

Results to date: 

• Approximately 466 grants are now listed from around 46 NSW government agencies and departments on one page.
• Over 266,000 unique visitors to the Grants and Funding Finder.
• The finder has serviced  124,320 applications of the filter and searches for grants on a single page.
• Most popular categories to date include business, education and arts & culture
• 55% are desktop users, 45% are mobile and tablet users
• 396 users viewed grants listing content in their own language (not previously possible).

How do I list my grant on the finder?

The OneCX program is supporting agencies to meet the requirements of the DPC mandate and grants administration guide.

Access to publish grants on the nsw.gov.au Grants and Funding Finder is now available for all NSW Government grants administrators. This enables agencies to publish their grants in accordance with the Grants Administration Guide, on the website’s content management system (CMS).

To access the CMS and training resources, grant administrators will need to submit a request via the nsw.gov.au Help Hub. 

Stay in touch 

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