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Aurizon Community Giving Fund

Founded in 2011 the Aurizon Community Giving Fund provides grants of up to $20,000 to eligible charities across our areas of operation.  Since launch the fund has supported over 630 charities with funding support for projects delivering benefits to our local communities in the areas of health and wellbeing, community safety, environment and education.

 

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Community Giving Fund recipients announced

Youth Opportunities Austrlai CGF recipient from South AustraliaImage courtesy Youth Opportunities Australia

Thank you to all those organisations across Australia that submitted applications for the latest round of the Aurizon Community Giving Fund. Aurizon is proud to announce 23 successful recipients from this round, a full list of these organisations is available here.

These grants will assist local initiatives and groups from all over Australia.

The next round of the Aurizon Community Giving Fund is schedule to open for applications in early 2025, sign up to our mailing list above to be the first to know when the next round opens.

Community Giving Fund Eligibility

Am I eligible for a grant?

Please view our Guidelines and Terms and Conditions. There is also a list of Frequently Asked Questions below and a guide on Tips for Writing Grant Applications which may be helpful to your charity when writing your grant application.

 

  • Non-profit organisations that hold an approved deductible gift recipient (DGR) status charity (Item 1) from the Australian Tax Office. If you are unsure of your organisation’s tax status, check with your financial advisor and the Australian Government’s ABN Lookup website.
  • The Aurizon Community Giving Fund is focused on the broad areas of health and wellbeing, community safety, the environment and education. All applications for an Aurizon Community Giving Fund grant must fit within at least one of these funding categories to be eligible for consideration.
  • Cash grants are only available for projects that affect the immediate areas in which Aurizon operates. View our areas of operation on the map below.

CGF Map Oct 2024

Community Stories

The Starlight Foundation, Hunter Valley NSW

The Starlight Express Room, a bright, medical-free zone at John Hunter Hospital, will use funding from Aurizon for running the daily activities program, based on fun and play supporting the wellbeing of seriously ill children and putting some laughter in their day.

Police Citizen’s Youth Club NSW, Singleton NSW

The Aurizon Community Giving Fund support will be utilised by the Singleton PCYC to install 4 new outdoor bench seats on the club grounds, and purchase and replace resources and equipment for youth/holiday activities for the local area.

 

Sunnyfield, Skills for Life

Funds from the Aurizon Community Giving Fund will be used to purchase a SmartBoard that will be used to deliver the Sunnyfield Skills for Life Program for people with an intellectual disability in Maitland.

Got Your Back Sista, Empowerment programs.

The Empowered and living free from domestic violence program aims to help women who have escaped domestic violence gain the confidence, support and skills they need to obtain employment and thrive.

The Reach Foundation, Reach Connection Workshops

At Reach, we are focused on a preventative and early intervention approach to supporting young people. The Aurizon grant will allow Reach to empower & inspire over 600 young people in the Illawarra region through the delivery of our secondary school workshops.

The Humour Foundation, Clown Doctors Program

For 17 years our local Clown Doctors Dr Nose-Best and Dr Nose-Nothing have been creating thousands of magic moments of joy and laughter to help uplift sick kids at the John Hunter Children’s Hospital.

Kidsafe NT

Funding from Aurizon will assist Kidsafe NT with the delivery of the Home and Road Safety for Aboriginal Communities Project. This project allows Kidsafe NT to provide educational yarns to Aboriginal Families as well as providing and fitting a child car restraint suitable to the child’s age and height.

Capricorn Helicopter Rescue Service, Rockhampton QLD

Funding from the Aurizon Community Giving Find will be used to help with the cost of installing a solar system to reduce both the amount of energy that the rescue service draws from the grid and overhead costs. 

Mackay Community Visitors Association, Mackay QLD

Funding will assist in the purchase of a wheelchair hoist to be installed in an additional vehicle for wheelchair accessibility due to increased demand.  The introduction of an extra wheelchair accessible vehicle will benefit those within the local region who require wheelchair transport.

 

The Oasis Townsville, Connections Saves Lives

The Aurizon grant is very important to The Oasis Townsville. The Connections Project involves encouraging groups formed by the veteran community, including families, to conduct community activities physically at the Oasis Home Base in Oonoonba. 20% of the Townsville community is veteran community.

Jigsaw Group, Traineeships for young people with disability

At Jigsaw, we believe people prepare best for work, through work. Our revolutionary pathway to open employment for people with disability embeds a comprehensive, skill-based training program within a real workplace - our commercial document and data management business.

Mobile Learning Centre Project, Central Queensland Life Education

Our new MLC allows us to keep moving our program forward by providing an updated, interactive and engaging learning environment for children.

Ronald McDonald House North Australia, Hospitality Cart

The RMHC North Australia Hospitality Cart at Mount Isa Hospital is the first of its kind in Australia and aims to specifically address the needs of seriously ill North West Queensland children and their families.

TEC-NQ Awards Scholarships 2020

The annual Tec-NQ Senior School Awards recognises local high achieving students undertaking pre-apprenticeship qualifications. The awards scholarship program was introduced to give the local community an opportunity to directly support these students.  

Trust for Nature

Funding from Aurizon will be used to build a protective fence to stop herbivores from eating native seedlings, giving native plants a chance to get established. It will involve protecting 4 hectares of native vegetation with fencing, and native seedlings for rehabilitation works.

Kai Eardley Foundation, Perth WA

The Kai Eardley Foundation supports the facilitation of Tomorrow Man and Tomorrow Woman workshops in schools and sporting clubs across regional WA. The workshops are engaging and immersive, allowing young people to talk about their challenges without judgement. 

Bunbury Dolphin Discovery, South West WA

Funding will be used to support the DDC Storm Chasers program which was created to tackle the issue of rubbish polluting the local environment from beaches to bush land, endangering wildlife, and spoiling the natural environment.

 

Marine Rescue Bunbury, Emergency Radio Direction Finder

Marine Rescue Bunbury is grateful for the Aurizon Community Giving Fund who have supported us to obtain a Radio Direction Finder for our rescue vessel "Dingo Marley". In an emergency situation, the Radio Direction Finder provides an accurate direction from a transmitting emergency beacon or a marine radio.

Foodbank WA, Hampers for vulnerable Mullewa families

This program is providing food relief to individuals and families living in the regional town of Mullewa, approximately an hour east of Geraldton, where unemployment and lack of transport has impacted their access to affordable food.

CinefestOZ Film Festival, IndigifestOZ Indigenous Film Festival

The Aurizon Giving Fund Grant will help champion CinefestOZ Film Festival’s Indigenous Program, IndigifestOZ, in Bunbury. IndigifestOZ also introduces aspiring young Aboriginal students to the possibilities and career paths within the film industry and is closely linked to the CinefestOZ schools’ program for participating Bunbury schools.

Health Communication Resources, Headspace Geraldton

Community media is a powerful tool to impact communities at the grass-roots level. This grant will allow us to develop community strategies and produce local product to promote important information and education around alcohol and other drugs at the local level.

Previous Community Giving Fund recipients

In June 2024, Aurizon announced 30 successful recipients from the previous round of the Community Giving Fund, a full list of recipients is available here.

These grants are currently assisting local initiatives and groups from all across our areas of operations.

Image courtesy Secondbite.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

  • The community organisation must be a registered Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) Item 1 endorsed by the Australian Tax Office. All successful applications will be validated to ensure this criterion is met prior to the grant being released.

    If your community organisation does not have DGR Item 1 status, your organisation is not eligible to apply for the Aurizon Community Giving Fund grant.

    If you are unsure of your organisation’s tax status, check with your financial advisor and the Australian Government’s ABN Lookup website www.abr.business.gov.au.
  • The Aurizon Community Giving Fund grants program is structured to make grants directly to DGR Item 1 organisations. Whilst auspice arrangements will be considered, we prefer to make grants directly to the respective charities.
  • No, you must check on each occasion. We have been notified that there have been significant changes to these organisations internal policies associated with these types of arrangements.
  • Aurizon’s Community Giving Fund is focused on the broad areas of Health and Wellbeing, Environment, Community Safety and Education. All applications must fit within at least one of these funding categories to be eligible for consideration.

    Health & Wellbeing
    We seek to provide grants to initiatives that improve a community’s health and wellbeing, such as healthy lifestyle programs, mental health support, cardiovascular health related projects – particularly if they specifically support women, Indigenous groups or the LGBTIQ community.

    Community Safety
    We seek to support initiatives that increase safety and security in our local communities, such as emergency response, domestic and family violence, natural disaster prevention/minimisation measures, accident prevention and road safety - particularly if they specifically support women, Indigenous groups or the LGBTIQ community.

    Education
    We seek to provide support in areas such as literacy and numeracy, life education, apprenticeships and traineeships, and in particular, increasing and retaining skills in regional areas.

    Environment
    We seek to support initiatives that promote environmental enhancement in the communities through which we operate. Focused on issues such as improving biodiversity of natural habitats, community conservation and environmental education. Examples of initiatives we would look at supporting include, land rehabilitation and revegetation programs, clean-up and education days as well as local conservation projects.
  • No, all geographical areas are equally considered, however we encourage all applicants to check Aurizon’s areas of operation to ensure your project is located appropriately.
  • The Aurizon Community Giving Fund cash grants will be based on a minimum of AUD$1,000 and a maximum of AUD$20,000.
  • You can submit separate applications for different projects in any one round provided the applications meet the necessary eligibility criteria and Terms and Conditions.
  • Only online application forms are available. If you start an application and need to stop to search for the requested information, you can save your application and go back at any time before the closing date to complete it.

    Similarly, the Criteria and Guidelines and Terms and Conditions document is only available online.

  • Firstly, you should check your Junk folder. Depending on your Inbox setting, the email is sometimes recognised as junk mail and is sent to the Junk folder.

    If it is not there, please contact the Aurizon Community Giving Fund team at community@aurizon.com.au.

  • The online application link closes at 5pm AEDT on the closing date. If you miss this deadline, you will have to make your submission in the next round.
  • You will be notified as to the outcome of your application as soon as a decision is made. We ask that you refrain from contacting the Aurizon Community Giving Fund during the processing period.

    Correspondence regarding your submitted application will be sent from info@aurizon.good2givegrants.org. Please ensure you add this email address to your safe senders list.
  • If that occurs, as per the Aurizon Community Giving Fund Terms and Conditions, you must inform the Aurizon Community Giving Fund team immediately at community@aurizon.com.au.
  • We are very fortunate to receive an extraordinary number of worthy applications. However, as you can appreciate we are unable to support all projects. Given the number of applications we receive, unfortunately we are not in a position to provide individual application feedback.
  • As long the school building fund has DGR Item 1 status and the project meets the requirements to be funded through the building fund, an application can be submitted.
  • Some community organisations may be eligible to apply under this type of arrangement. You must first check with the auspice organisation. It is important to note that any successful grants will need to be deposited into the bank account of the DGR Item 1 auspice organisation.
  • Grants from the Aurizon Community Giving Fund can only be made to organisations with DGR Item 1 status. This is a legal-taxation requirement of the Fund. Unfortunately, organisations with Item 2 status cannot be considered.

  • Aurizon is a national organisation with operations in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and South Australia. 

    Grants will only be available for not-for-profits projects that affect the immediate areas in which Aurizon operates although the administrative centre of the applying organisation may be located outside of the stated areas of operation.

  • Please simply select one of the locations (the location with the largest focus if that may be the case) and clearly outline within the remainder of the application the other locations the project affects.
  • Yes, you can.
  • Applications to the Aurizon Community Giving Fund can only be made online.
  • Your application will autosave as you work through your submission.

    Click on the ‘Submission’ button at the top of your application, then hit the ‘Email Link’ button in the submission page. An email with a unique link to your application will be sent to the email address that you provided in your application. You can click on the link to go back into your application any time before the closing date to complete.
  • We encourage applicants to submit an approved photo to their application if available, however there is no facility for attaching documents to the application. If we require more information to review the application, we will contact you.
  • After the application closing time, depending on whether further research is required or we need more information, our process for determining successful or unsuccessful applications may take up to an eight-week review period.
  • It is possible that the granted amount may vary from the original application request.

    If that occurs and your proposed project is unable to proceed with the reduced grant, you can choose to withdraw your application.
  • Via email on community@aurizon.com.au.

Delivering for our local communities


Since 2011 the Aurizon Community Giving Fund has helped a diverse range of organisations across Australia deliver projects that make our local communities better places to live in.

Together, we make a difference where it matters most, supporting over 630 projects through charities and community groups.

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