Breaking Barriers, Building Futures: Supporting Rural, Regional and Remote Education

Breaking Barriers, Building Futures: Supporting Rural, Regional and Remote Education is sponsored by The Ian Potter Foundation (in partnership with Australian Schools Plus). This opportunity supports mission-aligned projects and measurable outcomes.

Grants Round Up April 2026 | The Ian Potter Foundation Grants Round Up April 2026 Grants Round Up April 2026 The Ian Potter Foundation FLOW (2023), a free NORPA outdoor community event celebrating kinship, culture and connection created and performed by Mitch King with Blake Rhodes. Directed by Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal.

Image: Kate Holmes, FLOW (2023), a free NORPA outdoor community event celebrating kinship, culture and connection created and performed by Mitch King with Blake Rhodes. Directed by Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal. Image: Kate Holmes, At its most recent board meeting, the Foundation awarded $10,583,449 in grants.

This included Major grants of $3 million to the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to build the Centre for Community Child Health's capacity and $5 million to Australian Schools Plus to deliver a targeted grants program supporting rural, regional and remote education. Additionally, several grants were awarded in Community Wellbeing and Arts, totaling $1,823,000.

Among these, t he Reconnect Project received a grant to upgrade its inventory management system to handle newly contracted e-waste decommissioning contracts. Find out how to donate your no-longer-needed tech to the Reconnect Project. Find further information on several of these grants below.

The Ian Potter Cultural Trust was awarded $760,449 towards Emerging Artist grants. Murdoch Children's Research Institute Capacity Building for the Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH) The Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH) is a department of The Royal Children’s Hospital, a research group within the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), and an affiliate of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Paediatrics.

With a strong focus on prevention, collaboration and early intervention, CCCH works with families, communities, services, funders and governments to deliver measurable improvements in outcomes for children.

CCCH’s work is largely supported through short-term, project-based funding, which enables innovation and experimentation, but doesn’t provide sustained investment in the organisation’s capacity to systematically embed, scale or sustain these projects for long-term system-level impact.

This five-year capacity-building grant will support the Centre in expanding its education and learning programs to reach more practitioners, growing its paid professional services, and strengthening its core organisational and innovation capacity.

Investment in these areas will increase the Centre’s reach and impact, grow self-generated income, and improve long-term sustainability—delivering better outcomes for children and families experiencing the greatest disadvantage.

Australian Schools Plus Ltd Breaking Barriers, Building Futures: Supporting Rural, Regional and Remote Education Australian Schools Plus was established in 2014 following a recommendation of the 2011 Review of Funding for Schooling (Gonski Review), which identified a role for philanthropy in addressing educational disadvantage.

Founded by the Commonwealth Government, Australian Schools Plus operates as a national intermediary, providing single‑ and multi‑year grants to disadvantaged schools nationwide. Over 12 years of operation, Schools Plus has supported more than 550,000 students across 1,800 schools.

Australian Schools Plus focuses on five priority areas: closing learning gaps (particularly in literacy, numeracy and STEM), supporting student wellbeing, improving outcomes for rural, regional and remote communities, strengthening First Nations education, and responding to crisis and climate impacts.

This funding will enable Australian Schools Plus to expand its support to rural, regional and remote (RRR) schools nationwide (reaching an estimated 4500 students) and to invest in the organisation’s ability to engage First Nations students in its programs.

RRR schools face persistent teacher shortages, high staff turnover and limited access to professional learning, with educators frequently teaching across multiple year levels while managing complex student needs. Despite Australian Schools Plus' significant reach to date, there remains a substantial unmet need in RRR communities, where schools are often the heart of their towns and a critical source of stability.

This funding will build on a $4. 7m investment by the Paul Ramsay Foundation in Australian Schools Plus for remote and very remote schools. Northern Rivers Performing Arts Incorporated Growing a creative community beyond recovery: NORPA’s new Framework for empowering and supporting artistic practice Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) is a nationally recognised regional theatre company based in Lismore, NSW.

NORPA creates original, accessible work that reflects the Northern Rivers’ people, stories and landscapes. Known for its “theatre without walls” approach, the company produces site-specific and place-based works across diverse locations, blending multiple art forms. NORPA will soon be moving into its new flood-resilient creative hub, The Joinery.

This will enable NORPA to reinstate onsite programming (suspended since the 2022 floods, which destroyed the facility previously occupied by NORPA). This grant will support NORPA to introduce new initiatives to rebuild creative sector activity within the region.

This three-year project comprises activating the new space, providing development, collaboration, and engagement opportunities for artists across a suite of six annual NORPA initiatives.

These include: Live Edge: Designed to ignite experimental performance ideas and creative innovation, each year four performance artists will be supported to create new performance works responding to The Joinery space, or to installations by theatre designers or visual artists. These works will then be shared with audiences through a three-day season of public events.

Fuel: Will provide regular training workshops and masterclasses for local and visiting creatives in Acting, Physical Theatre, Dance, Design and Playwriting. Regional Makers Studio: This annual program brings 40-60 regional artists and theatre makers from across Australia to The Joinery for a five-day curated exchange.

Makers in Residence Program : NORPA will provide three 7-14-day residencies per year in 2026 and 2027 and four residencies in 2028 to support artists to make new work. Youth Theatre Making Collective : Targeting young artists aged 12–18 years, with regular workshops, training intensives and theatre making with sector professionals.

Associate Artists: Two to three locally based artists will be engaged for two years to ensure The Joinery is a place of creative training and exploration. The Placement Circle: Strengthening Women’s Employment Pathways in Greater Shepparton Founded in 2019, WomenCAN Australia (WCA) was established to fill a critical gap in targeted support for women facing barriers to sustained financial security.

The organisation's mission is to empower women to achieve financial independence through education and employment. To date, WCA has supported over 1,000 women to connect to training and employment, including women returning to work after caring responsibilities, victim-survivors of family violence, migrants and refugees, and those experiencing economic hardship – the majority in regional Victoria.

Central to WCA’s work is The Placement Circle – a peer-support employment program that centres lived experience, fosters connection, shared learning, and mutual support, enabling women to journey together as they reconnect to the workforce and navigate a new career pathway. The organisation helps women not only find jobs but truly flourish – strengthening families, communities, and advancing gender equality.

Women in regional Victoria face significant barriers to entering and sustaining employment, including caring responsibilities, limited transport, and reduced access to flexible training. At the same time, the region is experiencing acute workforce shortages. WCA will be the ‘glue’ between employers, job seekers and training organisations in the Greater Shepparton area.

This three-year grant supports WCA to expand the Placement Circle program in Greater Shepparton from two to six industries, building on its success in addressing workforce shortages and supporting women into meaningful employment in Aged Care and Early Childhood Education and Care. All grants awarded in this round can be viewed in the Grants Database .

You may be interested in these As NAIDOC Week celebrates 50 years, we share two inspiring examples of what can be achieved by working alongside Indigenous communities Grants Round Up July 2026 In its latest grant round, the Foundation awarded $6. 7 million. Grants Round Up December 2025 In December 2025, the Foundation awarded $11.

1 million in grants. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Universities/Research Institutes Standard Grant Conditions We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present.