December 12 2025
By The Ian Potter Foundation
This month, the Foundation awarded $11,101,000 in grants.
This included $4,441,000 in grants across its Arts, Community Wellbeing, and Early Childhood Development programs. The Board also awarded $5,410,000 in Public Health grants under its new funding guidelines in this area.
In addition, a Major Grant of $1,250,000 was awarded to Infoxchange for its NFP Digital Future Initiative.
Read more about some of these grants below.
Infoxchange is a leading social enterprise that improves the lives of people in need through innovative technology solutions. It supports not-for-profit (NFP) organisations by creating cross-sector collaborations with government, philanthropy, and technology partners to combine resources and amplify positive impact at scale. Sector knowledge, relationships, products, and services are combined to activate the smart use of technology, with over 38,000 government and community services using Infoxchange's products and services to enhance efficiency and deliver greater impact.
This Major grant targets the entire NFP sector by supporting the delivery of the NFP Digital Futures initiative, which aims to empower NFPs to support communities to thrive through the adoption of leading digital technologies. Effective digital technology is essential to protect against today's cyber threats and enable staff to spend more time delivering impact.
More than 60,000 charities across Australia deliver critical services to the nation's most vulnerable communities. Despite its importance, many charities struggle to establish effective digital foundations that enable them to provide services efficiently, measure their impact and leverage the efficiencies available through AI and protect their information from cybersecurity threats. To address these challenges, a sector-led, collaborative, long-term approach is required.
This funding will be used to support the core Digital Futures team, who will:
The project is designed to demonstrably raise the sector's digital capability in key impact areas, including cyber security, data and AI.
Since 2006, BackTrack Youth has provided young people with the holistic, flexible and long-term support they need to overcome barriers that marginalise them from learning, training, work and their community. These young people face complex intersecting challenges, including early contact with the justice system, housing instability, intergenerational trauma and poverty, substance use, unemployment, disengagement from education, and distress.
BackTrack offers youth work, education, accommodation, training, employment, a working farm, an extensive dog program, and an ecosystem of wraparound support for 11- to 18-year-olds, providing support for 'as long as it takes'.
The Ian Potter Foundation played a crucial role in the establishment of BackTrack's social enterprise arm, BackTrack Works. Six years on, the organisation has grown a cohort of alumni who are stepping up to drive projects and provide unique mentoring and lived experience across BackTrack's programs.
This grant will support BackTrack to seize the opportunity to invest in this cohort (the BackTrack Crew) to develop them into the next generation of leaders, securing the long-term future of BackTrack.
In 2025, the BackTrack Crew developed an innovative program to tackle youth crime in Armidale, resulting in a remarkable 50% reduction in youth crime. Their ability to build rapport and understand what works for youth in crisis is unparalleled.
The BackTrack Future Leaders Program will develop individualised training and activities that carefully extend the ambitions of this unique group, offering leadership pathways, developing and employing young leaders for a breadth of roles and careers in BackTrack and beyond.
Big hART is a community arts organisation that was established thirty-two years ago to explore new ways of addressing disadvantage. Motivated by the closure of a paper mill in the industrial town of Burnie, Tasmania, Big hART began working with the community, creating high-quality art to transmit their story.
Big hART works with communities experiencing high levels of need. Rather than focusing on the problem, the unique non-welfare projects build on community assets, strengthening vulnerable individuals and creating long-term attitudinal shifts.
BighART's Artisan Inclusive Employment Project aims to provide structured pathways into meaningful, sustainable employment for job seekers in North West Tasmania, particularly those aged 16-25 who face barriers to employment.
The project will support small, socially minded for-profit enterprises by offering supported employment to vulnerable youth. It is based on a model whereby for-profit small businesses are supported with free rent and on-site utilities, provided they employ young people who face barriers to employment. Big hART will provide wrap-around support for young people in collaboration with other local community organisations.
This grant will go towards the salary of a program coordinator on-site, who will support the interaction of local businesses and young trainees, and towards one day of wages for the trainees for the first twelve months of the program. Businesses will then absorb wages once they reach a profitable size.
The Ladder Project Foundation (Ladder) is a national not-for-profit organisation established in 2007 by AFL players determined to create better futures for young people experiencing homelessness. As the official charity of the AFL Players' Association, Ladder empowers young people aged 15-25 to break the cycle of disadvantage and reach their full potential. AFL players contribute $25 to the Ladder from every senior match they play, totalling $240,000 annually.
Ladder delivers structured, evidence-informed programs that strengthen key protective factors proven to reduce long-term disadvantage. These include improving mental health and well-being, building self-efficacy and life skills, and fostering strong connections with adults and peers. Programs support young people in re-engaging with education, employment, and training, which are critical pathways to long-term stability.
The programs are flexible, strengths-based, and intentionally non-classroom-based in design, recognising the complex and diverse needs of young people, including those with lived experience of out-of-home care, homelessness, or the justice system.
This grant supports Ladder in expanding its reach in Gippsland, building on the success of the Step Up Latrobe Valley program, which has been helping young people in the region since 2018. Importantly, this initiative will also extend opportunities to parents/carers, particularly women, engaged in Ladder's Surviving Adolescence program. Many of these participants are recovering from family violence, including financial abuse, and have been out of the workforce for extended periods. This initiative will support them in rebuilding their confidence, updating their skills, and re-entering the workforce in a safe and supportive environment.
As leaders in preventive mental health, Smiling Mind exists to help every mind thrive, offering mental fitness solutions available anytime, anywhere. It offers three core programs: Smiling Mind for Schools (mapped to the national curriculum), Smiling Mind at Home (supporting parents and caregivers) and Smiling Mind for Wellbeing (supporting adult mental health) through its free App.
They are trusted experts in social and emotional learning in primary schools and the only provider of digital resources designed to support children's mental health in both schools and at home.
To date, the Smiling Mind Primary School Program has reached over 1,700 Australian primary schools, and multiple evaluations have demonstrated its high impact. Over the next five years, Smiling Mind aims to scale this program into every primary school across Australia. They have launched a major fundraising campaign to raise national awareness of mental fitness and preventative mental health, expand Smiling Mind's reach across schools and communities, and establish a new revenue stream to strengthen the organisation's long-term sustainability.
This grant will help accelerate the expansion of their Primary School Program, enabling broader access to preventative mental health supports for children, while also strengthening the organisation's long-term sustainability and sector leadership.
The National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) is Australia's only government-accredited tertiary education institute dedicated to contemporary circus arts. Located in Prahran, Victoria, NICA provides professional, industry-focused training through degree programs, vocational education, and recreational courses for all ages.
NICA is already Australia's leading provider of tertiary circus training, creating world-class graduates. However, to maintain its national and global reputation, NICA needs to attract the highest-quality staff and expose both its students and staff to international and local experts in the field.
The Foundation's grant will support NICA in maintaining excellence by exposing students and teaching staff to international circus developments and teaching methods, including:
All grants awarded in this round can be viewed in the Grants Database.
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We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present.
