Tips for making Local Initiatives Fund applications:

1. Talk to us about your proposal before filling out the application form.  It can help you to get clear about SKIP and your project. It can also save you wasted energy and time on an application that does not meet the criteria.
2. Be very clear that it is the parents/caregivers who will gain parenting knowledge and skills – SKIP does not fund activities that are fun and educational for children that do not strengthen parents’ skills and knowledge about managing their children’s behaviour.
3. Tell us about the intended reach of your project e.g. is a fun day intended for around 30 or around 300 parents?
4. Only apply for as much money as you need for what you really want to do.  The Local Initiatives Fund has an annual budget of around $1million to distribute.
5. Be realistic about the amounts you apply for – if your organisation has an average annual income of $20,000 and you have applied for a $100,000 project, this will be a surprise to us.
6. We can only fund activities that occur after we have a funding agreement signed with you.  For Round 8 this means we can only fund activities beginning after July 2008.
7. Remember to ask your referee if they are happy to be your referee. We will need to contact them to talk about their relationship to the work you do and the project for which you have applied for funding.
8. If you want to involve a celebrity or guest speaker in your project, ensure there is a strategy to continue the learning shared in the community e.g. follow-up discussions within parenting groups or early childhood education centres.
9. SKIP is about increasing access to parenting information so priority will be given to projects that provide free activities.

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