Train digital mentors to help more people get online. The Capacity building grant gives you $52,500 to train and support digital mentors in your community.
Grants are now open! From 12 August to 27 September.
Round 10 applications are now open until 27 September 2024.
Digital mentors help people to feel confident and safe online. They support communities to learn digital skills. They are at the heart of community-led digital inclusion programs.
The Capacity Building program is a train-the-trainer initiative to support and develop digital mentors in local communities across Australia. Capacity Builders work with Good Things to inspire skilled, passionate and friendly digital mentors to help more older people be connected.
The Capacity Building grant and training program is created by Good Things Australia and available to community organisations in Australia through the Be Connected program.
Organisations successful in being accepted into the Capacity Builder program will receive $52,500 grant funding and a specialist pack of training resources ready to deliver.
Capacity Builders will nominate at least one person as their trainer who will attend a skillshare with Good Things on how to deliver this training package in their community.
The Capacity Builders use the training package to train digital mentors in their community, then provide 2 hours of follow up coaching support. Capacity Builders have 12 months to complete this work.
The digital mentors that have been trained by Capacity Builders go on to provide digital skills support to older Australians in their community through the Be Connected program.
The Capacity Building program is your chance to upskill staff and volunteers so they can support older Australians to get online.
Your organisation will need to be able to train the required number of people willing to digital mentors (50 or 100 people). You will need to make sure that your newly trained digital mentors are able to immediately practice their skills and start supporting others to get online.
As this is a Be Connected funded program, your trained digital mentors will need to support over 50’s to improve their digital skills.
Please read our guidelines and T&Cs carefully to check your eligibility before applying for this grant.
Digital mentors are the people helping others to learn.
Teaching people digital skills makes sure they have the tools and knowledge needed to do essential activities like connect with loved ones, bank online and avoid scams.
The good news is digital mentors don’t have to be tech experts. They just need to friendly, motivating and willing to help.
Each Capacity Builder will nominate who they will train as digital mentors as part of their project. The digital mentors they train can be staff members or volunteers.
All trained digital mentors need to be available to provide digital skills support to older Australians through community organisations in our network.
If you do not have enough people you can train in your organisation, consider buddying up with other organisations in your local area and applying together to share the benefits of this project. We have found that organisations in this program are more successful when they already have an established group of volunteers or staff members to train, rather than starting to recruit everyone from scratch.
Organisations must be registered as part of our network to be eligible. It’s free to register to become a member, and we can support you with more grants, webinars, marketing resources, step-by-step guides and more.
Contact us to have a one on one chat about this grant and how it may work for your organisation.
Please read our grant guidelines on my.GoodThings carefully before you apply. They contain critical information that can help you understand eligibility and what you need to do for the grant. The guidelines also include a list of all the grant application questions to help you prepare.
Keep in the loop with news, grant announcements, events and updates in our Good Things newsletter and learn how to get involved in closing the digital divide.
