About Our Grants for Social Enterprises

We're proud to invest in social enterprises with a proven model for job creation to support people facing barriers to mainstream employment.

What's in this article:

  • How we support social enterprises 
  • How we choose social enterprises 
  • Which social enterprises are eligible?
  • Social enterprises we support
 
Male chef in kitchen standing in front of a cutting board with female chef in the background

How we support social enterprises

By investing in a supporting employment-focused community organisations and social enterprises, our mission is to help create 10,000 jobs by 2030. 
 
Since 2006, Westpac Foundation has been working with social enterprises to help them scale and create more jobs and training opportunities for people facing barriers to mainstream employment. 
 
 

How we choose social enterprises

We provide multi-year grants of approximately $100,000 per year to help social enterprises with a proven model for job creation transition to their next stage of growth - these are by invitation only from our existing inclusive Employment grant partners. 
 
We also seek to collaborate with other funders on our multi-year grants. An example is the WISE Grant which is managed by Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. 
 
See our latest Impact Report (PDF 7MB) for a list of our partner Social Enterprises. 
 
 

Which social enterprises are eligible?

Our focus

We focus on the early stages of social enterprise development including " validation," " development," and " growth". We do not fund "vision" (start-up) or "established" social enterprises. 
 
Social enterprise stage Description 
Vision The ideation or start-up stage. 
Validation An early-stage social enterprise that is still establishing its financial and business stability.

The business is operating or trading (earned over $50k in trading income in the last 12 months) but is still reliant on grants with trading revenue less that 50% total revenue).
Development A stable social enterprise that is building its financial and business stability. 

Trading income is a significant component (over 50%) of total revenue. 

The business goal is to be self-sustainable (excluding Impact Costs), and focused on diversifying income streams. 
Growth A financially sustainable social enterprise with a viable business model considering growth options and interest in attracting impact investment in the next few years. They may still require funding to manage impact costs.
Established Commercially viable with opportunity for further growth. 

Organisation type 

We focus on organisations that: 
 
  • Are seeking to strengthen their business model, build greater financial resilience and sustainability in delivering their social mission.
  • Would benefit from non-financial capacity-building support in addition to the grant. 
  • Have a long-term strategy to build its business models to transition over time to attract traditional finance and impact investment. 
 
 

Social enterprises we support

Career Seekers

Provides private sector employment opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers including students and mid-career professionals.

Good Cycles

A Melbourne-based social enterprise that uses bikes to engage, educate and employ youth at risk. 

Green Connect

Creates jobs for resettled refugees and young people in the Illawarra region (NSW) through keeping waste out of landfill, composting and growing chemical-free food. 

Jigsaw

Provides document and data management services to corporate and government organisations, as well as delivering social benefits through the training and employment of people with disability. 

ReNew Property Maintenance

A Perth-based social enterprise that connects at-risk young people with hands-on, entry level employment opportunities in commercial property maintenance. 

Australian Spatial Analytics

Australian Spatial Analytics is a strengths-based social enterprise that employs young autistic adults to do high quality data analysis for businesses and governments.


Keep exploring our grants

Inclusive Employment Grants

We support organisations creating inclusive and sustainble jobs in local communities. 

 

WISE Grant

The Work Integration Social Enterprise (WISE) Grant provides funding to WISE to help them strengthen and increase their employment outcomes for people who face challenges getting into the workforce. 

 

Westpac Scholars

Investing in the next generation to transform the future of Australia by awarding 100 scholarships a year, forever.