Australian Government funding for Free Software (community) projects

I think that it would be really useful for people in our community to learn about the funding available and put grant applications forward. It would probably involve collaboration between groups like Linux Australia, ComputerBank, ACS and perhaps linkages with people from less technical organisations.

The top-level funding comes from government departments, such as DCITA [grants] and DEST [grants]. Grants for individuals may be delegated through smaller bodies, depending on the scheme.

Artists work that system quite a lot in order to work on many small projects with funding from similar departments. The procedure that seems to work is to get a few people together with complementary skills, put in applications for a few different grant schemes, and hope that some come through.

Basically, there's grant money out there, there's lots of people in our community doing great stuff but not asking for that grant money, and maybe we could learn (as a community) how to change that.