The idea for this service came from the interview comments of school leaders who were involved in my PhD study. People had great ideas for improving the learning conditions for students but they had less knowledge in how to fund an idea, where to look to identify suitable funding options and what was required to secure and use effectively the funds. These sorts of sentiments were captured in comments, such as the one below:

…even if I was to take [the principal’s] role that would be an area I’d have to improve
and feel more confident in; or if someone’s going to jump over me into [the principal’s] role
then I’d like to think they had that broad range of skills … Things like writing applications
for funding and the entrepreneurship that goes on in schools…that’s an area I’d be looking
to work on and probably where I don’t see a great strength (Assistant Principal, June 2007)

In 2008, a scoping study was conducted by ACER to ascertain whether there really was a ‘need’ for education specific services in this area. People were asked about their current practices in this area and what they perceived were key barriers to seeking and using additional funding opportunities.

Amongst its findings, the scoping study identified that:

1.    more funds could be going into more schools. Additional funding opportunities are out there, but for various reasons (e.g. time, capacity) school leaders’ approaches to seeking and using funds are at best patchy.

2.    not all funding information is relevant to schools or educational in focus.

3.    no organisation currently tailors all the possible grant information for schools.

4.    two key disincentives for school leaders are the time it takes to identify funding options; and seeking and weighing up whether it is worth putting in for a grant.

5.    school leaders take into account various factors when deciding whether to put in for a fund. These include the stress involved; the total grant amount versus the amount of words to be written for a submission; relevance to school priorities; and who will actually do the work.

From the scoping study findings, The Tender Bridge – Bringing schools and funds together has been developed.

We hope you find our website and associated services and learning materials helpful in your ongoing development of teaching and learning in your school context.

Dr Michelle Anderson
The Tender Bridge
Project Director