The power of community meets the power of the internet in auDA community grants

auDA - .au Domain Administration, the not-for-profit organisation charged with managing Australia’s four million-plus .au domain names, has announced that applications are now open for its 2026 community grants program.

Part of auDA’s remit is encouraging digital inclusion and innovation, and it has made $50,000 grants available to 15 organisations looking to use the internet for community good.

AuDA’s senior manager of public benefit, Rikki Andrews, told the Community Advocate that through the grants auDA seeks to support “education, research and community-led projects that enhance the utility of the internet for the Australian community.”

It particularly aims to benefit one or more of these groups:

• Rural, regional and remote Australians
• Australians living with disability
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Young Australians (12–24 years old)

Ideally, the grants will act as “a gateway,” she said.

“What is the gateway to engage people to do something or make a change that you think will be of benefit? [Through the grants] we can entice people and engage people to develop those digital skills and establish an online presence through the big gateway of choice.”

An example was a grant awarded last year to Landcare Tasmania, which applied to create the Landcare Knowledge Exchange, a digital library and training series.

The grant funded the creation of a secure, searchable digital library of Landcare knowledge across the Apple Isle, but also funded a statewide program of in-person workshops and online training to educate Landcare groups on how to digitise records and use digital tools to preserve knowledge.

Andrews said it was the workshop component that really appealed to auDA’s external grant selection panel.

“It was appealing because it was going to have a positive impact on the environment, but secondly, it was using a digital platform to gather knowledge and to be able to share knowledge,” she said. “That’s a really good use of digital platforms. Everybody can contribute together, you can see it all and you can start to do data analysis and sharing, all of that type of thing.

“It acknowledged that for Landcare Tasmania, and all the other Landcares and other organisations as well, many volunteers are older people who may not be as digitally savvy.”

Andrews said the digital skills workshops, run in local libraries and other community centres, enabled older Landcare volunteers to improve their internet skills through something that they were really interested in.

“They’re not going to learn how to use a computer because they need to send an email or engage with their Centrelink or their MyGov stuff, or other boring uses,” she said. “They’re doing it because they’re passionate about Landcare and they want to be able to share with people and be part of a broader network. The digital platform enables that to happen.”

Other grants last year enabled the development of digital hubs, online mentoring and other important uses of the internet for groups across a wide range of Australian places, demographics and cultural groups.

A striking part of the auDA grant application process is the way it encourges potential grantees to explore the online and AI resources already available. AuDA wants grantees to be familiar with the National Device Bank, Infoxchange training resources, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.

“When you’ve been in a number of grantmaking roles, you see people applying for stuff that you know has been funded before, and you know that there are resources and how-to’s out there,” Andrews said. “It’s frustrating when you have to say, ‘You do not need to ask me for money yet. There are resources there, there are case studies, go and do that first and then come and say, hey, actually I only need a little bit money so I can apply this stuff. We don't need to create it from scratch.’

“We have updated the grant FAQs to keep pointing people to the things that I know are there, that are trusted, that have been well developed by good organisations. To know that what a grantee wants to do is important, wanted and needed, we need to consider that there are national strategies out there, like the Not-for-profit Development Blueprint, and the Digital Futures Strategy that Infoxchange is pulling together. We should all be working together to deliver on those,” she said.

“Yes, auDA has got a grant program, but this stuff is available all year round, so we encourage organisations to go and find it, use it and apply it so that we can get the improvements that we’d like with the resources that are already there,” she said.

The grants have been recognised for their impact, with several recipients winning Australian NFP Technology Awards, including Justice Connect, Success Works Partners and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).

The Community Grants Program is part of auDA’s wider Public Benefit Program, which also distributes research and development grants and partners with the Churchill Trust to award Churchill Fellowships.

More information

auDA community grant program: website