Grant Funding Planning - DEADLINE 25 FEBRUARY

[Antifoo (Murray Wayper)]

Calling on all Teams (and others) to nominate projects for the CGBF Grant I spoke about at the last meeting.
Projects should promote your strategic direction for the Space. Key drivers are:

• lack of resource to complete a workflow
  • eg, metal shop needing a magnabend/panbrake to compliment YAG & welders
• equipment in high demand by existing and prospective members
• sufficient amount of equipment to run classes
  • eg, migs for welding classes, soldering iron sets for electronics,

As discussed, grants can only be given for tangible assets, the list of ineligible items is available here.

All projects will need to be entered on the CAPEX 2022 sheet so there’s not long to put your projects together AND get them entered.

I will be holding a capex and project meeting after the general meeting on Tuesday 25th, along with the Team Leaders meeting.

[Ryan1 (Ryan Marple)]

The metalshop has finalized a wishlist. We understand we may not get everything onto the grant so more important items have been prioritized. In order of highest priority our desired items are:

1. Powermax45 XP Plasma Cutter - $ 4,180.00
2. Razor 320 TIG Welder - $ 3,476.00
3. Hydraulic Pan Brake - $ 19,195.00
4. Welding Table - $ 2,585.00
5. Razor 200 TIG Welder - $ 1,760.00

The rationale for each of there items has been discussed internally within the team but I’m happy to reiterate at a general meeting.

[Raf (Raf Kempeneers)]

I have quickly glanced through all the requirements for the GCBF and it looks like some things that are mentioned in the General Meeting 08/02/2022 would be ineligible (depending on your viewpoint).

Quite a bit of items that are mentioned would be replacing things that are already there.

So:

• Toolbox
• Shelving
• Vice
• 3D-printers
• Lasercutters
• Welders
• Welding table

Are things that are already available. So we need to really pitch the improvement of having that tool and the value for money of having that tool.

I copied and pasted some sections from their website with MY remarks in CAPS to try and get contrast.

WARNING: this is quite boring. In Summary, we should really focus on wording and making a proper sales pitch. The teams should highlight the difference the tool is going to make, especially if it’s replacing something that is already there. This is just food for thought, I am just trying to look at it from their point of view.

The Grant committees viewpoint will be that:

• A lasercutter is a lasercutter
• All 3D printers are the same and why does HSBNE need three?
• HSBNE already has welders
• HSBNE already has tools

An application is deemed eligible if:

• it demonstrates that it will benefit Queensland communities (HOW DO WE RELATE HSBNE TO THE BROADER COMMUNITY)
• MULTIPLE quotes have been sourced; the actual quotes are not required to be submitted with the application but may be requested at a later date

For the Carport covering the future Mechanical area and the Mezzanine in the Wood Workshop:

Facility Improvements:
If you do not own the land you must have:

• written approval from the owner to get the proposed improvements
• sourced quotes from a licensed builder or builder contractor (if applicable by law)

We should aim to get As high as possible in the Priorities and other Determining factors.
The "Government priorities identified by the Minister " is one that we can certainly work with.

Priorities

Applications are prioritised by the committee in this order, where 1 has the highest priority:

1. Items/facilities directly affected, damaged or destroyed by a declared natural disaster in the last 2 years
2. Equipment or facility improvements
3. Buses, cars, caravans, boats, tractors, trailers, large mowers, motorbikes and similar items
4. Community events, training, workshops, festivals, publications and website development
5. Organisations that have received more than $15,000 from the GCBF within the last 2 years

Other determining factors

These factors also contribute to the committee’s decisions:

• Financial position of organisation (SO WE NEED TO BE IN A BAD FINANCIAL POSITION? OR A GOOD ONE SO WE DON’T GO BANKRUPT?)
• Age of organisation
• Value for money of the grant (DOES IT IMPROVE THE VALUE OF MEMBERSHIP HAVING THIS TOOL?)
• Other contributions, financially or in-kind, towards the grant (HSBNE TOPS UP ANY MONEY THAT WOULD BE “MISSING”? OR SUPPLIERS GIVE A DISCOUNT?)
• Opportunities for the organisation to generate income (WE CAN ATTRACT MORE MEMBERS/CAN DO BETTER WORKSHOPS/RENT OUT MACHINERY FOR STARTUPS)
• Benefits to more than one organisation (CAN WE LINK TO TEAM ARROW/MENS SHED/START UP FACILITY)
• Number of applications by the legal entity (if sponsoring)
• Geographical location of organisation and benefit to region (WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF HAVING HSBNE IN BRISBANE? WHAT VALUE DO WE ADD?)
• Target group being assisted (DOES THE TARGET GROUP GO BEYOND THE MEMBERS?)
• Government priorities identified by the Minister ( priorities? Supporting jobs , Making it for Queensland , Investing in skills. THESE ARE SOME OF THE ANGLES WE CAN USE. “WE HELP MEMBERS TO GAIN VALUABLE SKILLS THEY CAN USE TO GAIN EMPLOYMENT OR TO START THEIR OWN BUSINESS IN QLD” “WE CAN BRING BACK MANUFACTURING SKILLS TO QLD”

The list of variations can be important. Prices can change, quantities can change and items can be changed for something that is equivalent.

You can ask for changes (variations) to be made to an approved GCBF grant in certain cases.

There are 3 types of variations:

• extending the acquittal due date
• changing the quantities and amounts of approved items (PRICE CHANGES)
• requesting to change items that are in line with the original application. (OTHER SUPPLIERS)

I probably spent way too much time on this post. I assume there is already quite a bit of experience writing grants?

[Ryan1 (Ryan Marple)]

Thanks for outlining these points Raf. To my knowledge, the submissions in the meeting are only part of the internal HSBNE process for accepting capital expenditure. Items that will be actually put on the grant will follow the eligibility criteria of multiple quotes.

In reference to upgrading equipment, there’s a lot of value in doing that in comparison to buying more equipment. A lot of our equipment is becoming unreliable so it often can’t be used or be trusted to be working at any time. Replacing old equipment reduces our maintenance burden (which is already far too high) while completely new equipment would increase it. A lot of the old equipment also requires arcane knowledge to use making it less accessible to most members.

[Raf (Raf Kempeneers)]

Hi Ryan, Understood.

I am just trying to look at it from the point of an official (from the GCBF committee) that is trying to check off requirements from their list of objectives following their procedures. The way you worded it about the old equipment is a perfect reason as to why the upgrade is valid.

[Ale_More (Alejandro Moré)]

I’ll second @Ryan1 on this. Quickly you can see that we have a lot of stuff that we want to get on the grant. So after is voted by the membership, we will have to reach a concensus about what’s gonna go into the grant and then worry about selling this to the Grant’s people and be on top of the technicalities of the matter.

I’d suggest to people who has presented proposals that could be paid though our normal way of funding, to vote their items allowing to get them through normal funding if they are remove from the grant application.

[devians (Joshua Hogendorn)]

Just to clarify re voting, capex etc.

The CAPEX sheet is the list of stuff we have voted to buy, but its also a forward looking plan. IE, the capex sheet is setup in such a way that we can say ‘its on our roadmap to buy X at some point, and this is the order of priorities in our spending’. It also supports allocating things for grants and it understands the concept of a bargain, in that stuff can go in there with a ‘new’ price, and a ‘bargain’ price so we can have the pre approval to jump on deals if we see them (marketplace, auctions etc).

The reason we ask the grant items to go through the CAPEX sheet is that we should have all this stuff as part of the long term plan for the space, regardless. We’re just picking stuff up out of capex to ‘bring forward’ that expenditure. Its also because prior grants didnt go through any member approval and thats a bit questionable, so trying to tick all the boxes.

So, the next step is to look at what everyone has proposed, do some prioritisation and culling, seek alternatives for things, figure out what the best move is. That all goes into the capex sheet once voted on by members and we then work towards buying the items (in this case, by the grant. but some of this stuff might not get allocated to the grant but go on capex regardless because its ‘part of the plan’)

Re your reading of the grant rules and criteria, you’re dead right, we just have to pick the items and have good backup for ‘why’ etc. things with better stories do better on grants. For example, its not on there right now but if we put 4x MIG welders on there, we can say ‘yep it reduces maintenance, parts, consumables and it lets us run classes and teach the brisbane community a key skill in manufacturing’, the pitch being 4x means classes, right? So there may be some fiddling with the specific items to aim towards that kind of thing.