The Learning Fund

Connecting Education and Communities

As part of our efforts to make a difference for disadvantaged children and their families, the J R McKenzie Trust supports work that engages parents, families and whānau in their children’s learning, to achieve better educational outcomes for children.

We know that lots of early child hood centres, kohanga reo, schools and community groups are already working hard to achieve this.  There are great examples of effective practice around the country.  We want to encourage them to share their learning and inspire others.

For many groups it can be difficult to access the learning opportunities where this sharing takes place.  Maybe there’s a conference or a training session which is relevant to this work, but you can’t afford the registration fee.  Maybe you’d like to visit another organisation doing this kind of work, but you can’t afford the petrol or the airfare.  That’s why we’ve created the Learning Fund.

The Learning Fund makes small grants (up to $500) towards the costs of these kinds of learning opportunities.  Grants are made to organisations (not directly to individuals) to cover the costs of their staff, volunteers or members attending or taking part in a learning opportunity.  The learning opportunity should be related to our Connecting Education and Communities project: that is, it should improve your work to engage parents, families and whānau in their children’s learning.  For example, it might provide your staff or volunteer with new skills to help them work better with families, or it might be a chance to learn about new ideas for how to engage whānau.

Hints for completing the form online 

Registering 

Registering creates an 'account' for your organisation in Smartygrants, and you can use this again if you wish to make other applications in the future, either to the learning fund or our other grant rounds. You will need to enter an email address to register. You may use any email address you wish to register. However, if your organisation has a 'generic' email (e.g. info@organisation.org or admin@organisation.org), using this may be a good idea, so that other staff members can use the same log on in future if necessary (as long as they know the password!)

Saving your draft application and returning later

Remember to save often to ensure that you don't lose any of the information you've entered. You can press 'save progress' or 'save and close' at any point and log out. When you log back in, your draft application will be saved and you can start where you left off.

Submitting your application

Once you have completed your application, you will be asked to review and then submit it. Remember to review your application carefully, as you can't change it online once it has been submitted. You will not be able to submit your application until all the compulsory questions (marked *) are completed. Once you have submitted your application, you will automatically be emailed a PDF copy of your application for your records.

Further help

We are using a software package called SmartyGrants for our online applications. You may wish to download and read through the guide for applicants.