Local giving with powerful results
Cardinia is one of Victoria’s fastest-growing shires, and growth brings real pressure on families, housing and community services. Your support helps make sure no one is left without the help they need.
Government and council funding can only stretch so far. Without a coordinated local effort, good causes go underfunded, worthy projects stall, and Cardinia’s growing needs risk being met too late, or not at all.
Your gift is combined with others, building real funding power for Cardinia.
Local data guides us to the areas facing the greatest need.
We award funding to trusted organisations doing genuine local good.
Recipients report back, so you know exactly what your gift achieved.
The beauty of the Foundation is it gives us all a vehicle to really help make a change…
Yes. As a registered charity with DGR1 status, donations to the Cardinia Community Foundation are tax-deductible.
Your donation is combined with others and directed to local grants, supporting organisations and causes across our four focus areas: family resilience, children and youth wellbeing, housing stability, and food security.
While general donations are directed to where the need is greatest, options like Named Funds and the Women’s Giving Circle let you support causes closer to your own interests.
Donating through us means your gift is combined with others for greater impact, and directed to causes that have been carefully assessed and vetted, something that’s harder to guarantee when giving directly.
We report on the outcomes of every grant we award, and publish an annual Impact Report showing exactly what local giving has achieved.
Yes. We offer structured partnership tiers for local businesses, including Cornerstone, Foundation, and Partner levels, each offering different recognition and involvement opportunities.
No. Every donation, large or small, contributes to the funding pool that supports local grants across Cardinia. Please know that donations over $2 are tax deductible.
Every dollar donated stays local. Unlike national charities, your support is never spread across other states or causes outside Cardinia Shire.
Every grant decision is made collectively by our volunteer board, based on a consistent, transparent assessment process.
There are several ways to support us beyond donating, including corporate partnerships, workplace giving, and sharing our work within your own network.
I think many of us have visions of what a homeless person is, or somebody in need, and you could see these people and some of them were just… you could quite easily imagine it was either somebody you knew or somebody you care about who could be in exactly that same position.
Spending that time one-on-one with these people gave them the belief that there are people out there who really care.
My name is Simon Dunston. I’m the owner and director of SJD Homes. SJD Homes has been in the Cardinia Shire for about the last 17 years, but I’ve been a resident here for about 25 years.
We’ve been very active in the community for quite some time. We’ve been giving back to the community through various charities. What we’ve really found is that, over the journey, it really is hard. You need to know who needs it most. And sometimes the people that you’re talking to aren’t the people who are in the most need.
The Cardinia Community Foundation has been around for quite a few years. I was approached probably about two years ago to see if I would have some interest in becoming more involved in it. So I got to know a lot more about what they’re doing in the area and was pretty impressed with what I saw.
The beauty of the Foundation is it gives us all a vehicle to really help make a change. So why we’ve been heavily involved and wanted to donate, and for me to get more involved in the Foundation, is that they really can see the people who need it most.
Being on the Board of Directors, it feels as though it gives you a purpose. I get to hear about the people who are needing the grants, but you can also see that direct impact that you are able to make with people in our community.
It’s very easy for a business to turn around and justify and say, “Right at the moment, I can’t afford to,” or “I can’t help.”
But that’s the wrong attitude. Because if we’re feeling a pinch as employers, what about the people who are really finding it tough?
A company with a purpose is a place that people want to come to.
As a business owner, the thing that I’ve learned is that my retention of staff is fantastic because people want to be involved in these things. They want to help.
It’s not just giving to people. It’s what we all get out of it.
Because a community is exactly that. It’s all of us working together on a problem.
This is the time that we rally together. And as a collective, we really can make a difference.
