City of Melbourne Small Business Grants Program
The City of Melbourne’s Small Business Grants Program supports local small businesses aiming to innovate and grow. This program is designed to enhance Melbourne's economy by offering funding to businesses that create employment opportunities and contribute unique offerings to the city.
The program aligns to the City of Melbourne's Economic Development Strategy 2031 ensuring Melbourne is one of the
easiest places to start and grow a business and encourage innovation and start-up creation. This program also exists to enhance the City of Melbourne’s reputation for business vitality, diversity and inclusiveness and contributes to the city’s economy and community.
For this program, a ‘small business’ is defined as an organisation which employs less than 20 fulltime or equivalent employees.
Eligibility
Your business must:
- be located within the City of Melbourne municipality
- hold a valid Australian Business Number (ABN)
- have less than 20 full-time employees
- be an Australian registered business, sole trader, company, business cooperative or partnership and provide documented evidence of its legal structure
- provide evidence of appropriate business insurances
- not have outstanding acquittals or debts to the City of Melbourne
- provide evidence of financial viability
- have a minimum 3-year commercial lease within the City of Melbourne if applying for the Shopfront Occupancy stream.
Funding
The program will support applicants with new businesses to the municipality or existing businesses looking to expand or relocate their current offer within the municipality.
For this grant round applicants choose ONE of following four streams, with up to $25,000 (excl GST)
per applicant available for each:
-
Open stream: for any small business operating within the municipality that meets the eligibility
criteria and program objectives. -
Social enterprise stream: For this program, a ‘social enterprise’ is defined as a business that
derives most of their income from trade and uses profits to contribute to their social mission.
Within this definition, types of applicants may be a certified B Corporation or a for-profit business
that meets the Social Traders or People and Planet First definition of a social enterprise. -
Circular economy stream: for a small business that delivers circular outcomes or will
implement circular economy solutions to generate circular outcomes. These are products,
services or initiatives that avoid, reduce, or design out waste. -
Shopfront occupancy stream: for a small business that occupies a ground floor, street-facing
commercial shopfront within the municipality that has been vacant for more than four months
and meets all other eligibility criteria and program objectives.
o Key Shopfront Occupancy Focus Areas: an additional $5,000 is available for
applicants who occupy a vacant shopfront in one of CoM’s key occupancy focus areas -
Docklands and the eastern and western fringes of the Central Business district. See
Appendix 1 for the geographical footprint of these focus areas.
What they will fund:
Capital improvement costs associated with fit-out of business premises including, but not limited to furniture, cabinetry, joinery, partitioning, flooring, shelving, and painting.
Website costs including development or enhancements.
IT equipment costs including the purchasing of hardware (computers, laptops, printers, servers).
Specialised equipment and software that is directly related to the operation of the new business or as part of the business expansion activity.
Other expenditure items not listed above where it can be clearly demonstrated there is a significant need for the set up or expansion of the small business.
What they won’t fund:
- Operational expenses which are ongoing costs to run the business, such as rent, utilities, legal costs, marketing, subscriptions, wages and personal expenses.
- Applications that do not meet the eligibility or assessment criteria.
- Expenditure items incurred prior to the date the business applied for this grant.
- Anything else outside of the agreed budget.
- Any activity that denigrates, excludes or offends parts of the community, is contrary to anti vilification laws, or freedom of speech, or not aligned with Council policies, priorities or values.
- Activities that pollute land, air or water, or destroy or waste non-renewable resources
