Strategic Grants is proud to offer New Zealand’s most comprehensive suite of customised grant resources, backed by extensive experience, industry knowledge, and local team members on the ground.  

We work with your local Council, to bring you an always up to date list of grant opportunities through access to the GEMS (Grants Expertise Management System) grants calendar database, completely customised for your local organisations. And we couple it with grant readiness training, to increase funding success in your community.

“Auckland Council is very happy with its bulk subscription to GEMS. Best of all, our community groups tell us they are securing more new funding! With GEMS they know which grants are available, and it helps them stay on top of workloads and due dates. They don’t need to spend hours searching for grants, and everything is recorded in one place. Organisations are also learning industry best practice, setting them up for future fundraising success.”

Duncan McLaggan, Auckland Council

GEM Local, through the Ruapehu District Council GEM Local Community Groups Programme, works really well for us. The customised grants calendar is great for our community groups and has worked really well in being able to provide alternative grant opportunities that they can find all in one place.”

Candice Mcnaught, Ruapehu District Council

Benefits for Councils:

  • Free up Council time and resources by equipping community groups with tools they need to seek grant funds outside of what your Council offers
  • Identify relevant grants for Council Projects
  • Council branded webpage with custom URL – preview what your site could look like here

Benefits for Community Groups:

  • Self-identify relevant grants for project delivery
  • Increased grants success and mission delivery
  • Access to practical webinars, tip sheets and writing samples
  • Cloud-based software accessible from anywhere and important customised grants information delivered direct to their inbox!

“We absolutely LOVE this access. We have identified many other funders to apply to in the future. The use of this service is amazing.” 

GEM Local user via Auckland Council subscription

“GEM Local has been an amazing support as we are working voluntarily, and it saves a lot of time which is important as a volunteer.” 

GEM Local user via Whangarei District subscription

This is just a snapshot of the outcomes being achieved by community organisations using GEMS as part of the Council programme

Two thirds of community groups found access to GEMs either “Extremely” or “Very” useful.​

Four out of five community groups know more about grant opportunities and two out of every three have more advanced notice to prepare applications.​

Two thirds of community groups reported reduced time in searching for grants.​

One third of community groups have been successful in obtaining new funding streams thanks to the program.​

Nine out of every ten community groups have identified at least one new grant opportunity through taking part.​

Amongst those who were successful, the median amount of new grant funding is $11,000.

Our Partnership delivers:

  • A customised grants calendar and GEM Portal account for Council to identify funding prospects for council’s own projects
  • Training for Council’s Grants Team in using GEM Portal
  • 3 x one-hour live grant writing training webinars for community groups
  • Free GEM Local personalised grants calendars for community groups
  • Monitoring, evaluation and reporting of the program’s benefits in your local community

Our presence across Aotearoa

In addition to our long-running and successful New Zealand Council programme (we’ve been partnering with Auckland Council and Ruapehu District Council for four years now), we have successfully run our popular face to face Grant-seeker Workshops for smaller local community groups in the Wairarapa, Selwyn and Whangarei funded by councils and community development agencies, as well as our own Best Practice Grant-seeker Workshops in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch for not-for-profits and community groups of all sizes.

Some of our New Zealand Council and non-profit clients

Our NZ based Grants Strategists

Ruth Button

Ruth Button

Grants Strategist

Greta Buchanan

Greta Buchanan

Grants Strategist


We’d love to hear from you – request your demo of GEMS below or send us message with how we can help: