Government Grants for Dummies

Government grants are supposed to fund bold ideas, spark community benefit, or protect the environment. In reality, they’ve become a lifeline for organisations that exist less to solve problems and more to survive on a steady diet of public money. Once you see how the game works, it’s less about outcomes and more about keeping the tap turned on.

Step one: design the project backwards. Don’t start with a real-world need — start with the grant criteria and build a proposal that fits neatly inside it. Whether it delivers anything useful is beside the point. The goal isn’t change, it’s funding.

Step two: never, under any circumstances, give money back. If you find yourself with leftovers at the end of the project, invent something — anything — to burn through it. Side projects, consultant reports, creative “engagement strategies”… as long as the balance hits zero, you win. The true measure of success is not results, but whether every cent has been spent.

Step three: bring in the consultants. This is where the consultant curtain comes down and the paper trail fades. A $300,000 “initiative” can be quietly transformed into $250,000 in consultancy fees, hidden behind memorandums of understanding and tidy invoices. On paper, it looks like progress. In reality, it’s often just money moving in circles.

By the time the acquittal report lands, the cycle is complete. Boxes are ticked, KPIs are parroted, and outcomes are presented as glossy bullet points. Taxpayers never see what really happened — just a tidy assurance that all funds were “fully expended.” And so the organisations remain solvent, new grants are chased, and the merry-go-round keeps spinning.

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be like this. There are simple fixes that could stop the grift. Consultants could be required to provide detailed expenditure breakdowns, outlining the actual services delivered, the outcomes achieved, and the costs attached. Every dollar spent should clearly align with the original grant agreement, with any detours explained and justified. Caps and guidelines on consultancy fees could stop projects becoming little more than feeding troughs for professional services. And strict conflict of interest rules — real ones, not box-ticking exercises — could force grantees and consultants to declare relationships that might skew decisions.

None of this is radical. It’s just basic accountability. But until these guardrails are in place, the grant system will keep rewarding those who know how to game it best. For the rest of us — the people actually footing the bill — we’ll keep getting glossy reports while the real outcomes vanish behind the consultant curtain.