Collaborating for Cultural Initiatives and Community Connection
Developing meaningful and long term partnerships is central to the Ingrained Foundation’s approach, with a focus on sustainable and long-term outcomes. Earlier this year, we celebrated our five-year milestone, with the introduction of our inaugural Thriving Communities partnership with Human Nature Adventure Therapy, alongside our annual grants program.
As the year draws to a close, we are excited to announce our multi-year Cultural Initiatives program with The Returning.
The Gathering, photo credit: The Returning
The Returning is an Indigenous women-led not-for-profit organisation created in 2018 by Bundjalung woman Ella Noah Bancroft. The Returning offer seven programs across the region, focusing on nature therapy principles, health retreats and family support services.
Over three years, Ingrained Foundation will provide rental funding for a larger, more collaborative office space which will allow them to continue to focus on existing programs throughout the region and developing a sustainable funding model.
The arrangement has been co-designed with The Returning, and will focus on supporting The Returning to move towards their vision of all people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to be connected to Country, to their ancestral culture, to community and to themselves.
“The Returning was seeded from a deep desire to see our community rise, to see our knowledge systems valued by the 97%, and to share the fruits of the Bundjalung coast with our inland communities. The Returning hopes to inspire ways to get back to relationality with self, community and country while also supporting our people with cultural job opportunities and spaces to practice, share and maintain our culture,” says Ella Noah Bancroft, Founder, The Returning.
“We are all women, mostly mothers and mostly mob run charity. We are so grateful for the support from Ingrained and the multi year funding that will allow us security for the heartbeat of our organisation to have a home for the next three years. Supporting the operating costs of a charity is crucial to its success.”
Ingrained is looking forward to developing more arrangements of this nature, working with grassroots not-for-profits to improve their capabilities, and increase agency and security of funding so that they are supported to be more effective and impactful.
With our annual grants program opening applications again in March 2025 (funding pool: $150,000), along with other initiatives in the works, we encourage local not-for-profits and the community to sign up to our newsletter for news and updates.