By Lizzie Macaulay
Regular readers will know this column usually finds me turning up somewhere new and learning from people far more capable than me. This month is similar, with one small difference: I’m already in the room. The project I’m about to tell you about is one I’ve been working on myself, and I’ll admit there’s something a little vulnerable about inviting you behind the curtain.
Over recent months, I’ve been working with Community Bank Hervey Bay, helping to get the word out about some significant community initiatives they have coming up in 2026. Part of that work involves talking to a lot of people across the Fraser Coast. Community groups, sports clubs, charities, service organisations. And a theme kept emerging from those conversations that stopped me in my tracks.
When I’d mention grants, something shifted in people. Not disinterest, more like a quiet anxiety. These are organisations run almost entirely by volunteers, people already giving their evenings and weekends to something they care deeply about. The idea of adding a formal application process, with its paperwork and criteria and scrutiny, on top of everything else? It can make the whole thing feel like more than it’s worth.
But when I delved deeper into what their organisation was trying to achieve this year, what they needed to make a real difference to the people they serve, the conversation came alive. Turns out most community group leaders don’t lie awake thinking about funding opportunities. They lie awake thinking about projects. The gap they can see. The equipment that would change everything. The service that doesn’t exist yet but should.
That reframe, starting with the project rather than the money, changed how I approached this whole thing. And it’s the spirit in which I want to tell you about what Community Bank Hervey Bay is doing this year.
First, a bit of context that surprised me when I dug into it.
Community Bank Hervey Bay operates on a profit-for-purpose model. Up to 80% of local profits are reinvested back into the Fraser Coast community. It’s a structure that sits at the heart of Bendigo Community Bank network, and it means that when locals bank locally, that money doesn’t disappear into a head office somewhere else. It stays here. It comes back as grants, sponsorships, and programs that benefit the very people who walked through the branch door.
Most people don’t know this. I didn’t fully appreciate it until I started working with them.
What it looks like in practice, across nearly twenty years, is a quiet accumulation of investments in the fabric of this community. Solar panels on the roof of the Fraser Coast Hospice. Support for programs serving young people, families, and those doing it tough. And perhaps most vividly, the funding of a sleep bus (the Zbus) for the Fraser Coast.
Twenty years of this kind of investment adds up. And in 2026, the bank is doing something it hasn’t done before.
Community Bank Hervey Bay is opening a $200,000 community grants program for Fraser Coast organisations. Individual grants range from $2,000 to $50,000, with between five and fifteen projects expected to receive funding. Applications are open to not-for-profit organisations, sporting and recreation groups, community service organisations and more.
If your organisation has a project burning away in the background, something you know would make a real difference, but the idea of formalising it feels like one more overwhelming thing on an already full plate, that’s exactly who this next part is for.
On Thursday, 9 April at 6pm, Community Bank Hervey Bay is hosting the Fraser Coast Projects Forum at the Bendigo Bank meeting room. It’s an open invitation to any organisation with a project in mind, whether the idea is fully formed or just a feeling that something needs to exist. The bank’s team will be there to help you shape it, talk through the process, and make sure the vision you’re carrying doesn’t get lost in the logistics of applying for support.
Picture what your organisation could achieve with the right support behind it. Start there, and let the application follow.
And then there’s June. My favourite part of all of this…
On Saturday, 13 June at Seafront Oval, Community Bank Hervey Bay will host its 20th Anniversary Community Showcase, a free carnival-style family fun day running from 10am to 2pm.
We’ll be seeing a huge variety of stallholders, and the best bit? Every community group, charity and sports club that’s joining us to hold their own stall will be bringing something interactive with them. A demonstration, an activity, or something, anything that lets visitors actually experience what the organisation does and who they are at their core, rather than just what you get from the flyer on the desk. The idea is for people to leave having discovered things they didn’t know existed on the Fraser Coast.
And that, honestly, is what excites me most about this.
The Fraser Coast has an extraordinary number of people quietly doing extraordinary things. Community groups running on goodwill and late nights. Sports clubs that shape young people’s characters as much as their fitness. Charities are filling gaps that no one was even aware existed.
Most don’t have a marketing budget, and word of mouth, powerful as it is in a community like ours, tends to travel within networks that already know you. An event like this puts you in front of people who don’t.
I’ve lived on the Fraser Coast for over a decade, and I will be the first to admit I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. Working on this project has already introduced me to organisations and initiatives I had no idea existed, things happening quietly, consistently, and with remarkable heart, right under my nose.
June 13 is going to bring a lot of that into the light. But what strikes me more is this: somewhere on the Fraser Coast right now, someone is running a group, coaching a team, or keeping a service alive on the smell of an oily rag, and who hasn’t quite found the moment to put their hand up.
If that’s you, now’s your chance to think bigger.
Community Bank Hervey Bay 2026 Grants Program
Applications open: 1 April 2026
Applications close: 10am, Wednesday 27 May 2026
Fraser Coast Projects Forum: Thursday 9 April, 6pm, Bendigo Bank meeting room
https://events.humanitix.com/fraser-coast-projects-forum
20th Anniversary Community Showcase: Saturday 13 June 2026, 10am-2pm, Seafront Oval
Enquiries: events@bankcommunity.com.au
