Building Early Education Fund – Small-Scale Grant Opportunity

The purpose of the Building Fund Small-Scale grant opportunity is to provide capital grants to build new or expand existing services in areas of need. The grant opportunity will enable successful providers to expand service delivery in areas where there is undersupply of ECEC. It will also target investment to improve early childhood development outcomes and socio-economic factors.

Under this opportunity, funding is available for Child Care Subsidy (CCS) and National Law approved NFP providers with a track record of delivering high quality ECEC services and demonstrated capability to build National Law and Regulation compliant Centre-Based Day Care (CBDC) services. Funding is also available to NFP organisations, including local councils, to modify buildings to facilitate the provision of in-venue Family Day Care (FDC) by a high quality provider in areas where no ECEC is available.

Funding will be for ECEC capital works only. This includes new buildings or expansions provided it creates new or additional ECEC places in areas of need. Grantees cannot use funding for service delivery. Applicants will be required to outline their business case for managing the ongoing viability of service delivery of these new or expanded services.

Funding under this grant opportunity is not available to facilitate or support the ongoing operational costs of ECEC service delivery. However, grantees may be eligible to apply for operational funding under the Supplementary Operational Support Funding Grant opportunity, open to applications from March 2026 to June 2029, under which operational funding will be available from 2026-27 to 2029-30. Recipients of capital grants will not be guaranteed operational funding.

The objectives of the grant opportunity are to increase:

• the number of NFP CBDC services and ECEC places in areas of undersupply in a timely manner;
• the number and capacity of services delivered by quality, NFP providers in the sector; and
• children’s participation in ECEC in areas of need.

Consistent with commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, the grant opportunity also aims to support availability of high quality and culturally safe ECEC for First Nations children, families and communities to ensure children thrive in their early years.