Eligibility for representative bodies

Support your small and medium enterprise members to achieve export success.

Representative bodies are organisations or associations promoting the interests of a group of Australian businesses.

Grants to representative bodies help them to assist their small and medium enterprise (SME) members as required by the Export Market Development Grants Act 1997 (EMDG Act).

The aim is for SME members to:

  • become ready for export
  • create, develop, expand and diversify their export activities in foreign markets
  • gain export readiness, marketing and promotional skills
  • support trade diversification priorities.

The EMDG Act defines SMEs as businesses with a financial turnover of less than $20 million per year.

Eligibility criteria for representative bodies

To be eligible for a grant as a representative body, you must:

  • meet other definitional requirements in the grant guidelines
  • not be distributing income to members or shareholders
  • have a valid Australian Business Number (ABN)
  • have the skills and experience to deliver, or arrange delivery of, proposed export training activities
  • be tax compliant and fit to receive a grant
  • demonstrate in your submitted plans how your activities support your SME members
  • meet all other eligibility requirements.

More information about representative body eligibility is in the EMDG guidelines on Guidelines and legislation.

EMDG representative body funding

If eligible, EMDG grant funding may be available for representative bodies:

  • providing export training recognised by Austrade to your SME members
  • undertaking new marketing and export promotional activities incorporating eligible expenditure that support SME members.

Marketing and promotional activities

If you are planning marketing and promotional activities, you must have a high-quality plan for proposed new promotional activities.

The plan must be unique and tailored to the representative body’s members. It must not be copied from another representative body, business, EMDG application or a generic marketing plan.

New activities must demonstrate:

  • a substantially new or different approach towards marketing and promotion
  • alignment with government trade priorities and/or emerging trends and changes in export opportunities
  • support of expansion to new markets only
  • promotion of new products, services or innovation
  • support of new or existing SME members.

Export training activities

You must have a high-quality plan for proposed export training activities tailored to your SME members. This is needed if you are planning export training.

Grant amounts and duration

For Round 4, we will offer representative bodies a maximum grant up to $50,000 per financial year.

Grant agreements will be for up to 2 years for 2025–26 and 2026–27.

You must be able to match the grant funding with your own money. This cannot be funding from other Commonwealth, state, territory or local government sources.

Prepare to apply

If the representative body tier is right for your organisation, read the EMDG guidelines on Guidelines and legislation and apply.

Templates and sample documents are available at Apply as a representative body.

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