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:
The EMDG Act defines SMEs as businesses with a financial turnover of less than $20 million per year.
To be eligible for a grant as a representative body, you must:
For more information about representative body eligibility:
If eligible, EMDG grant funding may be available for representative bodies:
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:
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.
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.
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.