Australia has just put another $600,000 behind social enterprises — and disability employment is part of the story.
On 1 October 2026, the Minister for Social Services, the Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, announced six new grants under the Social Enterprise Development Initiative (SEDI): targeted capability-building funding of up to $120,000 per enterprise, covering the unglamorous essentials that help small mission-driven businesses scale — financial management, business planning, legal support.
Among the recipients is RoboFit in Wollongong, New South Wales: an organisation providing integrated rehabilitation and employment pathways for Australians with disability. It sits alongside a catering business training refugees and migrants to launch food businesses (FoodLab, Sydney), a Torres Strait Islander cultural tourism operator creating Indigenous employment (Strait Experience, Thursday Island), and a streetwear brand funding youth homelessness programs (HoMie, Melbourne).
Since 2024, the Australian Government has invested $6.6 million in SEDI grants across more than 60 social enterprises, deliberately targeting some of the country’s most marginalised communities: refugees and asylum seekers, First Nations people, young people — and people with disability.
The point most people miss
Read that list again. Disability employment isn’t siloed in a separate “disability program.” It sits inside a mainstream social-enterprise ecosystem, funded on the same terms, judged by the same outcomes: jobs created, businesses grown, communities strengthened.
That’s exactly where accessible entrepreneurship belongs.
Too often, entrepreneurship support for disabled people is designed as a niche disability service — well-meaning, but siloed from the networks, intermediaries, funders, and markets where businesses actually grow. Australia’s approach suggests a better model: back the intermediaries that already know how to build enterprises, and make sure disability inclusion is designed in, not bolted on.
What we’re watching
At WKG Foundation, our entrepreneurship modules were built from lived experience of disability — but they’re designed to travel. The SEDI announcement strengthens our conviction that the right partners for adapting them aren’t only disability organisations: they’re the intermediaries already supporting social enterprises, and providers in programs like Inclusive Employment Australia, who understand both business-building and employment pathways.
If you’re an Australian intermediary, social-enterprise supporter, or employment provider interested in accessible entrepreneurship — we’d like to talk.
Source: Department of Social Services, “Ready, SEDI, Go: New funding for social enterprises to deliver bigger community impact,” 1 October 2026. https://ministers.dss.gov.au/media-releases/19366