Jessie Ballantyne - Uncovering grants and all good things

Jessie Ballantyne is passionate about entrepreneurship, business and giving. Her motto for life is ‘Be Real, Take Risks, Dream Big, Give Generously’.

Jessie’s entrepreneurial spark first came to life when she fell in love with France in Year 9. She had an inspirational French teacher who inspired her to become an exchange student and pursue her love of French. But her parents didn’t have the $8,000+ needed for the exchange back in 1997, so her launch into business began.

At 14, Jessie would come home from school every day to bake and sell thousands of biscuits, sold books through party plan, sold chocolate-coated snakes from her high-school locker (the school canteen shut the operation down as they started losing money!), babysat and catered for parties on the weekends. Her parents paid half, she paid half, and Jessie spent a life-changing 12 months in French-speaking Belgium.

Years down the track, after working in grants and seeing just how difficult it was for organisations to find and keep track of grants, Jessie saw the need for an easy-to-use online grants directory. Jessie founded The Grants Hub in 2013, when she was 39 weeks pregnant with her second child. The Grants Hub is now Australia's award-winning grants directory, with a network of 28,000+ grant seekers and helping over 2,000 organisations across Australia find grants every day.

But it hasn’t all been smooth-sailing. When The Grants Hub was only a couple of weeks old, Jessie’s 11-day-old son was diagnosed with congenital heart disease and needed open-heart surgery. She found herself with a two-year-old daughter, a baby in emergency open heart surgery, and a startup.

Sitting in the ICU ward at the Royal Children’s Hospital, she answered emails, updated grant listings and kept The Grants Hub afloat. Miraculously, both her son and The Grants Hub survived that time with the support of many, many people.

The following years were marked by business growth, PTSD, another child (three in total), business awards and lots, and lots of coffee!

Jessie is also the founder of ‘Hey Good Thing’ - For-Purpose Gift Boxes for good.

Socials:

Website: https://jessieballantyne.com/

LinkedIn: Jessie Ballantyne

FB: Jessie Ballantyne

Insta: Jessie Ballantyne @jessie.ballantine

The Grants Hub

Website: https://www.thegrantshub.com.au/

FB: The Grants Hub @thegrantshub

Insta: The Grants Hub @thegrantshub

Podcast: Grants Uncovered