| FUNDERS: TO ACHIEVE OUR VISION, HOW SHOULD WE APPEAR TO OUR FUNDERS? |
In this perspective we ask ‘to achieve our vision, how should we appear to our funders?’. Obviously being a peer organisation, a key stakeholder in this group is likely to be the NDIA. The NDIA offers a range of grant opportunities to peer organisations, including under the ILC (Information, Linkages and Capacity Building) area. But the NDIA isn’t the only possible funder, and it is likely not the only possible source of financial support for a peer program. It may be possible to gain support from a local council, small grant schemes, state government grants and programs, private and philanthropic funds, community groups and even from individual donors. While we will of course consider what the NDIA may want from your peer programs, we should also consider what other funders such as these may value:
- Lions Club may offer an annual donation: they may want speakers available for their events;
- Private donors may want a way of publicly showing their support and/or knowledge of the benefits their donation can bring at the coalface;
- State Government programs may want evidence on savings that your peer program may bring to their Health budget; and,
- Local Councils may want evidence on the ways in which your peer program raise community awareness.
The NDIA have very clear ILC outcomes they want to see from any programs they will fund. The NDIA are clear about the goals for ILC investments.
ILC outcomes can be viewed online (see: https://ilctoolkit.ndis.gov.au/outcomes/ilc-outcomes) and are discussed in more detail in the ‘ILC Outcomes Discussion Starter’ (available via link on that same webpage). This discussion starter explains that, when preparing an application for ILC funding, your organisation will need to identify how the activity makes a contribution to one or more of the five ILC outcomes and how you will gather evidence on this contribution. Grant applications should therefore include outcome assessment information, which will form one part of our ‘Funders’ perspective within the BSC. In most cases, peer programs will come under ‘Individual Capacity Building’ for which the outcome objective is as follows:
It is important to note that peer programs funded as ILC activities will be required to monitor, evaluate and report on both process and activity outcomes. Gathering evidence on the process of delivering an ILC activity encourages a feedback loop between the peer organisation and their members. It enables peer programs to be aware of the need to adjust and refine their activity as it is being delivered. Gathering evidence on process outcomes enables the peer program to better understand the effectiveness of the program for people with disability as it is happening. The peer program gathers evidence to identify what is working (and any enablers for this success), what is not working as well, and what external factors (barriers) may be constraining the success of the program. So process really relates to what is being done and whether this is being effective in achieving the programs’s goals. If it isn’t, then understanding why and adjusting your delivery accordingly is all part of growing and learning as a peer support provider.
Monitoring and reporting of activity outcomes will be one aspect of the reporting requirements for receiving ILC funding from the NDIA. Activity evidence will relate to:
- How much is being done? This may include quantitative measures of peer program output (for example, how many activities conducted or how many interactions with people).
- How well is it being done? This is related to the quality of the activity and satisfaction of the users and may be measured with quantitative or qualitative data.
- What was the change for peer members? This is the difference that your provided activity (peer program) has had for your individual members, and could be evidenced by storytelling, case studies or pre and post surveys.
ILC funders want peer organisations to have the capacity to measure, collect evidence, and report on outcomes. Outcome evidence shows the ILC that your peer team have embedded an outcomes orientation for their peer program. Given that the ILC is a key potential (and perhaps actual) funder, such evidence is becoming increasingly important and valuable. Therefore, effective use of our ‘compass’ is of even greater importance within this operating environment. Essentially, unless your peer organisation is able to establish a system which captures activity and process outcomes for the funder ‘ILC’, it is unlikely you will be able to successfully operate in this space.
However, our funders focus is broader, not only directed towards NDIA and ILC outcome reporting/measurement requirements. We accept this is an important consideration for most peer programs but is also one that frequently changes. Over time, it has been adjusted regularly. Amending your compass whenever the ILC changes its tool or reporting requirements is not ideal. It would require greater team investments in terms of learning, training, change management and alike. It would also not enable you to see your journey over time.
Ideally your peer program needs a unique compass that will be used over the long term, providing you with the ability to see change in your own peer organisation’s journey, and performance, over time. This evidence across time frames tells you about how your journey is progressing over time. If you created your compass based only on current ILC requirements, you would be potentially missing opportunities for internal tracking as you grow and develop. You may also not then have evidence that may be needed for other funding opportunities that appear over time if you take a narrow focus. Therefore, in this package, we suggest the inclusion of ILC outcomes as one of the important areas of objectives within the ‘Funders’ (and in some cases the ‘Members’) perspective(s). When considering the ILC as a key funder, we need to consider what evidence they will want to view when they are considering their national readiness or jurisdictional grants? Can you show a history of successful delivery and outcomes as well as highlight your organisational learning and knowledge already invested in?
ILC outcomes and grant requirements are not the only objectives to be included in this domain for most peer organisations. When considering the objectives to include in the ‘funder’ domain, we must ask ourselves ‘how should we appear to our funders in order to achieve our vision’? We can consider various viewpoints of different types of funders, from donors to state government grants, to philanthropic funds through to the ILC. Each funder group should be considered even if your peer organisation is not currently accessing all of the funding opportunities available. As discussed, you want to create a long-term compass and therefore think about how you want to appear to a range of potential as well as existing funders. For example, what would major philanthropic grant fund selectors want to see? Can you capture your level of activity and impact within the social sector to share with others? What could an individual ‘Mum and Dad’ donor want to see in an organisation they donate to? How important is a clear message? What about inclusion and innovation? How much could illustrating your work with stories/case studies mean to them? Answering these questions facilitates selection of the most appropriate objectives for the ‘Funder’ perspective. Examples of objectives for the ‘Funder’ perspective are shown in the table below.
The initial step is for us to select the key objectives for our peer organisation for this Funder domain. We then select the ways in which we will measure if we are meeting those objectives and make decision around this measurement. In other words, for each objective, we select a measure which should include how we measure this and how often we measure it. We then decide what our target performance is, and if we need to set up any new initiatives in order to meet this target. This is a fairly sophisticated process, but we are simply considering:
- What ‘thing’ will show us if we are doing this or not (and enable us to share this with funders)? For example, if our objective is that we keep our administrative costs under 20% of program expenditure, we could measure this from the two relevant categories in a financial report (our Profit and Loss or Income Statement).
- How will we get some sort of understanding of that ‘thing’? We will take the total of our Administrative Costs and determine its proportion to the total of our Program Delivery costs.
- How regularly do we need to check how this ‘thing’ is going? Do we check this only annually, or do we do this each time the Board receives a Profit and Loss Statement?
- What level do we aim for? In this case, our objective clearly states our target performance is 20%.
- Do we need any new initiatives in order to meet this target? In other words, do we need to consider ways to reduce our overheads, or have some sort of program to do this over time?
Examples of objectives and the decisions which may follow are shown in the table below. You can now think about the ways in which you will complete this table within your own peer organisation.
| FUNDERS: TO ACHIEVE OUR VISION, HOW SHOULD WE APPEAR TO OUR FUNDERS? | |||
| Objectives | Measures | Targets | Initiatives |
| To keep administrative costs to 20% of program delivery costs. | Profit and Loss Statement expense categories ‘Administration’ header and ‘Program Delivery’ header calculate a percentage. | 20% Admin relative to Program Delivery measured annually in Annual Report. | Not required. |
| Accurate cash flow estimates enable investment returns. | Investment earnings from term deposits are maximised. | CEO to report to Board at meetings on investment returns being >2.8% on prepaid revenue. | Not required. |
| We offer a welcoming, safe and supportive environment to our peer members. | Surveys of peer group members asking ‘do you feel welcome in your peer group?’ and ‘do you feel supported within your peer group?’. | 85% of members agree they are welcomed in their group; 85% of members agree they feel supported in their group. |
Peer Facilitator training program. Establish Facilitator community of practice where effective tools are shared. |