Balancing Sector Organisation Support

The CBF aims to balance sector organisation support with support for stations and content makers through our funding programs.

Guiding principles

  1. We recognise the important role that sector organisations(1) play in supporting community broadcasting sector development. When sector organisations thrive, the whole sector thrives.
  2. We recognise that while in some circumstances centralised delivery of services by sector organisations can be a more effective and efficient use of resources, we want to ensure that the greater proportion of our discretionary funds are allocated to advance community media by investing our funds directly into stations and content makers, so we can support stations to be resilient, sustainable and integrated into the fabric of Australian communities.
  3. We are mindful that by its nature, the funding of sector coordination by sector representative organisations includes support for core operations including salaries and the level of support we provide risks incrementally increasing over time beyond what can be sustainably supported. We don’t want the level of funds we have available to directly support stations and content makers to be compromised.
  4. We allow for the indexation of sector coordination funding to occur in sync with any indexation of relevant Community Broadcasting Program funding allocations applied by the Australian Government through the annual Federal Budget process.
  5. These guidelines apply to any sector organisation, whether applying through Sector Investment funding or through our other grant programs. These guidelines exclude funding for ‘sector projects’ because these projects have dedicated funding available and for those projects the proportion of funding available for centralised delivery of services is considered on a case by case basis.

Guidelines

  1. The CBF will annually publish the proportion of funding allocated to sector organisations as a proportion of all funds allocated excluding sector projects(2).
  2. The CBF will budget for a maximum of 18% of funds to be allocated to sector organisations (excluding sector projects funding) via Sector Investment funding processes.(3).
  3. The CBF will inform organisations applying for Sector Investment funding of the total maximum level of funds available in the invitation to apply.
  4. No specific budget or restriction of the level of funds available will be set for sector organisations applying via our other grant categories as applications are considered on their merits in competition with stations and content makers.
  5. Should the total level of funds allocated to all sector organisations exceed 17% (excluding sector projects) in the previous financial year, the CBF Board will receive a report on the particular allocations to sector organisations in that financial year and review these guidelines.

Proportion of total allocations minus sector projects allocated to sector orgs 2014-15-18.8%, 2015-16 19%, 2016-17 15.5%, 2017-18 16.3%. Proportion of total allocations to sector orgs 2014-15 52.5%, 2015-16 47.5%, 2016-17 39.1%, 2017-18 48.3%

Notes:

  • The reduction in the proportion of total allocations excluding sector projects that you can see occurring from 2015/16 to 2016/17 is largely due to the change to how RPH Transmission funding was dealt with (we started funding RPH Transmission funding direct to stations instead of via RPH Australia from 2016/17).
  • CMTO is excluded from the ‘orange line’ in the chart because its entire funding is considered a sector project.


Approved by the CBF Board 8-9 November 2018. Download the Balancing Sector Organisation Support with Support for Stations and Content Makers guidelines including a graph demonstrating proportions for 2014/15-2017/18 (PDF, 709KB).

1. Sector organisations includes sector representative organisations and other sector-based organisations servicing the sector such as the Community Media Training Organisation.
2. In each of the past two financial years, the funding allocated to sector organisations formed 16% of all funding allocated when funding for sector projects was excluded.
3. Where indexation applied by the Australian Government increases a funding allocation that supports sector coordination funding for a particular sector organisation, the level of funds available for sector coordination by that sector organisation will increase commensurately. The overall proportion of funds allocated to sector coordination, however, remains the same.

 

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