What makes a station resilient and how can we support that through our grants?

This question informed an independent assessment, commissioned in early 2020, which looked at how we can best support and sustain a thriving community broadcasting sector.

As part of this work, social impact consultants, Think Impact, consulted widely with sector organisations and stations, and also looked closely at our grants programs and data. In their final report, they outlined six essential aspects of resilience (listed below) and 15 recommendations to guide the CBF’s future granting strategies.

• A connected station – being connected to each other and being mutually supportive.
• A future aware station – being change-ready, able to quickly react and adapt to changing environments, while still taking care of the day-to-day
• A well-led station – ensuring there are strong governance practices such as leadership, decision-making, staff engagement, board structure, strategic planning, and financial management.
• A learning station – adapt to long-term trends and create a learning culture to share knowledge and expertise, address common issues and challenges, and realise shared opportunities
• Appropriately resourced – having sufficient human resources that are equipped with the right skills and equipment so stations can increase their financial resources and meet their audience’s needs.
• A representative station – strongly representative of the community they serve and have a diverse workforce.

The CBF Board considered the resilience model and recommendations, which were reviewed by peak sector organisations and our grants advisory committees, and endorsed our Action Plan.

In preparing our Action Plan we’ve focused in on three of the five key principles developed by Think Impact which form the basis for their recommendations. The three principles are:

• Align funding with aspects of resilience
• Simplify and clarify the grant application process
• Develop cultures of resilience.

Each of these principles has several accompanying actions we have started working on. These include looking at what resilience means for stations, reviewing our grants and committee Terms of Reference, better understanding how and what data we collect, analysing budget breakdowns, streamlining our grants forms and processes to improve the experience for applicants, and looking at new sector training and development opportunities.

You can read more about the proposed resilience model and Think Impact’s recommendations in their report “Oily rags, shoestrings and gaffer tape”: Granting for Station Resilience.

About our grants 

We run two Content and Development & Operations grant rounds each year, usually in January and July.  You can check when our next grant round is open on the key dates page. 

Quick Response Grants are also available outside our grant rounds for community media organisations that are experiencing emergencies. 
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