Explainer: Aligning your outcomes to our grant category objectives

The Measures of Success table in our Grant Application is where you need to align the planned outcomes of your project with one or more of our grant category objectives.  You need to select from the options provided in a drop-down list to let us know how your project will align with the goals of the grant category.  Which of our grant objectives will your project contribute to?  If multiple apply, pick the most relevant. 

Note:  you do not need to select more than one grant objective i.e. you will not necessarily be scored higher for selecting more than one objective.  It depends on the scope of your project and quality of responses over quantity of objectives met. 

You may be wondering how your planned outcomes may correlate to our grant category objectives, so we have provided some examples in the Grant FAQ links below: 

• What do the CBF Development & Operations funding objectives mean?
• What do the CBF Content funding objectives mean?

Tips on setting outcomes 

Outcomes are the changes you expect to occur as a result of your activities.  We want to know what you hope to achieve by the end of the funding period.  For example, a change could be increasing financial sustainability of your station.  The following SmartyGrants webinar ‘Outcomes 101: Understanding outcomes in grantseeking’ provides some helpful tips:

The Measures of Success table will also now feature in our Grant Report forms.  This means that the outcomes, measures and targets you set at the time of application will also be automatically included in your Grant Report form for that grant and you will be required to reflect on how you went in relation to your goals.  Remember it’s fine if not all targets were met, we want to hear about the lessons you learnt along the way. 

Tips on reporting on outcomes 

At the time of reporting, we want to know what you achieved with the CBF grant. What was the impact of the project on the station or the community? Did you achieve your outcomes and targets? What did you learn?  

Explain how you acknowledged the CBF for the project and if possible, include any support material, e.g. media articles, photos, ads, programs, written responses to your project etc. 

Some CBF grants require completion of a Grant Progress Report half way through the funding period. This may be due to the size of your grant and/or the length of your funded activities. Completion of a progress report will often release payment of the remainder of your grant funds. Progress reports are simpler than final Grant Reports.  You let us know how your plans have progressed since receiving funding, and if there’s anything we can do to help. Completing a Grant Progress Report is also a time for you to reflect on what’s working and what’s not, so that you can make changes now that will result in better outcomes later.  You will be encouraged to consider: 

• Are activities progressing within planned time frames? 
• Have you run into any unexpected challenges? 
• Are outcomes meeting your expectations? 
• How have you altered any of your expected outcomes or time frames since beginning these activities? 

This may be a good opportunity to apply for a variation including changes to budgets or timeframes. 

You can also find more information on general reporting tips here and the SmartyGrants webinar ‘Outcomes 101: Understanding outcomes in grantseeking’.