How the Community Broadcasting Foundation built a culture of impact

CBF is an Australian funder with a 40-year legacy of supporting the country’s diverse and vibrant community media sector. While this case study comes from outside Ireland, it offers highly transferable lessons for any grantmaker looking to embed outcomes-focused thinking.

With more than 400 grantees, including First Nations stations, multicultural broadcasters, LGBTQIA+ media, and youth-focused outlets, CBF's challenge wasn’t finding meaningful stories – it was finding a way to systematically capture and reflect on their impact.

“Before we started this work, impact measurement didn’t really look like anything,” Kate says. “We did a lot of reporting on activities and outputs, and now and then we’d publish a great case study with some photos, but we had no way of aggregating outcomes across the portfolio.”

That changed in 2022, when CBF began a multi-year transformation, a shift that included adoption of the SmartyGrants Outcomes Engine.

Strategic drivers and sector-wide momentum

CBF’s decision to shift was catalysed by a significant internal restructure in 2017/18 that streamlined nine grant programs into three. Alongside governance reviews and strategic reflections, the board identified the need for outcomes and impact reporting. This internal push aligned with a broader shift across the community media sector, driven by peak bodies and codified in the Roadmap 2033: Community broadcasting’s plan for greater impact.

“There was a strong appetite across the sector to better articulate our value and impact,” Kate says. “Our grantees needed a way to demonstrate the difference they were making, especially the smaller stations with limited resourcing.”

A cautious, community-centred approach

From the outset, CBF knew that shifting from compliance to learning would take time. Many of the foundation’s grantees are small, volunteer-run organisations with limited capacity for administrative load.

“We took a gently-gently approach,” Kate explains. “There were changes to our data collection that I, as an evaluator, would have loved to do earlier, but the team kept us grounded. We had to make sure the changes were genuinely appropriate and achievable for our community.”

Embedding the Outcomes Engine

CBF's first step was to embed the SmartyGrants Outcomes Engine into their application and monitoring forms. They customised the outcomes and metrics sections, asking grantees to nominate up to four outcomes aligned to CBF’s own framework. For each, grantees were asked to provide metrics, baselines, targets, and data collection methods.

To support grantees, CBF developed practical guidance materials and delivered webinars on outcome measurement basics. They resisted the urge to set a standard list of metrics at the get-go, opting instead to share a list of suggested indicators and let organisations tailor their approach.

Building foundations: Theory of change and MEL

Kate led the internal development of a theory of change to map the organisation’s pathways to impact. Through participatory workshops, the team identified a “missing middle” between short-term project outcomes and broader sector goals. This led to a set of outcomes that were then tested with community-based advisory committees.

“Our grants advisory committees are made up of people who work or volunteer in the sector, and they sense-checked everything,” Kate says. “They helped us refine language, highlight missing areas, like the importance of wellbeing in workplace culture, and made sure our model reflected real experience.”

Following this, Kate designed a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Framework with seven guiding questions covering impact, process, and relevance. A full audit of 200+ indicators was conducted, and the data collection system was streamlined to fewer than 100. Kate focused on changes that would:

• Improve data reliability;
• Support and improve feasibility of collection of data; and
• Make indicators more consistent across different grant programs to enable aggregation.

From data to decision-making

The MEL Framework has led to improved internal reporting. CBF now delivers:

• 6-monthly monitoring reports aligned to strategy and tailored to boards and advisory committees
• Real-time thematic snapshots to help guide specific decision-making
• An annual impact report (beginning in 2026) based on aggregated outcomes data

Looking ahead: Analytics and grantee dashboards

Kate has bold ambitions for SmartyGrants Analytics, a new tool introduced to the system in 2025 that reveals near-real-time insights gleaned from grants data. Rather than exporting and charting data in spreadsheets, Kate plans to create dashboards accessible by boards, committees, and eventually grantees.

“We want to make our data dynamic and accessible so people can see how the work is progressing at any time, not just at acquittal,” she says.

Lessons for other funders

CBF’s story is a powerful reminder that building a culture of impact doesn’t happen overnight. It requires strategic alignment, sector consultation, patience, and enabling technology.

“Start small. Be purposeful. And don’t wait for perfect,” Kate advises. “You’ll learn as you go, and the value of those insights is worth the effort.”

More information

Community broadcaster tunes into measuring social change

Learn more about the SmartyGrants Outcomes Engine

This case study was presented to the SmartyGrants/Philanthropy Ireland learning session and was first published in Making Change Visible: A Practical Guide to Impact Measurement for Funders part of a joint publication between SmartyGrants and Philanthropy Ireland.