A SHARED APPROACH TO MEASURING THE VALUE OF SPORT

GippSport has taken a leadership role in advancing how the sport sector understands, measures, and communicates its value – while also helping shape its future direction.

Like many organisations, GippSport recognised that traditional reporting methods, focused on participation numbers and activity counts, did not fully capture the broader outcomes created through sport. While these measures show who takes part, they provide limited insight into what changes as a result.

To address this, GippSport adopted the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB), enabling a shift from output reporting to consistently measuring outcomes and social value.

Through applying the ASVB in practice, two key opportunities emerged:

• to better reflect the specific outcomes created through sport participation, and
• to ensure the framework captures what matters most for young people

This led to a partnership to develop sport-specific values within the ASVB, supported by VicHealth.

This work has now evolved into a critical next phase: the development of youth-specific sport values, seen as essential to fully capturing the long-term impact of sport and strengthening how the sector measures social value.

Historically, organisations across the sport sector have relied on participation data and qualitative storytelling to demonstrate impact. While both are valuable, they make it difficult to consistently quantify outcomes, compare programs on a like-for-like basis and clearly understand return on investment

For GippSport, this created a practical challenge.

Despite strong community connections and deep local knowledge, there was no consistent way to:

• identify which programs delivered the greatest social value relative to investment
• confidently prioritise funding, effort, and program design
• clearly demonstrate the scale and nature of impact to funders and stakeholders

As a result, decisions were often guided by experience and intent, rather than supported by a shared, comparable measure of value.

This challenge is even more pronounced in youth-focused programs, where many of the outcomes that matter most, such as confidence, connection and wellbeing, can be difficult to consistently measure and value.

By adopting the ASVB, GippSport can now measure program outcomes in a consistent, comparable, and credible way.

Rather than focusing solely on participation, they can quantify changes in wellbeing, including social connection, confidence and capability to participate, inclusion for people with disability, and levels of physical activity.

Crucially, these outcomes are translated into a common measure of social value, enabling GippSport to:

• understand value created across programs
• compare initiatives on a like-for-like basis
• identify which approaches deliver the greatest impact
• clearly communicate outcomes to funders, partners, and communities

GippSport’s approach has gone beyond simply adopting a measurement framework.

Through applying the ASVB across a range of programs, they identified the need for values that more accurately reflect the outcomes created through sport participation.

In response, GippSport played a key role in developing sport-specific values within the ASVB, supported by VicHealth.

Rather than adapting programs to fit the tool, GippSport helped shape the tool to better fit the sector. This has strengthened confidence in comparing programs and improved the quality of evidence used to inform decision making.

Importantly, this work laid the foundation for the next phase – ensuring the framework captures the distinct  impacts experienced by young people through sport.

A shared approach to measuring social value does more than improve reporting – it strengthens decision making across the entire sector.

By using a consistent framework like the ASVB, organisations contribute to a shared evidence base where outcomes are clearly defined, measured consistently and valued using the same approach.

This enables meaningful comparison across programs, regions, and cohorts, clearer understanding of what works and why, and a more strategic allocation of funding and resources.

This consistency becomes even more critical when considering youth outcomes, where early intervention can have lifelong impact but requires strong, trusted evidence to support investment.

Without a shared framework, impact remains fragmented – making it difficult to demonstrate value at a system level or build a compelling case for sustained investment.

For GippSport, this is particularly important within the Regional Sport Assembly network, where a shared approach creates opportunities to understand collective impact across communities.

Over time, a sector-wide approach enables stronger evidence-based advocacy, better alignment between programs and community need, and the ability to demonstrate the collective value of sport.

This shifts the conversation – from participation and activity, to outcomes, impact, and value – positioning sport as a critical contributor to community wellbeing.

GippSport sees social value measurement as critical to the future of sport, particularly as funding continues to shift towards outcomes-based models.

Through this work, a key gap has emerged: youth outcomes are not yet accurately captured.

While sport-specific values represent a significant step forward, applying adult-based values to young people limits the sector’s ability to fully demonstrate impact.

To address this, GippSport is now supporting the next phase of development, with additional funding secured to expand the ASVB to include youth-specific sport outcome values.

This investment will improve the accuracy of outcomes for young people, strengthen confidence in early intervention and better demonstrate the lifelong value of sport participation.

By embedding youth-specific values, the sector will be better equipped to evidence impact, influence policy, and secure sustained investment in young people.

GippSport’s experience demonstrates that investing in shared measurement doesn’t just improve reporting – it strengthens decision making, builds sector-wide evidence, and enables more strategic investment.

Most importantly, it highlights that youth-specific measurement is not optional – it is essential to understanding the true value of sport.

As the sector continues to shift towards outcomes and impact, this work positions sport as a critical contributor to lifelong wellbeing and ensures that investment in sport is backed by clear, credible evidence at both a local and national level.