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.

The Sports Wellbeing Values capture changes in wellbeing associated with participation in sport including:

• participation for people with a disability
• improved attitudes to physical activity
• removing barriers to participation
• receiving coaching
• attending sports events.

Together, these outcomes reflect the multiple ways sport contributes to improved wellbeing, social connection, and inclusion across communities.

The values have been derived by Simetrica-Jacobs using robust wellbeing data from New Zealand, originally commissioned by Sport New Zealand, and have been adjusted to align with ASVB’s established wellbeing valuation approach. This ensures consistency with existing ASVB values while extending the ASVB calculator to better reflect the social value created through sport.

These Sports Wellbeing Values will support organisations to:

• measure the social value created through participation in sport
• communicate wellbeing outcomes in clear and credible terms
• strengthen funding and advocacy narratives
• contribute to a more consistent and comparable evidence base for the value of sport

The addition of the Sports Wellbeing Values broadens the relevance of the ASVB calculator for the sport and physical activity sector. With nearly 100 outcomes now in the bank, it enables a wider range of programs and activities to be measured using a consistent and evidence-based approach, supporting more confident reporting, decision-making, and sector advocacy.

Watch this space. We will be sharing case studies and practical examples of how the Sports Wellbeing Values can be applied across different sporting contexts, including early insights from our partners at Gippsport who have been testing the values within their programs.

If you are not yet an ASVB subscriber but are interested in the Sports Wellbeing Values, you can register your interest below to receive updates, case studies, and upcoming opportunities to see the values in action.

The ASVB offers a grant program for not-for-profits and certified social enterprises, with an annual revenue of less than $1.5M, to access the ASVB for free.

These grants are funded through the sale of large and very large ASVB subscriptions (based on our sliding fee scale).

Our grant program is our way of helping to make sure any organisation can demonstrate the social value created by their programs and is the foundation of our social enterprise model.

VIEW SLIDING FEE SCALE

Successful grant applicants are awarded a fully supported 12 month subscription to the ASVB. This means the organisation can add unlimited users to the ASVB from across their organisation, they can run unlimited social value impact calculations and download an unlimited number of Social Impact Valuation Statements.

Grantees will receive free online training and support throughout their subscription period to ensure they are confident in applying the ASVB methodology correctly.

An ASVB Grant can help micro organisations in a number of ways:

• Build the internal social impact measurement capacity of the organisation
• Forecast the social value that could potentially be created by a program to secure funding prior to delivery
• Report the social value delivered through past programs to add evidence to funding bids or show social return on investment to existing funders
• Use social value calculations to inform internal budget allocation and program improvement
• Include in Annual Reports to demonstrate progress against Mission

1 – Are you an Australian business that is either a registered not-for-profit or a certified social enterprise? If you answered ‘Yes’ move on to step 2.

2 – Download our current ASVB Outcomes List and check that we have the main outcomes that your program delivers. (You will need to identify three from the list to include in your ASVB Grant Application).

3 – Get a copy of your previous year’s audited financial statements to prove that your annual revenue is less than $1.5M

(If you’re a start-up, or don’t have audited financial statements, please get in touch via email (info@asvb.com.au) to discuss other acceptable forms of evidence to verify your annual income)

4 – Complete the online ASVB Grant application form, then sit back and wait for us to get in touch.

APPLY FOR ASVB GRANT

Please note that if there are no ASVB Grants available when you apply, all eligible grant applications received will be added to our Grant Waiting List in order of receipt. Successful applicants will then be notified as soon as a grant becomes available.

We’re always so excited to announce that we’re adding new values to the ASVB – but these two values seem especially important given everything that is going on in the world lately. With the extreme climate events we’ve experienced in Australia, the recent floods and the not too distant Black Summer bushfires, not to mention the ongoing pandemic encompassing extended lockdowns for many – you could say Australians have been doing it tough over the past few years!

Apart from the immediate losses that come with climate disasters, like losing one’s home and community, the prolonged emotional stress caused by the pandemic, financial pressures that come with loss of employment, increased social isolation, unhealthy emotional eating and reduced physical activity has taken it’s toll on our mental health. Our ASVB wellbeing values show us how much it’s worth to improve our wellbeing across each of these different areas.

But when it comes to the social wellbeing and mental health aspects of  “disaster recovery”, whether that disaster happens to be a flood, fire or pandemic, we’re primarily focused on increasing two things: people’s resilience and help-seeking behaviours.

The word “resilience” has become a bit of a catch-all phrase, but it’s really about having the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. The flip side of this is to be able to recognise when you’re struggling and take steps to seek help. With so much work being funded in these areas, we felt it was important to look at the value these outcomes bring to people’s wellbeing.

That’s why we were so excited to partner with Mates in Construction (MATES) to undertake this research.

Suicide rates in the construction industry are 80% higher than in the general working age population, with that resulting in the loss of a construction worker every second day to suicide. In fact, construction workers are six times more likely to die from suicide than an accident at work.

It was based on statistics like these that Mates in Construction was founded to deliver a research-based suicide prevention program specifically focusing on the construction industry. MATES has since diversified to deliver suicide prevention programs into the mining and energy sectors, and more recently into pilot programs in manufacturing and apprentices

MATES is a research-based organisation with its own Academic Research Reference Group who have developed extensive peer-reviewed evaluations of their program, demonstrating that the MATES program does save lives. MATES research indicates there’s been at least an 8-10% reduction in suicide since its inception in 2008.

For those of you who understand the wellbeing valuation methodology used by the ASVB, you’ll know that our preference is to derive values based on existing national datasets. This helps to ensure the rigour of the dataset and that there is a large enough, nationally representative sample to use.

A small silver lining for us from the pandemic, was that additional questions were added to Wave 20 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. This was a government response to try to further understand the impacts the pandemic was having on Australians.

The additional Coronavirus module in Wave 20 included a whole range of questions about how the pandemic had affected people; had they had the virus, how great was the general impact on their lives, did it effect their employment, their home life, their diet, their physical activity, alcohol and tobacco consumption, charity work, consumption of TV and streaming content, access to digital technology, social contact, social distancing. You name it, they asked it!

Thankfully for us, they also added a panel of four questions covering resilience and self-reliance as seen in the below image.

The panel includes a 2-item version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), questions a and c above. (Vaishnavi S, Connor K, Davidson JRT. 2007. An abbreviated version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), the CD-RISC 2: psychometric properties and application in psychopharmacological trials. Psychiatry Research, 152: 293-297.)

The other two items, b and d, are drawn from the 46-item version of the Conformity of Masculinity Norms Inventory [CNMI] (Hammer JH, Heath PJ & Vogel DL. 2018. Fate of the total score: Dimensionality of the Conformity to Masculine Role Norms Inventory (CMNI-46). Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 19: 645-651).

When our partners Simetrica-Jacobs conducted the analysis of the data, they were able to derive a value for increased resilience based on the two items from the CD-RISC, but the analysis of how the two self-reliance items related to each other was less clear cut. They tried a couple of alternative specifications that involved question b, but found it did not really seem to have much of an influence. They made the decision to to just use the data from question d to reduce complication for our ASVB users when applying the value.

As the self-reliance questions were taken from an instrument originally relating specifically to attitudes among men, Simetrica-Jacobs looked at the impact on that specific group in the data, but didn’t find any significant differences between sexes, so again chose to not over complicate application for our ASVB users.

Both of the values derived had high statistical significance and passed Simetrica-Jacobs quality assurance processes.

As a result of only using one of the items from the self-reliance questions, we have decided to list this value as “Increased help-seeking” rather than “Increased self-reliance” as we feel this more accurately reflects someone having increased willingness to seek help when needed.

If you are delivering programs such as mental health and suicide prevention programs, disaster recovery programs, or any programs that focus on creating the outcomes of increasing people’s resilience or the willingness to seek help when needed, these values are now available to apply within the ASVB Value Calculator.

If you’re already an ASVB Subscriber, please download the current version of the ASVB User Guide, for guidance on applying the Resilience and Help-seeking values.

For those interested in learning more about the ASVB and how you might use these values to measure the social impact of your programs, please get in touch on info@asvb.com.au.

Those of you who have been following the Centre for Social Impact’s (CSI) “Amplify Social Impact” (Amplify) project since it was first announced in 2018, are no doubt very excited by the launch of the Indicator Engine!

For those of you who haven’t heard about Amplify, it is a $12M project that incorporates “a suite of online tools, a set of research reports, and series of events across Australia that will help improve social outcomes in five important social issue areas: Housing, Education, Work, Social Inclusion, and Financial Wellbeing.”

“The online platform is an integral part of the overall Amplify strategy. It incorporates the following tools:

• Australia’s Social Pulse™ which reveals how we’re tracking in key social issue areas over time, across the country, and across cohorts;
• Indicator Engine™ which helps organisations find the right indicators to measure so that they know when, where, and how they’re making a difference;
• Yardstick™, the programs, outcomes, and impact database, which reveals the programs, strategies, and initiatives across the country that are achieving outcomes and impacts, providing opportunities for replication and improvement.”

READ MORE ON AMPLIFY

In March 2022, the first tool from the Amplify Online suite was launched, and it seems to have really delivered something useful for the not-for-profit sector when it comes reducing the time and resources it takes to collect social impact data.

Once you’ve developed your Outcomes Framework, you no longer need to spend time digging around looking for appropriate indicators, you can instead use the Indicator Engine and simply select from the bank of validated indicators.

There is a Wizard/ Smart Assistant to guide you through the process of quickly and easily building your survey by prompting you to use suggested indicators. You also have the option of applying a framework from within the tool (more about this below), or you can manually build your survey from scratch by selecting from the indicator list or by adding your own custom questions. Whichever option you choose, it is so much quicker than if you were to build the equivalent survey in either Survey Monkey or Google Forms.

Once you’ve built your survey, you can then distribute it via email, set up as a kiosk (if service users were to complete the survey on an ipad in reception for example), or offline for those times when you’re working remotely without access to the internet.

Best of all they’ve launched the Indicator Engine at the perfect price point, with the majority of not-for-profits being able to access it for free or at low cost. So if your organisation is struggling with survey data collection I strongly recommend you take a look at the Indicator Engine.

Added functionality will come online with the launch of Yard Stick, which will allow you to automatically analyse the data you’ve collected through the Indicator Engine. Yard Stick will also make it possible to benchmark against other programs being run around Australia that are measuring against the same indicators. So essentially you can compare different programs, cohorts, locations etc.

Yardstick is due to launch later in 2022.

You might be wondering why we’re so keen to support the Indicator Engine? In fact many people spoke to me concerned that Amplify Online would be direct competition for the ASVB. But this isn’t the case at all, the Australian Social Value Bank (ASVB) is still the only social impact measurement platform on the market that allows you to understand the social value that your program creates.

Some of our ASVB subscribers have struggled with using the free survey tools available, which, over the past six years, has lead to many discussions about building data collection into the ASVB platform. But there’s also a segment of our users who have invested in subscribing to paid social impact data collection tools, or who are obliged by their funding bodies to use specific platforms, so we didn’t want to introduce another data collection component to further complicate their existing stack.

During this time we’ve spoken to a number of existing data collection platforms to look at working in partnership; we’ve  discussed developing APIs to seamlessly connect with these other platforms, but the outcome data required to be entered into the ASVB Value Calculator is so minimal that it just didn’t seem like money well spent. We also found that a number of these organisations we spoke with just didn’t have the same values or goals that aligned with ours. But the crux of it is that we’ve been reluctant to invest in developing data collection functionality when there are so many platforms already doing this well, so we believe that every organisation should choose the data collection platform that best suits their needs.

With the launch of the Indicator Engine, we feel that this is a really good platform that has similarly aligned values regarding helping the not-for-profit sector to measure their social impact, with a focus on making it simpler and easier for everyone, whilst maintaining a high level of rigour. This is why CSI have gone to the trouble of pre-populating validated indicators and why the ASVB has built our bank of methodologically consistent wellbeing values. Both of these aspects of social impact measurement can be time consuming and influence the level of rigour of your end results.

We have started discussions with CSI to look at embedding the ASVB surveys as a framework within the Indicator Engine. This would make it very easy for ASVB users to build their surveys, by simply selecting the ASVB framework, then toggling-on the appropriate survey questions that align to the ASVB outcomes they wish to apply in their social impact calculations.

Once the survey data has been collected, this provides the evidence required to apply the ASVB values. The aggregated survey results can then be easily transferred into the beneficiaries table within the ASVB calculator.

Now this doesn’t in any way mean that ASVB users will have to use the Indicator Engine, it just means that if you choose to do so, it will hopefully be even easier with all of our ASVB survey questions prepopulated in the ASVB framework.

So if you’re a current ASVB subscriber and you’re already using the Indicator Engine we’d love to hear your thoughts. Otherwise watch this space, and I’ll keep you posted with our progress.

The revenue generated from operating social and affordable housing in Australia is insufficient to finance new social and affordable homes. As a consequence, the provision of social and affordable housing is dependent on government subsidy, internal resources or philanthropic grant funding to become financially viable.

Social and affordable rental housing does, however, provide a series of wider social and economic benefits (WSEB) that generate cost savings across public and private sectors.

This project involves developing a tool that enables social and affordable housing project proposals to estimate these project-specific, wider social and economic benefits, and in turn strengthen the business case for new developments. It will provide comprehensive economic justifications for the use of external resources that would assist new supply, arguments that more accurately reflect the social outcomes that occur through the provision of social and affordable housing.

The Australian Social Value Bank has teamed-up with Swinburne University of Technology, Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) and Shelter NSW to bring the Social & Green Benefits Calculator project to life.

Swinburne University will take the lead, developing the Cost Benefit Analysis spreadsheet tool, which will include existing ASVB wellbeing values. We will continue to work with our existing partners, Simetrica-Jacobs, to undertake the research to quantify the associated environmental/ green benefits that will be included in the new tool.

The project is being managed by CHIA who will be assisted by Shelter NSW.

1. An excel based module for estimating project specific direct WSEB arising from the tenure and housing affordability aspects of new social and affordable rental housing.
2. Australia specific estimates of household benefits from access to urban green space and / or property design features such as private gardens, balconies.
3. An excel based module for estimating project specific WSEB associated with wellbeing, environmental and climate impacts of new social and affordable rental housing developments.
4. A user / training module that provides guidance on how to use the two excel modules; and how to incorporate results in business case development.

FUNDRAISING

We have already received grant funding from philanthropic sources and donations from other non profit organisations totalling $80,000. We are seeking support from government agencies, the private sector, and other non profits to get us to our goal of $140,000.
There is no minimum contribution – all are welcome. Our goal is to hit our funding target by the end of June 2022.

BETA TESTING

If you are a Community Housing Provider and an existing ASVB Subscriber who would like to be involved in beta testing the new Social & Green Benefits Calculator, please get in touch with Min on mins@asvb.com.au.

For further information about the Social & Green Benefits Calculator please download the flyer below.

The Australian Social Value Bank first went live in 2016. Our original set of wellbeing values were based on two data sets: The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and the Journeys Home survey.

The Journeys Home survey was the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal survey of homelessness in Australia. It  was funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Social Services, designed by Melbourne Institute, and the fieldwork was undertaken by Roy Morgan Research.

Journeys Home was launched in 2011 and tracked the movements of 1700 Australians who identified as homeless or housing insecure.  Six waves of data were collected; wave 1 in 2011, with the next five surveys conducted at six-monthly intervals, with the final survey, Wave 6, completed in 2014.

All six waves of data were used by Simetrica-Jacobs to derive the original wellbeing values based on Journeys Home.

The HILDA survey is a household-based panel study that commenced in 2001. It follows the lives of more than 17,000 Australians each year, and is the only study of its kind in Australia. It is also funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Social Services and is  designed and managed by The Melbourne Institute. Roy Morgan Research have been appointed to collect the data for Waves 9 to 23.

The HILDA data contains information on many aspects of Australian life, including household and family relationships, income and employment, and health and education. Participants are followed over the course of their lifetime.

The original wellbeing values in the ASVB were based on the first 15 waves of HILDA data.

In 2021 our friends at Simetrica-Jacobs  used an additional four waves of HILDA data to run their regression analysis on so that the updated wellbeing values are now based on 19 waves of HILDA data. Incorporating this additional data means that the majority of the values will have increased, some by a lot, but some of the values  have in fact decreased.

For example, the wellbeing value for “Improved English language skills for non-native speakers” dropped in value by roughly 30%. We could hypothesise why this might be; for example increased access to improved technology like “Google Translate” making language skills less of a barrier, or perhaps an increase in government information being disseminated in a wider range of languages.

In truth we don’t really know why the social value of improving English skills decreased by so much, only that the data shows that was the experience of the Australians in the HILDA survey.

The values derived from the Journeys Home data have also been updated, but as there are no new waves of this survey, they have all been increased to adjust for CPI (Consumer Price Index). This is also the case for the secondary benefits included in the Calculator.

The updated wellbeing values have already been integrated into the ASVB Value Calculator and will automatically be applied to any new calculations. Even if new calculations are performed retrospectively for programs that may have been delivered in previous years, the calculator will still use the current set of values. This is because social value should be calculated in terms of Net Present Value (NPV), or what the value of the program is now, in today’s context.

Previously finalised impact calculations in the tool should remain as they are, so be mindful that if you go in and edit an old calculation, it will automatically update using the current set of social values, which can not be reversed. Whilst this will generally result in greater total net benefits, there will be some instances where the total social value created by a program may decrease.

If you’re a current ASVB subscriber, and have any questions about how this may effect your calculations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on info@asvb.com.au.