‘Translating the impact of a small, volunteer-powered organisation's work into numbers. Sustained entirely in-house for three years.’

The Situation

DIVRS is a volunteer-powered community organisation supporting people in Darebin experiencing hardship. Like many small, high-impact community organisations, they had strong programs but no structured way to quantify or communicate their impact.

What I Did

I worked with DIVRS to build a practical Impact Measurement Framework and data collection tools, designed specifically for an organisation with limited resources and no dedicated data team. My involvement ended there, everything since has been run by DIVRS themselves.

The Outcome

Three years on, with no ongoing support from me, DIVRS has embedded the framework into how they operate and advocate:

• A 5:1 return-on-investment ratio - DIVRS is able to calculate that for every dollar invested, they return $5 of community value.  This data point has become one of their most effective talking points with funders and council

• Impact data now feeds directly into their annual report and grant applications

• The impact data was used strategically in advocacy

• Their approach has become a reference point for other organisations in the sector, with their peak body pointing to DIVRS's framework as an example of what is possible

• Survey response rates have grown year on year (72 responses in 2024, rising to 96 in 2025), as the team has kept refining the process on their own

"We're better able to tell the impact story, which we couldn't before, with figures and numbers, in ways that are meaningful for conversations with decision makers and when applying for funding."
Christina DiPierdomenico, CEO, DIVRS