Annual Survey Resources

20. For 2024, estimate the total number of people who USED the Neighbourhood House in an average week (include volunteers, students, children in childcare, people from other organisations who meet at the Neighbourhood House and drop-ins).

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Your visitor sign in book, class lists, childcare booking sheets, etc. will all help calculate this figure.

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USED the Neighbourhood House: means physically attending at a Neighbourhood House or any of its program delivery sites.

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This question asks you to estimate the number of people who physically visited the Neighbourhood House in an average week. Include here students, children in childcare, members of regular groups such as craft or recreational activities, people making enquiries, drop-ins or people from other organisations and groups who meet at the Neighbourhood House.

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Do not include online participants.

21. In 2024, how many of these people participated in Neighbourhood House activities in an average week, excluding online participants?

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Neighbourhood House activities: means all activities run by or for your Neighbourhood House. Exclude room hire activities that are purely commercial and were not sourced by the Neighbourhood House to meet a local need.

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This question asks you to estimate the number of people who participated in programmed activities at the Neighbourhood House in an average week. Include here students, children in childcare, members of regular groups such as craft or recreational activities, etc.

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Only include people participating in activities run by and for the Neighbourhood House. Do not include people from other organisations who meet at the Neighbourhood House or hire a room on a purely commercial basis. Do not include people who only participated online.

22. In 2024, how many people participated in your online Neighbourhood House activities in an average week?

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Neighbourhood House activities: means all activities run by or for your Neighbourhood House. Exclude room hire activities that are purely commercial and were not sourced by the Neighbourhood House to meet a local need.

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Include activities where 100% of a person’s participation was online. Estimate the number of people who participated in online activities run by and for the Neighbourhood House in an average week. This includes all types of online activities such as support or social groups, formal education and informal education such as exercise activities etc.

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Do not include activities where an individual’s participation was part online and part in person. If an activity included some individuals that participated in an activity 100% online and others in person or both, count only those who participated 100% online.

23. In 2024, for how many hours in an average week was the Neighbourhood House generally open to the public and: 

a) Staffed by paid staff?
b) Staffed soley by volunteers (no paid staff present)

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For example, if the paid coordinator works 4 days per week but the House is kept open five days per week through volunteer effort, the figures might be: staffed by paid staff = 30 hours; staffed by volunteers = 7.5 hours. If, in order to keep the Neighbourhood House open, the coordinator works more hours than they are paid for, or granted time off in lieu for, this should be reflected as ‘staffed by volunteers’.

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Open to the public: means a person can walk in off the street and a staff member or volunteer can respond to an enquiry, enrol them in an activity, enjoy a cup of tea, etc.

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It does not include when people are using the facility but no staff or volunteer is available to assist with enquiries etc.

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Neighbourhood Houses may be in use for more hours than they are staffed and open. Houses may also be in use after hours or on weekends without being open to the public.

24. How many weeks in 2024 was the Neighbourhood House open to the public?

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‘Open to the public’ means a person can walk in off the street and a staff member or volunteer can respond to an enquiry, enrol them in an activity, enjoy a cup of tea, etc.

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It does not include when people are using the facility but no staff or volunteer is available to assist with enquiries etc.

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Weeks where the Neighbourhood House closes e.g., over Xmas, are not counted as open, even if some groups use the facility in that time.

25. In 2024, how many hours in an average week were the building(s) managed by the Neighbourhood House in use? Include after hours, use by other groups.

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(Concurrent hours should not be added together e.g. If the Neighbourhood House runs 2 venues both open 9-5 Monday to Friday, the answer would be 40 hrs. However, if one of those venues was also open a further 3 hours on a Saturday, the answer would be 43.)

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Include the hours in an average week the Neighbourhood House building(s) was in use, including weekends and after hours, regardless of whether it is staffed or open to the public (that is covered in a previous question). Include courses run after hours, rooms hired on weekends, etc.

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The number of hours the building is in use should be greater than or equal to the total number of staffed open hours i.e. when the building is staffed and open it is in use.

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If the Neighbourhood Houses operates programs at more than one site do not just add the hours of each site together.

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This question captures the spread of hours e.g. if a childcare is delivered at one site from 6 am. to 6 pm. and the Neighbourhood House venue was being used from 9 am to 9pm, that would be 15hrs for that day i.e. from 6 am to 9pm.

26. Please record the number of different Neighbourhood House activity SESSIONS (NOT hours) you delivered face to face or online in 2024. E.g. you ran two playgroups; one ran twice a week for 40 weeks of the year [80 sessions], the other once a week for 48 weeks [48 sessions]: total for playgroups is 80 + 48 = 128 

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You are encouraged to use the program activity calculator to work out your answer to this question. The calculator will also use the information you enter to help you answer the question re activity hours that occurs later in the survey.

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This question is asking about the number of sessions run not the number of hours each session runs for. You will be asked about ‘hours’ later in the survey.

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Neighbourhood House activities: means all activities run by or for your Neighbourhood House. Exclude room hire activities that are purely commercial and were not sourced by the Neighbourhood House to meet a local need.

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To answer this correctly the sessions must:

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• Only include activities that are run by and for the Neighbourhood House or activities brokered in by the Neighbourhood House. For example if a yoga teacher approaches the Neighbourhood House to hire a room on a commercial (for profit) basis and collects fees from participants themselves this is not a Neighbourhood House activity. However if the neighbourhood house found a yoga teacher to teach at the Neighbourhood House because people requested this activity and the teacher preferred to pay room hire collect fees from participants themselves this can be included as the house organised the activity and the room hire was simply the most practical financial arrangement between the Neighbourhood House and the teacher.

• Not include activities that are run on your site by another organisation where they are simply using your room to deliver a service or as part of a partnership arrangement. Partnerships are covered in a different section of the survey.

• Not include activities run by other organisations in a shared facility or hub

• Not include services to individuals such as one-on-one tutoring or Centrelink agency work. These are covered in a different section of the survey.

• Be allocated to only one category for each activity.

• Be categorised based on based on the primary purpose for conducting the activity. For example, a seniors walking group could be either a seniors or a health and wellbeing activity. If the reason the group was established was to get seniors fit then it is a health and wellbeing group. If it was established to enable seniors to talk about things that affect seniors it is a senior’s activity. If the purpose is unclear, you can make your own call on which category seems most appropriate.

29. DFFH requires recipients of NHCP funding to deliver two activity hours for each of the NHCP coordination hours your Neighbourhood House receives per week.

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Reportable activity hours include all time spent involving the community, identifying community needs, determining appropriate community programs, partnership development and evaluation as well as the programmed activities of the Neighbourhood House.

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For the period 1 July 2023 - 30 June 20243, how many activity hours did your Neighbourhood House provide in an average week? 

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Activity hours: includes all time spent by the Neighbourhood House on involving the community, identifying community needs, determining appropriate community programs, partnership development and evaluation as well as the normal activities provided by and for the Neighbourhood House. It includes activity that may be undertaken by staff and volunteers.

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Do not include activity that is room hire on a purely commercial basis.

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Do not include purely administrative or managerial tasks e.g. room hire, taking bookings, paying bills, attending ordinary committee meetings etc.

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Include time spent on any of the following - click here.

32. In 2024, how many hours were spent assisting participants to access on-line government information or services in an average month?

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Include time spent by staff and volunteers or students on placements spent assisting people one on one to access government services or information online using digital devices. 

33. In 2023, approximately how much did you provide of the following services in an average month. Please use whole numbers only and enter "0" (zero) if your House does not offer the service. 

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For this question we are asking for the number of individual instances the service was provided.

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This question includes Internet/computer use hours; resume assistance; community lunch, frozen or other meals (eg meals prepared at the House to take home or be delivered) and Breakfast clubs.

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• Internet/computer use hours refers to individual sessions that actually occurred. E.g if 2 people are sitting on two computers for 1 hr at the same time this is 2 hours of use. Do not count hours the Internet/computer is available for use but not actually being used.

• Resume assistance refers to individual resumes that you assisted participants to develop or edit in a typical month.

• Community lunch, frozen or other meals (eg meals prepared at the Neighbourhood House to take home) refers to individual meals provided. E.g. 100 people come to each of the fortnightly community lunches, then that is counted as 200 meals. If 5 frozen meals are provided to one individual that is counted as 5 meals.

• Breakfast program refers to breakfast provided to school children as a breakfast for that day. The breakfast can be provided at the school, Neighbourhood House or elsewhere provided the NH is responsible for providing it. It does not include food supplies provided to families for the purpose of providing future breakfasts at home. Count each individual breakfast consumed in the collection period e.g. your Neighbourhood House provides about 10 children weekly with breakfast at the local school. This is counted as 10 children x 4 weeks = forty breakfasts.

37. How much did you pay in wages for employees to work in the social enterprise/s in the period covered by your last annual report? Only include hours that would not otherwise be worked e.g. exclude Neighbourhood House manager hours if they are not covered by the enterprise/s.

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For social enterprise managed by the Neighbourhood House, enter an amount for total wages paid, if any,  where people are employed specifically to work in/for the enterprise. This may include a manager who is employed for extra hours to manage the enterprise but would not include paid time that part of another paid role. Example 1: The Neighbourhood House employs a community engagement worker for 3 days paid for through a grant. The same person also does 2 paid days at the Neighbourhood House social enterprise and the wages are covered by income from the enterprise. Include just 2 days wages in this case. Example 2: The Neighbourhood House coordinator ordinarily works 30 hours per week. A new enterprise is established and the coordinator spends 1 day per week managing the enterprise. The coordinator is not employed for extra hours to manage the enterprise and remains on 30 hrs per week. Do not include the coordinators time in this case.

39. In 2023, how many kilograms of fresh food and/or pantry items did you receive from the following in an average month? 

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This question applies to those Neighbourhood Houses that provide emergency food relief including Foodbank, Second Bite, Foodshare etc or food donations received and distributed by the House.

Remember only count things once. For example, if you receive food from food relief organisations and you use some of that food for a community lunch – only count the food as a community lunch (a separate question), not as kilograms to be given out.

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Liquids If you have items that are measured in millilitres or litres – do a one-for-one exchange. For example, one litre of milk will become 1 kg of milk; a 200 ml tin of coconut milk will become 200 grams. There are 1,000 grams in a kilogram.

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If you hand out bags/hampers or boxes of groceries from donated goods – You can weigh a few to get an average bag and estimate the total number of bags/hampers/boxes for the collection period

For example: average bag/hamper/box = 2.5kg, average number of bags/hampers/boxes given out in an average month = 80, therefore 2.5 x 80 = 200kg for the month

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OR

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add up the weight of each item in an average bag/hamper/box to get your total weight for eg. 2 x tins of tomatoes – 800 grams each (1.6kg total), 1 x box of weetbix - 1.2kg, 2 x 1 litre of long-life milk – 2 kg total , 1 x bag of rice – 500 grams, 4 x tin of tuna – 85 grams each (340 grams total); therefore 1.6 + 1.2 +2 + 0.5 + 0.340 = 5.64 Kg for a bag/hamper/box and 100 were received in an average month therefore there is a total of 564 kilograms of food for an average month.

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If you have a ‘food relief agency supplier’ use your invoices from your food relief providers to work out a kilogram amount or if you're having trouble, you can upload them within the survey so that NHVic can calculate the kgs and dollar value for you.

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If you receive donations from individuals such as tinned goods or excess produce from gardens estimate an average weight of the donated items over an average month.

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If you have a blended service e.g. food supplied by one or more food relief organisations with itemised receipts with weights and quantities as well as goods donated by community members, you can work out and tell us the Kgs of food received for which you have no itemised receipts in the survey and upload receipts supplied by the food relief organisation. Be sure not to upload receipts for food which you have already included in a Kg figure in the survey.

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If you have a hybrid service - for example, you make take-home meal packs from donated goods and have an open pantry at the same time community lunch is on, please calculate all instances, including the kilograms of food that went into the take-home meal packs, the kilograms of food that people take from the pantry and the number of community lunches served (this is a separate question).

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If you give away food from your community garden - obviously the amount of food produced will vary throughout the year. You'll need to estimate the volume of food based on an average throughout the year. For example, take the average amount of food in the lowest volume month and the average amount of food in the highest volume month, add them together then divide by two. Clearly, there will need to be some approximation due to the variability of harvest.

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Uploading invoices If you are having difficulty calculating weights and you receive food from Foodbank or others who issue an itemised invoice or receipt with the quantity of food supplied, you can upload invoices in pdf or excel spreadsheet for an average month. We will then calculate the dollar and kilogram values for you. Make sure you save your invoices to your hard drive or desktop beforehand so that you can upload them to the survey. You can use a combination of uploaded receipts and your own calculations if you distribute food from more than one source.

40. For 2023, please estimate the dollar value of the material relief below that was provided by your Neighbourhood House during an average month. Please use whole numbers only and leave as 0 (zero) if your House does not provide that specific material relief. 

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This includes bill payments; cash/prepaid or gift cards; food vouchers; public transport cards, fuel vouchers clothing and household items, and personal care and hygiene items. The question requires you to calculate the value in dollars of the relief provided.

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Clothing and household items should be estimated on their usual sale value if they are provided new or their resale value if they are used. Resale value would be what you would expect to pay in an op shop or second-hand store.

41. In 2023, approximately how many Tax Help tax returns did your Neighbourhood House assist with? If none, enter "0" (zero). 

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This refers to the total number of individual returns the Neighbourhood House assisted with. If the Neighbourhood House assisted a tax help client to lodge 3 years' worth of returns, count this as 3.

Include tax returns completed face to face or via the Tax Help portal.

44. In an average month in 2023, how many different community groups:

• Use a room in the Neighbourhood House?

• Are supported by the Neighbourhood House?

 

‘Use of a room’ counts regardless of whether the room is hired or provided for free as long as it is a non-profit community group.

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‘Support’ for an external group can include providing secretarial or admin services, publicising events, and taking bookings etc., as well as less formal support such as encouragement and advice.

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If a group uses a room and you provide other support include them at both questions.

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If no external groups use or are supported by the Neighbourhood House, please enter 0 (zero) in each box.

45. In 2023, how much room use or room hire did you provide to external groups and/or organisations in an average month? If none, leave as "0" (zero). 

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Include any free room use provided to external groups. 
 

• Number of hours of room use/hire:

• What is the approximate value of that room hire if the hirers had to hire the space/s elsewhere:

 

You can use the tool provided here to calculate this

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Do not include room use by your Neighbourhood House run groups or activities.

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Total the number of hours any space was hired. If two spaces were hired at the same time add the times together.

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If possible, find out how much it would cost per hour for a community group to hire an equivalent space/s near you.

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Count how many hours of room use you provide, either free or at a charge, to other groups or organisations in a typical month.

46. In 2023, how many organisations did you work in partnership with?

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Please include all partnerships, whether funded or unfunded, formal and/or informal.

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Partners may include local government, health service, school, local business, other community organisations, etc. The partnership may be funded and governed by a written agreement: e.g. between the Neighbourhood House and local government to deliver social inclusion activities. Or the partnership may be an unfunded collaboration based on a shared vision: e.g. the Neighbourhood House works with the local school to identify young people who could benefit from homework clubs. This question is compulsory so if the Neighbourhood House is not involved in any regular partnerships, please enter 0 (zero) in the box.

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Do not include funding bodies as partners where they have no active involvement in the partnership other than the provision of funding e.g. ACFE.

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Do not include groups that are participants in an activity owned and managed by the Neighbourhood House e.g. the community garden group where the group does not or did not exist outside of that activity.

47. In 2023, how many of the following has your Neighbourhood House undertaken?

• Projects managed by the Neighbourhood House
• Funding applications made by the Neighbourhood House
• Projects managed by others that the Neighbourhood House participated in

 

Count all projects – funded or otherwise – managed by the Neighbourhood House. This includes projects run in partnership with other organisations where the Neighbourhood House is the lead agency.

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Count all funding applications – successful or otherwise – made by the Neighbourhood House.

Count all projects managed by others that the Neighbourhood House participated in. This includes projects run in partnership where another organisation is the lead agency or where the Neighbourhood House provides support e.g. by participating in the project delivery or by being part of a project reference group.

50. What was the total (gross) annual income of the Neighbourhood House as stated in your last annual report?

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Council-managed Neighbourhood Houses and Neighbourhood Houses auspiced by large not-for-profits can calculate their gross annual income based on a total of:

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• Neighbourhood House Coordination Program (NHCP) funding (where applicable)

• Contributions from the council/auspice body (including labour costs)

• Value of grants for use by the Neighbourhood House

• Fees, charges and fundraising income for the Neighbourhood House

53. In dollars, how much of your Neighbourhood House annual income came from fee for service activities in the period covered by your most recent annual report? Fee for service activities are those where you collect a fee from participants but do not receive a grant to cover all or part of the cost of providing the activity.

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Do not include room hire or social enterprise income captured elsewhere in the survey.

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This does not include ACFE programs or any other program partially or wholly funded by someone other than the participant.

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It does not include activities run by other organisations or individuals where the fee is paid directly to them.

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It does include examples like an art group run by a volunteer where the participants pay a fee for materials provided, or an exercise class where participants pay a fee to cover the cost of a tutor paid by the Neighbourhood House.