Annual Survey Resources

This page contains resources to assist you to successfully capture the information required to complete the 2022 Neighbourhood House Survey. 

This survey is compulsory for all NHCP-funded neighbourhood houses.

See the information session recordings here.

If you have any queries, please contact Neighbourhood Houses Victoria's Policy and Research Manager David Perry at [email protected]

Survey PDF - draft use only

The PDF version of the Neighbourhood Houses Survey for draft use only was emailed to all Neighbourhood Houses in December 2022 and a copy is provided below. It will enable you to work out and record your answers before you fill the survey in online. You may also find it useful:

  • if you prefer to print the survey and write down the answers before entering them online
  • if you need to ask others in your organisation to answer certain questions
  • to have all the answers prepared so you can complete online more quickly and with fewer of the interruptions that often occur in Neighbourhood Houses.

We have made the PDF fully interactive so you can tick the checkboxes etc.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF

Please remember, if you use this PDF version, you must still manually transpose your answers into the online survey using the link we will email to you in early February 2023.

Please also note:

  • To ensure you can save any changes you make in the pdf file it is advisable to have the latest version of a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat Reader available free here. 
  • The PDF is an abridged version of the survey which excludes some administrative information, e.g. your postcode, that will be pre-filled when you enter the survey online. You will be able to correct any errors in the pre-filled information at that time.
  • The PDF version also includes questions you may not be asked online depending on your responses to some questions. For example, you are only asked the questions in the 'Location Changes' section if you indicated in the previous question that you changed your location. To assist, we have noted on the PDF if you are directed to skip or complete specific questions.

Calculator tool 

Designed to make life easier, this is an Excel spreadsheet emailed to Neighbourhood Houses in December 2022 to record and automatically tally some of the data required for the survey. It assists with questions about:

  • Volunteers
  • Program sessions
  • Governance hours
  • Activity hours
  • Room hire
DOWNLOAD THE EXCEL SPREADSHEET

Information session

Our online information sessions went through the survey and calculator tool, and answered a lot of questions.You can revisit the recordings here:

Support desk

Definitions
  • USED the Neighbourhood House: means physically attending at a Neighbourhood House or any of its program delivery sites
  • Neighbourhood House activities: 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.
  • Open or Open to the public: Means a staff member or volunteer is present to assist anyone entering and requiring a response to an enquiry, enrolment in an activity, etc. It does not include when people are using the facility but no staff member or volunteer is available to assist with Neighbourhood House related enquiries etc.
  • Community development projects: Community Development is a community-led, participatory process with members of your community who have identified a mutual goal. It is coordinated collaborative action by a community group to drive community or systems change. A Community Development project is co-designed with affected community members, and they take an active role in the project. A community development project involves a process over a period of time, working towards a specific goal to create change. It is not a single activity done solely by the Neighbourhood House “for” community members. Projects may have dedicated funding. Projects are not ongoing activities but may lead to ongoing activities as an outcome.
  • 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. Do not include activity that is room hire on a purely commercial basis.

Please click on the question below you require help with.

22. For 2022, 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).

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

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

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.

Do not include online participants.

23. In 2022, how many of these people participated in Neighbourhood House activities in an average week, excluding online participants?*

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.

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.

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.

24. In 2022, how many people participated in your online Neighbourhood House activities in an average week?*

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.

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.

25. For the collection period, for how many hours per week was the Neighbourhood House generally open to the public and:

a) Staffed by paid staff?
b) Staffed by volunteers when paid staff were unavailable?*

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’.

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.

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

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.

26. How many weeks in 2022 was the Neighbourhood House open to the public?*

‘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.

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

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.

27. In 2022, 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.

(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.)*

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.

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.


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

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.

28. Please record the number of different Neighbourhood House activity SESSIONS (NOT hours) you delivered face to face or online in 2022. 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 *

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.

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.

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.

To answer this correctly the sessions must:

  • 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 get seniors connected with other 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. This question asks about Community Development projects that your Neighbourhood House facilitated or actively supported that were designed to benefit the whole community or a whole group within the community. Project examples may include working with residents to get better public transport connections or a project working with cultural or gender diversity groups to promote respect and understanding.

Do not include activities primarily designed to benefit individuals or already established, ongoing activities such as general training, services, art and craft groups etc.

While projects can have many outcomes at once, please choose one category per project that best matches the main purpose of each project undertaken (ie one project should not be entered in multiple categories) .

In 2022, how many projects to benefit the whole community or a group within the community that your Neighbourhood House facilitated or actively supported were designed to:*……….

Community Development is a community-led, participatory process with members of your community who have identified a mutual goal. It is coordinated collaborative action by a community group to drive community or systems change. A Community Development project is co-designed with affected community members, and they take an active role in the project. A community development project involves a process over a period of time, working towards a specific goal to create change. It is not a single activity done solely by the Neighbourhood House “for” community members. Projects may have dedicated funding. Projects are not ongoing activities but may lead to ongoing activities as an outcome.

This question is asking about the number of projects NOT the number of outcomes. While projects can have many outcomes at once, please choose one category that best matches the main purpose of each project undertaken.

Consider all of the projects where there was a collective impact i.e. for a whole community or an entire group within it and choose a category for each project. For example if you did one community infrastructure project you would enter a “1” in that category; if you did 2 environment projects, they would enter 2 in that category.

A single project may have many activities associated with it. For example a project to promote harmony may include a class based cultural education program, a community festival, and a cross cultural cooking program. This is still just one project. The numerous individual activities associated with it are captured in the other questions about sessions, events etc.

We are looking at projects specifically designed to directly improve outcomes for a whole community or an entire group within it. Groups within the community may include the unemployed, public housing tenants, single parents, people with a hearing impairment, women, people from a particular culture the LGBTQI+ community, users of a service or facility etc.

Do not include activities just because they are open to anyone in the community but that only benefit those that participate e.g. return to work classes. While this targets unemployed people as a cohort, the outcome primarily benefits only those who attend. Establishing an unemployed advocacy program or creating a local employment strategy would be included as it is designed to improve the situation for all local unemployed.

Classes are generally not included however a series of classes run for the purpose of raising community awareness of a new cultural group in the community or about how to participate in elections would be included because the intent is not to increase personal knowledge of individuals but rather to affect change in the community through promoting mutual respect or strengthening participation in decision making.

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

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

For the period 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2022, how many activity hours did your Neighbourhood House provide in an average week? *

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.

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

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

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

34. In 2022, 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. *

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

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.

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 club 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.

39a. In 2022, how many kilograms of fresh food and/or pantry items did you receive from the following in an average month? 

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.

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.

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

OR

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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).

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.

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 2022, 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. *

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.

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 2022, approximately how many Tax Help tax returns did your Neighbourhood House assist with? If none, enter "0" (zero). *

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 2022, 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.

‘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.

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

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

45. In 2022, 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).

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

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

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

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

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 2022, how many organisations did you work in partnership with?*

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

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.

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.

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 2022, 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.

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.

51. In dollars, how much recurrent Local Government (Council) funding did you receive in the period covered by your most recent annual report?

This is funding which was or is expected to be received consistently for 2 or more years and does not include funding that varies based on volume of outputs (use whole number only; no dollar sign, commas or decimal points).

Recurrent funding is any funding that is received each over multiple years and may include indexation increasing the amount each year. It may need to be reapplies for periodically for example every two, three or five years. There may be a service agreement with specific outcomes or objectives that need to be achieved.

It is NOT funding provided based on a unit price for a service. For example, if council provides funding for a service based on the number of people using the service e.g., a dollar amount per person accessing food relief, it should not be included.

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.

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

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

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.

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Author: Petro T

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