Information, Linkages and Capacity Building – also known as ILC – aims to make positive changes in the lives of people with disability. These changes are sometimes called outcomes.

Outcomes can be changes in things like awareness, knowledge, skills or behavior. The way it works is people take part in activities and as a result they experience outcomes.

Organisations that receive grants are often asked to report on what they do. These activities are usually called outputs. For example, the number of people that visited a website is an output. The NDIA want to know about not just what organisations do, but what difference they make.

The NDIA has built the ILC outcomes story builder to help organisations describe how their activities will achieve outcomes for people with disability.

It should only take 5-10 minutes to use, and at the end you’ll have a handy diagram that you can save or send to others.

Let’s see how it works…

There are five simple steps that will help you build up your ILC outcomes story.

This can also be called a logic model or a theory of change. It is a diagram of how an organisation, program or initiative results in change.

Let’s work through an example. Imagine we work for a non-profit organisation in a small rural town that provides information and peer support activities for people with disability. And that we are interested in applying for an ILC grant.

Step 1 asks why your idea is important? Here we are focusing on what the need is, how we know there is a need and how we have engaged with people with disability…so…

Our organisation has found that people with a disability in our town can be socially isolated or would like to build their confidence to follow their interests.

They told us that they would really value face-to-face and internet support from peers so that they access help and advice when it suits them and from people they trust.

Step 2 asks who you will work with? Here we identify the people who would benefit from our activity as well as those we will work with to carry out the activity.

We are going to work with adults with disability who are new to our area or feel socially isolated. We want to have a minimum of 15 people involved in the peer support group. Most of them do not have an individual NDIS plan, but all people with disability will be welcome.

We will also work with partner organisations. To promote our project, we will work with local disability organisations and to host our face-to-face sessions we would like to work with local neighbourhood houses.

Step 3, so what will we actually do? Here we want to describe in plain language our activities.

We will provide Information, linkages and referrals. Guest speakers will provide relevant and accurate information. The group leader will also provide information based on the group’s interests.

We will also provide Individual capacity building.

We will facilitate a peer support group for adults with disability who are new to our area or socially isolated. This will be face-to-face with an internet option available as well.

Step 4, now that we have described the activities we plan to deliver, we need to think about the outcomes we will achieve.

Our first longer-term outcome is that…

People with disability have the skills and confidence to participate and contribute to the community and protect their rights:

In working towards this outcome, we would expect to see that those participating in the peer support group will have…

Increased motivation, confidence and empowerment to act

Increased self-advocacy, independence and relationship building

Our second longer-term outcomes is that…

People with disability are connected and have the information they need to make decisions and choices

In working towards this outcome, we would expect to see that those participating in the peer support group will have…

Improved knowledge about disability and/or where to find support from mainstream and community services

Increased use of information to make decisions to shape and plan an ordinary life

At this point in the outcomes story builder, you could save and complete your story.

Or you could continue to Step 5, where we need to consider how we will measure outcomes we have identified.

We will go into more detail about measuring outcomes in the next video in this series.