From grant approval to great acquittal - a simple guide to reporting the difference you made

For many organisations, acquittal reporting can feel like the least exciting part of receiving a grant. After months, or even years, of delivering activities, engaging participants, juggling budgets and solving unexpected problems, sitting down to write a report can feel like a final administrative hurdle.

But a great acquittal is much more than a compliance exercise. Every Lotterywest grant is reviewed at acquittal against the outcomes identified and the evidence provided to demonstrate progress and impact. A strong acquittal helps assessors understand the difference your initiative made, while also helping your organisation learn from the initiative and build capability for future projects.

The good news?

The best acquittals are rarely created at the end of a project. They are built from the very beginning.

If you start with a clear impact plan, collect the right evidence along the way, and keep your reporting focused on outcomes rather than just activities, acquittal reporting becomes much simpler.

Here's a practical step-by-step guide to getting acquittal reporting right.

Step 1: Start with the end in mind

One of the most common challenges organisations face is trying to prove impact after a project has finished.

Imagine running a community program for 12 months, only to realise during acquittal that you never collected any evidence showing whether participants' lives actually changed.

Unfortunately, that situation is more common than you might think.

The easiest way to avoid it is to begin your project by asking a simple question:

"What will success look like?"

Rather than focusing solely on what you will deliver, think about what will be different because your initiative happened.

For example:

• Activity: Deliver weekly art workshops.
• Output: 80 people attend workshops.
• Outcome: Participants report improved confidence, stronger social connections and increased wellbeing.

The outcome is the real story here. It's the change that occurred because of the activity, not the activity itself.

This distinction between activities, outputs and outcomes is one of the foundations of effective impact planning and strong acquittal reporting. As highlighted throughout the Community Impact Hub resources, funders want to understand not only what you did, but what difference it made.

Step 2: Build a simple impact plan

A strong acquittal begins with a strong impact plan. The Community Impact Planner on the Community Impact Hub provides practical tools to help organisations develop:

• A Theory of Change
• A Logic Model
• An Outcomes Measurement Framework

While these tools might sound intimidating, they are simply structured ways of mapping how your initiative will create change. Think of your impact plan as the blueprint for your project.

A good plan outlines:

• The issue or opportunity you're addressing
• The activities you'll deliver
• The people who will benefit
• The outcomes you expect to achieve
• How you'll measure success

If you're unsure where to start, keep it simple.

For a small to medium sized grant (up to $250K), we recommend focusing on three to five key outcomes rather than trying to measure everything. A handful of strong indicators and one good story can often create a much more compelling impact narrative than pages of unnecessary activity data.

Step 3: Match your evidence to the size of your grant

One of the biggest misconceptions about acquittal reporting is that every grant requires huge volumes of evidence and extensive evaluation. This is not always true. For smaller grants, anecdotal evidence and participant feedback may be sufficient. For medium sized grants, an Impact Plan and one method of data collection – such as surveys or testimonials – is likely to meet needs. For larger grants, organisations are generally expected to provide stronger evidence using multiple data collection methods and, where possible, demonstrate change over time.

The key message is reassuring:

Collect only meaningful data, and don't collect more than you need. Lotterywest takes a proportionate approach to outcomes measurement and evidence collection. This means the level of evidence expected should be appropriate to the size and complexity of the grant.

The Outcomes Evidencing Toolkit on the Community Impact Hub has been designed specifically to help organisations understand what level of evidence is appropriate for different grant values and project types. It provides practical guidance on selecting indicators, choosing data collection methods and aligning evidence with intended outcomes.

Step 4: Decide how you'll measure success

Once you've identified your intended outcomes, the next step is deciding how you'll know whether they occurred. This means establishing outcome indicators. For example:

Your indicators should be practical, easy to understand and genuinely useful.

Remember, indicators are not there to satisfy reporting requirements (although they also serve that purpose). They help you learn whether your initiative is working.

The Outcomes Measurement Planner available through the Community Impact Hub can help organisations map outcomes to indicators and identify suitable measurement approaches.

Step 5: Collect evidence throughout the project

One of the easiest ways to make acquittal reporting stressful is to wait until the final month before thinking about evidence collection. Instead, build evidence collection into normal project delivery. Think about what information you need at three points:

Before you start your initiative

Establish your baseline. What is the situation before your initiative begins?

While you’re delivering your initiative

Monitor participation, engagement and emerging impacts. This can include:

• Attendance records
• Observation notes
• Short surveys or feedback forms
• Photographic evidence

After your initiative concludes

Collect final evidence showing what changed. This is often where organisations gather outcome data through participant surveys, interviews or case studies.

Collecting evidence throughout the project reduces pressure at acquittal time and often results in stronger, more reliable evidence.

It can also help you make informed adjustments during delivery. If participant feedback, survey data or other evidence suggests an activity is not working as intended, documenting how you identified the issue, adapted your approach and monitored the results can demonstrate organisational learning, responsiveness and capability.

Step 6: Use both numbers and stories

The strongest acquittals almost always combine quantitative and qualitative evidence. In simple terms:

Numbers tell us what you delivered

Examples include:

• Number of participants
• Attendance rates
• Survey scores
• Volunteer hours

Stories tell us why it mattered

Examples include:

• Participant quotes
• Interviews
• Testimonials
• Case studies

While not all grant types or sizes require significant data collection, we do recommend using mixed methods wherever possible because different types of evidence answer different questions. Quantitative data helps demonstrate scale, while qualitative evidence helps explain lived experience and change.

For example, survey results might show that 92% of respondents reported feeling more connected to their community after participating in the program. A participant quote can then help explain what that increased sense of connection looked like in practice.

Together, they create a richer picture of change.

Step 7: Analyse what the evidence is telling you

When reviewing your evidence, don't just focus on whether targets were achieved. Take some time to reflect on what you've learned. Ask yourself:

• What worked well?
• Which outcomes were strongest?
• Were there any unexpected outcomes?
• Did certain approaches work better than others?
• Were there challenges that affected delivery?

The most interesting acquittals are often the most honest. And they look a little deeper – asking not just ‘what’, but ‘why’.

Lotterywest understands that community initiatives operate in complex environments. Not every activity unfolds exactly as anticipated.

A thoughtful reflection on lessons learned can be just as valuable as reporting successes both for a grant recipient, and for their funding organisations.

Step 8: Write an impact-focused narrative

When it comes time to write your acquittal report, many organisations fall into the trap of describing activities in detail while spending very little time discussing outcomes. A stronger approach is to structure your report around impact.

The templated Lotterywest acquittal approach follows a logical storytelling format:

1. Overview: Provide a short summary of the initiative.
2. Opportunity: Explain the need or opportunity that existed in the community and why the initiative mattered.
3. Approach: Describe the activities delivered and how they addressed the identified need.
4. Impact: This is the most important section.

Focus on:

• Outcomes achieved
• Evidence supporting those outcomes
• Whether expectations were met
• Any unintended outcomes

Where relevant, explain how Lotterywest funding contributed to the outcomes achieved. What did the grant enable that may not otherwise have occurred? How did it contribute to achieving the broader outcomes of the initiative?

5. What Worked: Share success factors and key learnings.
6. What Could Be Done Differently: Reflect honestly on challenges and opportunities for improvement.

You might notice that this structure closely mirrors the case studies featured on the Community Impact Hub. Those case studies are excellent examples of effective impact storytelling and can provide inspiration when drafting your own report.

Step 9: Paint the "after picture"

Funders already know what you planned to do. They assessed your application, after all. What they really want to understand at acquittal time is:

What changed?

Help readers visualise the difference your initiative made.

Instead of simply writing: We delivered 24 workshops.

Try: Through 24 workshops, participants built new skills, increased confidence and developed social networks that continued beyond the life of the program.

The first statement describes an output. The second describes impact. That's what makes an acquittal memorable.

It’s also worth acknowledging that not all outcomes will be fully realised by the time an acquittal is submitted. This is particularly common for infrastructure, equipment and capacity-building grants where long-term benefits continue to emerge over time.

In these situations, explain the progress achieved so far and how outcomes are expected to continue developing beyond the acquittal period.

Step 10: Keep it human

Finally, remember that acquittal reports are read by people.

Good acquittals draw on multiple forms of evidence. Quantitative data, participant feedback, observations, surveys, interviews and case studies can all play an important role in understanding what changed and why.

In other words - numbers can help show the scale, reach and extent of change. Stories help explain how and why that change occurred. Together they provide a richer picture of impact.

The most compelling acquittals combine credible evidence with authentic human experiences. They help readers understand not only what happened, but why it mattered to the people and communities involved.

When writing your report:

• Use plain language.
• Avoid unnecessary jargon.
• Explain outcomes clearly.
• Include meaningful quotes or stories.
• Focus on the people who benefited.

Most importantly, don't underestimate the value of your own learning. Acquittal reporting isn't only about proving success. It's about reflecting on what happened, understanding what created impact, and using those insights to strengthen future projects, and importantly, future funding applications.

Final insights

The secret to a great acquittal report isn't really writing skill. It's preparation.

If you develop a simple impact plan, identify clear outcomes, collect evidence as you go, and focus on telling the story of change, acquittal reporting becomes far less daunting.

In fact, by the time you reach the end of your project, much of the work will already be done.

The Community Impact Hub, Community Impact Planner and Outcomes Evidencing Toolkit were all designed with exactly this goal in mind: helping organisations plan for impact from the outset so that reporting becomes a natural extension of good project design, not a last-minute scramble for evidence.

The best acquittals don't just show that a project happened. They show that it mattered.

Need more information? Check out the handy Quick Guide to Grant Impact, and the many helpful Tools and Resources and Insight Articles on the Community Impact Hub.