We are delighted to announce the 2026 SIMNA Awards finalists!

We received a record number of high-calibre applications from organisations of all sizes and types, including not-for-profits, social enterprises and corporates, working throughout Australia.

Our sincerest gratitude goes to our 2026 Judging Panel for generously volunteering their time and expertise in the field of social impact measurement.

And the 2026 Finalists are…

Emerging Practice in Social Impact Measurement

Learn more

Excellence in Social Impact Measurement

Learn more

Innovation in Social Impact Measurement

Learn more

Outstanding Collaboration in Social Impact Measurement

Learn more

  • Capital Region Community Services (CRCS) 

  • Cherished Pets

  • Transgrid

  • Victorian Leadership Network

  • Camp Quality

  • HOPE Housing

  • Settlement Services International (SSI)

  • YWCA Australia

  • Community Energy Queensland

  • Mission Australia

  • Seer Data & Analytics

  • Australian Child and Youth Cancer Alliance

  • Clear Horizon

  • Family by Family

Emerging Practice in Social Impact Measurement

Showcasing organisations or initiatives that are early in their impact measurement journey and highlighting progress rather than perfection.

  • CRCS’s Social Impact Framework gives the organisation a consistent way to plan, measure, learn from and communicate the difference its services make. Built around six interconnected pillars, including theory of change, program logics, participant and workforce voice, and ethical impact storytelling, it replaces fragmented, service-specific reporting with a shared approach linking strategy, practice and data. The 2026 participant survey showed improvement on every comparable measure, including trust, service quality and community connection, and pointed to clear priorities for communication, facilities, workforce continuity and follow-up. Presented as emerging practice, the framework will be refreshed in 2027 to strengthen lived-experience voice, implement SEER analytics and embed a “we heard, we changed” feedback loop.

  • Founded in 2015 by Dr Lissi Kennedy, The Social Hearted Vet, Cherished Pets is the world’s first B Corp certified veterinary practice. With its charitable partner, Cherished Pets Foundation, it provides accessible, affordable care for people experiencing vulnerability, centred on the human-animal bond. In 2022–23, an SROI analysis with ROOY found the work created an estimated $3.85 in social value for every $1 invested. In 2023, the two entities supported 2,980 people and 2,100 pets. 78% of clients felt more supported and connected, and 83% of referral agencies reported improved client access to veterinary care. By making the social value of veterinary teams visible, Dr Lissi aims to shift the profession’s narrative from compassion fatigue to compassion satisfaction.

  • Transgrid maintains NSW’s electricity transmission network and is delivering major infrastructure across regional communities, creating opportunities in employment, training, procurement and community investment. To move beyond reporting on spend and activity, it has developed an early-stage Social Value Framework linking community need, activities, outcomes and long-term value. The framework uses TOMs Australia measures, Australian proxy values and Salesforce-based data capture, with requirements scaled to each project’s risk and impact. A retrospective pilot on EnergyConnect showed social value could be evidenced across workforce, procurement, training and community resilience, while exposing data gaps and the need to avoid over-claiming. Those lessons are now strengthening governance, evidence standards and early engagement with delivery partners.

  • For more than twenty years, ten Victorian community leadership organisations have developed 13,007 leaders across all 79 local government areas. Until 2026, none could show collectively what their programs achieved. Supported by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, the Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation and the Menzies Foundation, they came together as the Victorian Leadership Network to build a shared Leadership Model and a monitoring, evaluation and learning framework. Its first Alumni Impact Survey drew 1,052 responses, with 95% of alumni reporting at least one new leadership action since their program. The result is the first consistent evidence of community leadership impact across Victoria, helping each organisation shape programs around what its communities need.

Excellence in Social Impact Measurement

Recognising the highest standard of mature, rigorous, and influential practice, setting the benchmark for what "great" looks like and driving continuous improvement.

  • Camp Quality’s approach to impact measurement puts the people it supports at the centre of every decision. It began with a 2022 Family Journey Mapping project, which drew on more than 430 interviews and survey responses and shaped the organisation’s strategic direction. Since then, Camp Quality has introduced real-time feedback, established Family and Children’s Advisory Committees, expanded co-design and commissioned independent SROI analysis. These insights have led to more family-oriented programming, expanded Family Retreats, new camp formats, redesigned cancer education including Bloom for teenagers, and dedicated bereavement programming. Its 2025 SROI evaluation estimated $4.50 in social value for every $1 invested, with benefits including wellbeing, connection and reduced isolation. Measurement is now embedded in how Camp Quality plans, delivers and improves its services.

  • Essential workers like nurses, teachers and police officers keep our cities running, but rising prices put homeownership near the communities they serve out of reach for many. HOPE offers another path: contributing up to 50% of a home’s purchase price through shared equity, so essential workers can buy a suitable home close to work sooner and share future capital growth with HOPE. The benefits ripple outward: financial security and shorter commutes for workers, stability for their families, better retention for employers, and communities that keep the people they rely on. Developed with UNSW and Think Impact, HOPE’s impact framework combines cost benefit analysis with SROI. As at December 2025, HOPE has supported 39 essential workers into 26 homes, delivering an estimated $5.6 million in social value since October 2022.

  • SSI supports more than 50,000 people from diverse backgrounds each year and uses its evidence and multicultural expertise to advocate for fairer services, systems and policies. Under its 2023–26 Impact Strategy, SSI designed and embedded a consistent, organisation-wide approach to measuring impact, guided by a Theory of Change and tailored to different client groups and services. Impact data now covers programs supporting more than 80% of clients. Measures were designed and tested with people with lived experience and are built into existing client touchpoints, making measurement meaningful, accessible and culturally responsive. Evidence now informs decisions from program teams to Executive and Board level, and has contributed to service improvements, SSI’s 2030 Strategy and its first ESG Strategy.

  • YWCA Australia’s Impact Framework answers a simple question: are we making a difference? Developed over five years through extensive consultation with clients, residents, staff and sector partners, it is built on an organisational Theory of Change and six domains of impact: Safety, Security, Agency, Connection, Wellbeing and Influence. Rather than relying on a single measure, it draws together surveys, operational data, qualitative insights, evaluations and research to build a growing picture of change over time. Now embedded across planning, service delivery, reporting and strategic decision-making, it is shaped by the voices of the women and gender diverse people YWCA supports. The inaugural Impact Report offers the first national view of YWCA Australia’s impact, marking a shift from reporting activities to understanding meaningful outcomes.

Innovation in Social Impact Measurement

Celebrating new, creative, and contextually grounded approaches that meaningfully enhance how impact is collected, analysed and used.

  • Community Energy Queensland (CEQ) is a community-led effort to make Queensland’s energy transition fairer, better understood and shaped by the people it affects. Information about renewable projects is usually collected from the top down and centred on objections, so it cannot show what communities understand, need or would accept. CEQ is testing a different model in three pilot communities across Northern, Central and Southern Queensland, working in person first to listen, map local assets and co-design plans with local working groups. Each community builds its own just transition dashboard, underpinned by a common Just Transition framework, and sets its own local indicators. CEQ is also building a first-of-its-kind social licence model that records community understanding, acceptance, participation and benefit sharing, with findings checked back with the community before use. The result is reliable, community-validated evidence, with communities holding the data about themselves.

  • Mission Australia wants the people who use its services to feel better about their lives, but traditional approaches to measuring wellbeing often reflect Western concepts and can exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices. Its Centre for Evidence and Insights partnered with Aboriginal leaders and staff to co-design a new measure, letting Aboriginal people define what wellbeing means and how it should be measured. The result is My Life, My Culture, My Community (MLCC), a culturally grounded tool built around three domains: life, culture and community. Piloted across eleven services in Western NSW, it gathered more than 200 responses, and 80% of Aboriginal participants chose it over the existing measure. Participation in impact measurement among Aboriginal adults rose from 35% to 46%, and initial validation shows strong reliability and alignment with established wellbeing measures.

  • metiora is an AI-native impact intelligence platform developed by Seer Data to change how organisations measure social impact and use evidence to improve decisions. Building on more than a decade of work with governments, philanthropic foundations, investors and communities, it addresses a persistent problem: impact is created across complex networks, yet measurement remains fragmented, retrospective and disconnected from decisions. metiora links commitments, funding, activities, evidence and outcomes, showing what is changing and for whom. AI helps organise and analyse information, while traceability, data governance and human oversight keep measurement credible. Funders gain clearer evidence, and community organisations and delivery partners gain tools to track progress and reduce reporting burden. It is being piloted with four inaugural customers: Snow Foundation, PLACE Australia, Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project and McKinnon.

Outstanding Collaboration in Social Impact Measurement

Highlighting place-based, systems change, and other collaborative initiatives that demonstrate genuine shared responsibility and power sharing in impact measurement.

  • Parents of children diagnosed with cancer face profound psychological stress that affects parenting confidence and family functioning, yet few interventions address it. The Australian Child and Youth Cancer Alliance, a partnership of Canteen, Redkite and Camp Quality, worked with families with lived experience to co-develop the Compass Online Parenting Program, combining an online psychoeducational program with facilitated group sessions. A 2025 mixed-methods developmental evaluation tested its feasibility, acceptability and early effectiveness, using surveys, interviews, facilitator focus groups and digital usage data. Sixty-one parents enrolled and completed the baseline survey. Parents who completed the follow-up reported high satisfaction and that the program met most or all of their needs, while 86% reported improvements in communication and behaviour management. All follow-up respondents (n=7) reported feeling less isolated. The findings are now informing refinements to content, delivery and long-term sustainability.

  • Our Town is a ten-year, place-based mental wellbeing initiative supporting community-led, preventative responses across six rural South Australian communities. Since 2019, town teams, community members and a Support Team of the Fay Fuller Foundation, TACSI and Clear Horizon have worked together to strengthen local approaches to mental health. A mid-term evaluation drew on six years of evidence, including stories, interviews, surveys, case studies and town-level reflections, to understand what changed, for whom, and how. Town teams shaped the evaluation questions, guided local inquiry and challenged emerging findings. The approach balanced rigour with community ownership, recognising contribution rather than claiming sole attribution. It also built shared language and direction across communities, and findings are now informing adaptive decision-making, refinement of emerging Change Pathways and collective advocacy for regional communities to lead change.

  • Family by Family is a peer-to-peer support program co-designed with South Australian families, connecting families who have navigated significant challenges with families seeking positive change. To build robust evidence of its long-term impact, where a randomised controlled trial was poorly suited to the realities of supporting families experiencing disadvantage, TACSI partnered with the BetterStart Group at Adelaide University to link program data with the whole-population BEBOLD data platform. The study compared 357 Family by Family families and 808 children with more than 57,000 comparable families across South Australia. It found an estimated 44% relative reduction in the risk of children entering out-of-home care and a 6% relative reduction in emergency department presentations over 24 months. The collaboration offers a replicable model for how community organisations, universities and government can use existing data infrastructure to strengthen evidence of what works.