What is the difference between outputs and outcomes in a funding bid?
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An output is what a charity does and an outcome is what changes, and funders increasingly ask for the second. Outputs and outcomes both belong in a bid, but only an outcome needs a measure agreed before the project starts. Where a funder holds back the last payment until the evaluation report arrives, an outcome you cannot measure is a payment you cannot claim.
Do this first
England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the same position, with no difference in principle — the funder payment mechanics quoted here are UK-wide. Northern Ireland: the same position, for the same reason. One funder named in this guide’s survey, Lloyds Bank Foundation, covers England and Wales only; nothing on this page turns on it.
Why outcomes decide the last payment
Outputs and outcomes are not a matter of presentation: an outcome you cannot measure can cost the charity its last grant payment. What you promise to change should be what the need statement has just shown is wrong. If you have not yet written the need statement and evidenced it, do that first.
Grants are not always paid in one go. This guide’s record of the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s own programme terms reads:
paid 50/30/20, with the final fifth held until the evaluation report. Procurement flow-down: 3 quotes over £10,000, tender evidence over £50,000.
Read the first clause again. The final portion is held until the evaluation report arrives. The evaluation report is where you demonstrate the outcomes you promised, measured the way you said you would measure them.
So an outcome that cannot be measured is not a presentational problem in the bid. It is an unpaid instalment at the end of the project. By then the money has been spent and the charity is carrying the gap. That is the reason this page exists.
What is the difference between an output and an outcome?
An output is what you do. An outcome is what changes. The distinction in full, and where impact sits beyond it, belongs to the impact hub: separate outputs from outcomes from impact. The table sets the two side by side as a bid uses them.
| Output | Outcome | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The activity you run | The difference the activity makes |
| Who can count it | Anybody, from your own records | Only against a measure you defined |
| Example | Twelve sessions run; 200 young people attended | Those young people report feeling less isolated |
| Evidence | A register, a booking sheet, a receipt | A before-and-after measure, taken both times |
| When it is fixed | When you plan the activity | Before the project starts, not at reporting time |
Both belong in a bid. Outputs show the funder the project is real and costed. Outcomes show what its money buys.
A bid with only outputs reads as a shopping list. A bid with only outcomes reads as a wish.
An outcome’s measure, agreed before the project starts
An outcome without a measure attached is not an outcome yet. Agree the measure before the project starts, not at reporting time.
Write each one in three parts:
- What changes. For whom, and in what direction.
- How it is measured. The actual instrument — a question you will ask, a score you will record, a count you will take twice.
- The target. What you are aiming at, and how confident you are.
Do the third part honestly. An ambitious outcome reads better on the page and is harder to evidence at the end of the project. The evidence is the thing the last payment depends on. A modest target you can demonstrate is worth more than a bold one you cannot.
Before you promise a measure, check one practical thing: that the charity can collect it, with the people and time it has. If the measure needs a survey nobody has time to run, it will not happen, and the gap will appear in the evaluation report. Choosing the measure itself is the work of the step where you choose your indicators.
How many outcomes a bid needs
Most bids need fewer outcomes than they carry. Two or three, each with a measure you will genuinely take, beat a page of them.
The chain a funder is reading for is short. It runs from the need you evidenced, to the activity you will run, to the change you expect, to how you will know. That chain has a name in the sector — a theory of change — and the bid does not usually need the diagram, only the logic. If any link in the chain is missing, the assessor supplies their own, and it will not be the one you wanted.
Outcomes in the trustees’ annual report
Promises made to a funder do not stay between you and the funder. The trustees’ annual report describes what the charity achieved, it goes to the regulator when you file your accounts, and a funder can read it.
The detail of that duty belongs to the reporting hub, not here. That hub starts from the step where you establish your SORP tier and your report’s contents.
The narrative sections of the annual report sets out the position. The Charities SORP requires a summary of the main achievements at every tier. It requires an explanation of impact only under a heading that applies to larger charities. For the smallest, it says the trustees should consider the difference the work made. Which tier your charity is in is explained in SORP 2026 and the three tiers.
Two documents from the same publisher, disagreeing. That page publishes the disagreement rather than resolving it, and this one does not resolve it either.
What follows for this step is smaller. Whatever your tier, keep the outcomes you promise a funder and the achievements you describe in your annual report telling the same story. Write them once, and reuse them.
The outputs and outcomes table
The output of this step is a short table you will reuse in the bid, in the monitoring plan, and in the final report. One row per output and per outcome.
For each, record what it is, how it will be measured, who collects it, when, and what the target is. Then read the list against the budget you are about to draw up, and against the need statement you have just written. If an outcome has no activity funding it, or an activity delivers no outcome, one of the three documents is wrong.
Keep the table. The budget comes next, when you build the project budget. After it, you write the monitoring and evaluation section from the same table. The evaluation report that releases the last payment is built from it too.
Common mistake: promising outcomes you have no way of measuring
Ambitious outcomes read better in a bid, so they survive the drafting. The Heritage Fund holds back the final portion of the grant until the evaluation report arrives. An unmeasurable outcome becomes an unpayable tranche, at the point when the money has already been spent.
Worked example
Tollgate Youth CIO’s draft bid promises to “improve wellbeing for 200 young people”.
Split in two, that is one good output and one unfinished outcome. Reaching 200 young people is an output: countable from the register, and nobody will argue about it. “Improved wellbeing” is an outcome, and as written it has no measure, so there is nothing for Tollgate to evidence at the end.
The fix is a sentence, not a rewrite. Tollgate names the short questionnaire its youth workers already use, and says it will be taken in the first session and in the last. The target is the share of attendees whose score improves. Same ambition, now measurable — and the measure exists before the project starts rather than being reconstructed in the final report.
What you should have at the end
A written set of outputs and outcomes with the measure and target for each.
It proves that every change you promised can be demonstrated, and by what. That is the document the evaluation report is written from, and where a funder pays in stages it is what the last stage rests on. Template: outputs and outcomes (planned).