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Your funder read your impact report and forgot it. Here's how to build one they remember
Most impact reports are read once and forgotten. How to build one around people, three numbers and an honest ending, so funders and boards remember it.
Impact reports take weeks to produce. Most are read once, by a funder or trustee with a full inbox, and forgotten by the following week.
The work in them is usually good. The evidence is usually there. What’s missing is a structure that helps a busy reader remember anything.
This guide is for charity leaders and CSR teams who own the report. It covers why reports get forgotten and a simple structure for one that doesn’t.
Why reports get forgotten
Most impact reports are built from the inside out. Every team wants its work included, every number feels important, and the result is a long document organised around the organisation rather than the reader.
Three things usually go wrong:
The people are at the back. The case study sits on page twelve, after the chair’s letter, the strategy and three pages of outputs.
Every number gets equal weight. Thirty figures, all in the same font size. A reader can’t tell which one matters.
The ending is too neat. Every programme succeeded, every target was met. Readers who know the sector can tell when a report is tidier than reality.
What funders and boards are looking for
Whoever reads your report is trying to answer one question: did this make a difference, and is it worth backing again?
They’re not looking for everything you did. They’re looking for enough evidence to trust you, told in a way they can repeat to someone else.
I’ve led a charity, the Naz and Matt Foundation, for more than 12 years, so I’ve written these reports as well as read them. And in my documentary work for one of the world’s largest technology companies, what the programme lead valued most was seeing the start, the middle and the end. A report that lets the reader see change over time is the one they remember.
A structure for a report people remember
1. Open with one person
Start with one person whose life or work changed, told in a few paragraphs, with their consent. Put them on the first page, before the chair’s letter.
Ask for: one consented story on the first page, chosen before anyone starts writing.
2. Build the report around three numbers
Choose three numbers that matter most and make them the spine of the report. Each gets a person inside it and a sentence on what happens if it moves. Everything else goes into a table at the back for the readers who want it.
I’ve set out the method for this in how to turn charity data into a story funders actually feel.
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A number on its own is a claim. A number with a person inside it is proof.
3. Show change over time
Wherever you can, show the start, the middle and the end. Before and after photographs of the same place. A participant’s words at the beginning and a year later. A chart with a person beside it.
4. Be honest about what’s unfinished
The standard arc, problem then intervention then transformation, pushes organisations to invent neat endings. I’d much rather read “here’s where things stand, what worked and what didn’t”. Funders are adults. A report that admits what’s still hard is more believable about what went well.
Ask for: a short “what’s still true” section that says what hasn’t changed yet and why.
5. End with what happens next
Close with the two futures: what happens if the work continues, and what happens if it stops. That gives the reader a reason to act, and a sentence they can take into their own meeting.
Photographs: the part everyone leaves until last
Pictures are often chosen in the final week from whatever is on the shared drive. A grant-maker told me this year that they have folders and folders of photographs sent in by the organisations they fund, and most of them weren’t usable.
Plan the pictures with the stories. If the report opens with one person, you need a photograph of them, or of their world, that they’re happy with. If you’re showing change over time, you need the “before” taken at the start, not remembered at the end.
Ask for: a photo list agreed at the same time as the stories, with consent planned for each.
Six questions to ask before you sign off your next report
Who is on the first page, and did they agree to be there?
Which three numbers carry the report?
Does each of those numbers have a person inside it?
Where does the reader see change over time?
What does the report admit is still unfinished?
Could a funder repeat the main point to a colleague after reading it once?
Where to start this week
Open last year’s report. Find the page where a real person first appears. If it’s after page three, that’s your first change for this year’s report.
If you’d like help structuring your next impact or ESG report around the stories behind it, that’s part of my storytelling consultancy.
Questions people ask
How long should an impact report be?
As short as it can be while still proving the change. A report built around one opening story and three numbers, with the detail in an appendix, is often more persuasive than a long one.
Should impact reports include failures?
Yes, honestly and briefly. Saying what didn’t work, and what you learned, makes everything else more believable.
When should we start planning the report?
At the start of the year. The stories and photographs that make a report memorable need to be captured as the work happens, not found at the deadline.
Matt Mahmood-Ogston is a London-based social impact storyteller and documentary photographer. He founded the Naz and Matt Foundation in 2014 and has led it for more than 12 years.
