How to Build an Impact Report for your donors

Now that you’ve put a plan in place to complete the annual government reports for your BC Society, it’s time to turn your focus to reporting to your donors. Impact Reports—the kind that you make available to your donors and supporters—are the perfect way to shed some light on the impact your organization has had over the past fiscal year. It’s good stewardship to share an Impact Report with your constituency, and this public-facing report will look a lot different than your legal Annual Report. 

Here are some things to consider when building an Impact Report for your donors:

1. Start with a plan.

You know that completing and filing your BC Society Annual Report will be a heavy lift, coming at the end of a period of planning, administration, and attention to compliance-related detail. Create a timeline for your donor report that balances out important milestones between the two reports. For example, once you’ve sent your financials to your accountant to review, use that time to get a head start gathering content for your donor Impact Report. Balance out your schedule so that you have ample time for each report.

2. Focus on impact rather than dollars.

Your annual filing to the CRA will need to account for every dollar you’ve received and spent over the past year, but we recommend a different approach with your donors. While it is prudent to share a high-level breakdown of your expenses over the year (and a small number of donors will clamour for them), donors are a lot more likely to remember a well-crafted story of how you impacted the lives of your beneficiaries than how much money you spent mailing letters. Take the time to find meaningful stories and put them front and centre.

3. Don’t be beholden to tradition.

While consistent processes can help you plan throughout the year and check off those boxes for the compliance side (and trust us, we’re all here for those!), too often we’ve seen charities caught up in the trap of tradition—slogging away at a 40-page printed report that only the most committed of donors read. If that’s the case for you, it may be time to hit reset. We recommend lean, digital-first, visual-heavy stories that are bite sized and memorable. A well-told and well-designed 4-page Impact Report can have just as much impact (if not more) than a detailed 40-page book.

4. Spotlight your donors. 

We’ve said from the start that your Impact Report is for your donors, so make sure they know that. Highlight their giving over the past year. Tie those figures directly to their impact. Better yet, profile a donor or two in your report. It’s a simple way to thank those donors featured, for other donors to see themselves in your work, and for you to showcase the reasons why donors support your mission. 

—-

These are just a few tips to get you started on creating a donor-facing Impact Report. Whatever you do, start small and manageable and make it fun.