Your Year-end Impact Report Shouldn’t Stress You Out

It’s that time of year.

If your mailbox is anything like mine, it’s jampacked with two things these days. 1) Holiday catalogs (So many!); and 2) appeals for end of the year giving. The latter is usually accompanied by an “Impact” report.

You know what can be hard about those end-of-year reports? Scrambling around at the last minute to find data to support your story. Not having an evaluation plan is the #1 mistake nonprofit organizations make. When you have no plan or strategy to collect data, staff end up frustrated and stressed and reports just aren’t effective. Your report includes charts and graphs that hinder, not help tell your story. And don’t even get me started on the exploding 3-D pie charts.

At CES, we have supported nonprofit organizations for 20 years.

We help nonprofits, community-based organizations, and funders develop strategies that make sense and create feasible data plans. You need a plan that is a perfect fit for you. One that considers your budget and staff capacity.

Having a vision for your evaluation (think Logic Model or Theory of Change), a road map for data collection (a specific and feasible evaluation plan), and reports that draw the reader in and make them want to join your team, will make that headache of an impact report something you look forward to.

Sometimes, it’s easier to start with the end in mind. Check out our FREE mini-course, Using Data to Tell Your Story.  Then when you are ready, let’s chat.

Ann