What should go first in a report to a funder?
The first section of a report to a funder should give the main findings and what they mean for the program. Write it so that someone who reads only that section understands what happened and what your organization plans to do next. A program officer may read many reports in the same season, and a summary at the beginning lets your funder see the most important points before deciding where to read more closely.
A useful opening summary usually answers four questions. What did the program set out to do? What does the evidence show about progress toward its goals? What did the team learn? What will change as a result? The detailed results, methods, and supporting tables belong in the sections that follow, where readers who want them can find them.
If your funder provides a reporting template, follow it, and use the same approach inside each section: main point first, then what it means. The template decides which sections the report must include, and What does my funder's annual report actually need from the evaluation? covers what a funder's required report usually needs.
How do I show impact instead of just counting how many people we served?
You can show impact instead of only counting how many people you served by explaining who participated, what they experienced, what changed for them, why that change matters, what your organization learned, and what happens next. A count of participants tells your funder how much activity took place. It doesn't tell them what difference that activity made.
Counts still belong in the report, because your funder needs to know the scale of the work. What matters is what comes after them. A sentence such as "we served 200 people" becomes more informative when it's followed by who those people were, who the program didn't reach, and what the evidence shows about their progress. If you aren't sure which of your measures describe activity and which describe change, What's the difference between outputs and outcomes, and why does it matter to funders? explains the distinction.
Participants' experiences, gathered through interviews, focus groups, or open-ended survey questions, can help explain the numbers. A survey might show that satisfaction with one part of a program was lower than the rest, and participants' own descriptions can help explain why. What makes an impact story credible instead of just emotional? covers how to combine the two responsibly.
Does the report have to be one long document?
The report doesn't have to be one long document, and for many funders a single full report supported by shorter versions works better. The full report holds the complete results, methods, and context. A one-page summary, a short slide presentation, or a brief update can then carry the main findings to the people who won't read the full document. That might be a program officer preparing for a meeting or a funder's board.
CDC's evaluation framework makes the same point in general terms: the style and format used to communicate findings should be tailored to each audience. Decide which shorter versions are actually worth producing based on who needs the information and how they will use it, so each format you make has a reader.
If an evaluator writes the evaluation report, you can ask for it to be more visually appealing or adapted to the audience you need it for. What can we ask our evaluator to change after we've reviewed a report? explains what you can and can't ask an evaluator to change.
What if some of the findings aren't good news?
Findings that aren't good news belong in the report, presented plainly next to what's working, with the context that helps explain them and what your team is doing about them. A report that gives what's working and what isn't the same honest treatment is more useful to your funder than one that presents only the strongest results.
When the results are disappointing enough that you need to prepare your funder before the report arrives, How do I tell my funder the results aren't what we hoped? covers that conversation, including when to raise it with your program officer.
The Grantibly perspective
Angelika's perspective
Data don't make decisions. People do. A percentage in a table may be technically accurate but still leave a project team, or a funder, asking, "So what?" We want to go further: what does the finding mean, why might we be seeing it, and does it suggest something the program should change?
We aren't interested in producing enormous reports no one reads, and we don't believe evaluation findings should sit on a shelf. We're educators as much as consultants, so we don't just want to deliver findings. We want people to understand what those findings mean and how they can use them. That's the difference between reporting activity and communicating impact.
