For small charities and community groups it can be tempting to file outcomes and impact reporting under fundraising or with annual reports and governance, but it’s a useful tool for communicators too. There can be some confusion about what the terms used in formal reporting actually mean, so this post explains the basics and looks at how they might show up in your communications.
Activities
These are the things you do. It might be running events, publishing resources or offering support services. There are lots of ways to communicate about these so that people are clear about what kind of things you do and how to access them.
Outputs
Outputs are things you can measure quite straightforwardly about your activities. They might include the number of people who attended an event, the number of times a resource was downloaded from your website, or the number of workshops delivered. Using outputs in communications is useful if you want to talk about how many people you’ve reached or show the range of your work. They are often used when reviewing what a charity has done over the last 12 months. Infographics can be a good way of sharing this kind of information in a visual way.
Outcomes
This is where you need to start getting more reflective and analytical. Outcomes are the short to medium term effects of your work and they are often measurable in some way. They can help you think about the ‘so what?’ question which is really important in charity communication.
Imagine you’ve run a bird box building and decorating drop in event which was attended by 50 families. You could share a post saying simply that ‘50 families attended our drop-in at the weekend’ but that’s only part of the story. Did those 50 families gain new skills, learn where to site a bird box in their garden, or have fun painting with others? These kind of stories help you to motivate supporters and donors as it helps them understand why what you do matters to people. You can share them fairly quickly after an event, which gives an immediacy to your storytelling.
Impact
Impact asks similar questions to outcomes, but is usually thought about over a longer time frame. This can be more difficult to measure and communicators often find that using case studies is a really helpful way of demonstrating what’s changed for individuals or communities.
Taking the family drop in example above, impact might include the participants passing on knowledge to others, encouraging their local council to put up bird boxes in parks, or learning to identify the birds visiting their garden and becoming more connected to nature. This longer term ‘so what?’ can be really powerful, as it shows supporters that your work has deep roots and its effects continue well beyond your activities and their outputs.
Being able to communicate what changes as a result of your work is a really effective way of connecting with current and potential supporters. Thinking about outcomes and impact can help you craft stories that do just that.
If you’d like some help with communicating outcomes and impact for your organisation or project, then please get in touch.
Shelly Dennison 