Five ways to repurpose your Impact Report
We all know that feeling.
A frantic compiling of data from the last 12 months; checking permissions for photos, cajoling colleagues into summarising their success and epic amounts of spell-checking before you go to print. All of this to produce your charity’s annual Impact Report.
It requires a huge amount of work every year, whether your team tracks and records on a monthly/quarterly basis or you’re a spontaneous, last minute bunch. When the report is finally produced, it’s time to celebrate your impact and feel proud of your achievements.
But why stop there?
Having put in the hard work already, now is the time to create a ripple effect, maximise your return on investment, and show your team it was all worthwhile! In this blog we explore five ways to repurpose your Impact Report to create compelling supporter communications.
1. Infographics
With concentration spans getting ever shorter, conveying information in picture format can really help your charity cut through. Identify key numbers such as community members supported, event attendances, training courses delivered or volunteers onboarded. This data shows your impact and can be easily transformed into infographics for use on social media. Infographics are particularly effective because they don’t require sound and are easily viewed on any device.
Don’t forget to analyse your outcomes too - what percentage of your project participants reported improved mental health, found a job or gained the skills to set up a new business as a result of your project? These statistics portrayed on an infographic can be a shortcut to showcasing your track record, explaining what you do and why it matters.
2. Videos
Preparing your impact report usually involves distilling project activities down into highlights. Having already put in the hard work to reduce your word count, edit and prioritise what you want to share about your activities, don’t stop there. Why not produce a short video about each activity you run, using the data at your fingertips?
Short videos work best for social media but you could also compile the shorts into a “full length” version for use in training sessions or to host on your website for prospective supporters. Videos will raise awareness of your work and reach new audiences through social media who might not read the traditional full Impact Report.
3. Case studies
Gathering data for your impact report involves staff digging out quotes from project participants, partners and volunteers. More time may have been spent checking and recording consent before publishing the report. Make the most of that work by adding the quotes to your website and saving them on a shared drive for use in funding applications.
With longer quotes there might be potential to transform them into mini case studies, adding context and background and describing what happened next. Recent case studies are gold dust for campaigns and funding applications, and are increasingly requested for end-of-grant reports too.
4. Saying thank you
Your impact report provides specifics. Whilst it’s easy to dash off a quick thank you letter to donors and supporters using your usual template, repurposing elements of the report allows you to be really specific as to what difference their involvement has made. Why not make each individual page of your impact report available to your team as a standalone PDF for supporter thank you communications.
5. Charts, graphs and tables
Many of us are more comfortable absorbing financial information as a chart or comparison table, rather than ploughing through lots of text. If you already created pie charts and graphs for your impact report which track income and expenditure, these can be repurposed for funding applications, demonstrating your strong track record in fundraising.
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Even time-saving ideas like these take some manpower. If you would like help actioning some of this, or putting together a beautiful Impact Report fit for supporters to see, please get in touch with our copywriting and design team; we’d love to help you out.
