I read a lot of impact reports. It’s part of my job. And I can tell you that roughly 80% of them are terrible. Not because the organisations doing the work are terrible — they’re often doing remarkable things. The reports are terrible because they’re written by people who’ve been told they need to report on their impact but have no idea how to communicate it effectively.

The result is a 40-page PDF full of pie charts, stock photos, and earnest paragraphs about “creating lasting change in the community.” Nobody reads it except the people who wrote it and the one funder who specifically requested it.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s how to write an impact report that people will actually want to read.

Lead with a story, not a statistic

The single most effective thing you can do is start your report with a real story about a real person whose life was affected by your work. Not a composite. Not a hypothetical. A real person, with their permission, telling their story in their own words.

This isn’t fluffy sentiment. It’s communication strategy. Human brains are wired for narrative. We remember stories. We forget statistics. If you want your reader to care about the next 20 pages of data, you need to give them a reason to care first.

One of the best impact reports I read last year came from a small homelessness service in Melbourne. It opened with a two-paragraph story from a client who’d moved from sleeping rough to stable housing. By the time I got to the program data, I was invested.

Know your audience

Different stakeholders care about different things. Your major donors want to know their money made a difference. Your government funders want to know you met your contractual obligations. Your board wants to know the organisation is on track strategically.

You probably can’t write a different report for each audience, but you can structure your report so that different sections speak to different readers. An executive summary for time-poor board members. A detailed outcomes section for funders. Client stories and testimonials for donors.

Think about who’s actually going to read this document and what they need to get from it.

Be honest about what didn’t work

This is the hardest part, and the most important. If everything in your impact report is positive, your credibility drops to zero. Every experienced funder knows that no program works perfectly. If you’re not talking about your challenges, they assume you’re hiding them.

The organisations that build the strongest relationships with funders are the ones who say “here’s where we fell short, here’s why, and here’s what we’re doing about it.” That’s not weakness. That’s integrity.

Include a section on challenges and lessons learned. Be specific. “We aimed to serve 200 clients but reached 147 due to staffing constraints in Q3” is much more useful than “we faced some challenges during the year.”

Use data, but make it accessible

Data is important. It provides the evidence behind your claims. But most impact reports present data in ways that are genuinely incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t a professional evaluator.

Some practical rules:

Use comparisons. “We served 500 clients” doesn’t mean much in isolation. “We served 500 clients, up from 320 last year” tells a story. “We served 500 clients at a cost of $2,100 per client, compared to the sector average of $3,400” tells an even better one.

Visualise simply. If you’re using charts, keep them simple. Bar charts and line graphs for most things. No 3D pie charts. No charts with 15 categories and a legend the size of a postage stamp.

Explain what the numbers mean. Don’t just present the data — interpret it. “Our six-month employment retention rate was 72%, which exceeds the benchmark of 60% for programs working with this cohort.” That’s useful information.

Keep it short

Twenty pages, maximum. If you can do it in twelve, even better. I know you’ve done a lot of amazing work this year, and I know your programs are complex. But your readers have limited time and attention.

If stakeholders want more detail on a specific program or metric, they can ask. Give them the essential story in a concise, well-designed document, and save the appendices for the people who actually want them.

Design matters

Your impact report doesn’t need to look like a Vogue editorial, but it does need to be visually clean and professional. White space matters. Consistent formatting matters. Readable fonts at readable sizes matter.

If you don’t have a designer, use a simple template. Canva has free nonprofit templates that look decent. Even a well-formatted Word document with consistent headings, clear section breaks, and properly sized images is fine.

What’s not fine is a dense wall of 10-point text with clip art from 2008. I’ve seen it. More than once.

The checklist

Before you publish your impact report, ask these questions:

• Does it open with a compelling human story?
• Can a new reader understand your mission and impact in under two minutes?
• Are there specific, comparable numbers backing up your claims?
• Have you been honest about challenges?
• Is it under 20 pages?
• Would you want to read it?

If you can answer yes to all of those, you’ve written an impact report worth publishing.