Do you want to improve the way your charity writes its impact reports, or communicates the results of its work?
Here are five things we learnt from the charity communications experts speaking at CharityComms Measuring Impact, Communicating Results conference:
1. Too few communication teams are conveying the impact of their charity’s work
That’s according to Martin Brookes, chief executive at New Philanthropy Capital, who spoke about why measuring impact matters and why so many organisations need to “sharpen up their performance”. He asked: “Why aren’t more communications staff driving the results agenda? Communication teams neglect to have meaningful conversations with the people who pay for their charities work.”
2. If someone says they found your communications work “interesting”, it wasn’t successful
Joe Human, coordinator at Cumbria Fair Trade Network, said when people come up to him at the end of a presentation and tell him it was interesting, he failed to engage them. “It has to hit them in their head and in their heart. It doesn’t have to be linear,” said Joe who talked about using stories and case studies to communicate an organisation’s impact.
3. Welcome all criticism as useful feedback on what you’re doing well and what you need to improve upon
Joss Saunders, legal advisor and company secretary at Oxfam GB, said that accountability means listening to feedback, responding to it and acting upon it. He talked about lessons learnt from putting together Oxfam’s accountability report.
4. Communications teams should report intermediate outcomes smaller changes that need to happen before the final desired outcome can be reached
This was the advice of Shehnaaz Latif, senior evaluation trainer and consultant at the Charities Evaluation Service. So, for example, to achieve the end result of improving children’s grades at school, an intermediate outcome is that teachers are better skilled and families have more support.
5. Impact reporting should be brief, in plain English, include case studies, be readable, well designed and honest
Brian Lamb, executive director of advocacy and policy at RNID, said it’s important to show in the document what was achieved compared to what you said you wanted to achieve. “You should be able to read the whole thing in 10 to 15 minutes and get a good idea of what your organisation does,” he said.
