Designing Impact Reports That Actually Work

This article is a summary of Episode 48 of our Designing Tomorrow podcast. Each episode is a conversation between Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, and Cosmic’s Creative Director, Eric Ressler.

One of our favorite types of projects to work on with social impact clients is impact reporting. We've done these in all kinds of different ways. The traditional stodgy annual report that's this bound thing — and hey, there's a place for that. But lately we've been really honored to be able to do some awesome experiential modern digital impact reporting. And today it's really helpful to talk about how you do impact reporting that actually works.

Let’s start by defining it. We've talked about annual reports before. This used to come in the nonprofit space as you released a year look-back. There are even some legal requirements around reporting your financials and your investments, et cetera, et cetera. And over the years though, that's grown naturally into more creative forms and formats of impact reporting and impact storytelling. So what we're not talking about here is the daily, weekly, monthly impact storytelling that you should absolutely be doing as a social impact organization. 

What we are talking about when we say impact reports is something that is more special, something that's a bigger play that you maybe do once a year or a couple times a year. And the first thing that comes to mind is if we're going to be doing impact reporting or generating some kind of impact report or annual report, the first criteria is that it should feel special.

How to Make It Feel Special

How do you make it feel special at a time when there's infinite content and there's infinite things to get your attention jacked up this way or that way or the other way? How do we do this?

That's the million dollar question. And that's where the creativity really comes in. There's different levers that you can push up and down to make it feel special. One is just straight production quality, production value. Wow, this thing's got so many bells and whistles. It stops me in my tracks because it's just different than everything else I see on my feed or every other impact report I see. That's one lever you've got. 

Sometimes pushing that lever up to 11 is amazing and that's what you should do. Other ways you can make it feel special though, are even just how you frame it, how you tell that story about an impact report or the content of the report itself. We had a client that we did an impact report for recently, and it was this big production. We did a massive 70 page print version. We did an awesome experiential digital version. Do you know what it was that the most people commented on about that impact report? It was one photo of one person in the community that was the best photo of that person anyone had ever seen. So what makes an impact report special? Everything, anything? Nothing — it's all context dependent.

It's one of our favorite parts of the job. It's one of our favorite parts of being in the sector in general — being able to talk about the world we're building or the society or the impact that we're having. 

Why does it feel that way? Sometimes it's frankly sort of an expectation to adhere to the way impact reporting has always been done. And nobody wants to produce a four page pamphlet with pie charts to talk about the simplest financial metrics that nobody cares about. It feels like that expectation is weighing us down. So let’s talk about some creative ways to do it.

The Power of a Single Touchpoint

That expectation is a perspective that we've definitely seen out in the field. Sometimes that comes from the fact that social impact leaders already know about all this impact. So it feels almost like retrospective reporting. And one thing that's important to keep in mind is that for your supporters, they might have no idea about any of that happening. 

There are people who support organizations, support them even with a lot of enthusiasm. And the one thing that they read every year is the annual report or the impact report. And so we take that responsibility seriously. We want to make sure that if that's true, if they only see this one thing this year, can we make sure that it is effective, impactful, inspirational, and that it, at the very least, reinforces the benefit of supporting your organization, if not encourages people to support even more deeply.

There are certainly people who fall into that universe, so that's probably very true. And so we're doing some deep introspection because it really is true, and especially if you can make it special, you can make it stand out, all the more important it becomes if that's the one thing that your supporter reads that year.

Invest in Your Impact reporting

We’re going to go out on a limb and make a couple of claims or suggestions here. 

1. You should be doing impact reporting in general. 
2. You should do at least one big special impact report per year as just a general guideline. You can do more than that, but you don't have to. One a year is a really good general cadence. 
3. If you are going to do impact reporting, you have to be strategic and intentional about it because there is absolutely a way to do this that is not going to do much for you, that feels not very impactful, that isn't actually all that impactful. That is essentially just checkbox marketing. Okay, annual report's done, we did that. Now back to the real work. 

If you think about it that way, it's probably not going to have much ROI for you. But hopefully with some of the tips and advice we go through today, we can change a mindset away from that perspective and more towards how you can actually do impact reporting that makes it one of the most valuable investments you're going to make this year.

Be Outcome and Results Oriented

You have to make sure that your impact reporting is outcome or results oriented. And what we mean by that is the outcome of your impact report should not be: We got the impact report done and it got into the hands of the people that we need to have it land in. That's the bare minimum. And if you do that, great, you could check the box. 

But what is really the purpose of impact reporting at a meta level in the first place? There are a couple of really big things that an effective impact report should and could do. 

1. The basic connecting the loop for supporters or prospective supporters around this is an organization worth supporting: This is an organization that has taken my support and turned it into meaningful progress on the mission that I care about.
   
   So there's that element of it — we want to reinforce, continue to build trust and credibility with the supporters that we're already reaching and invite new supporters in who we haven't reached or we haven't converted into being a supporter yet. 
    
2. Another aspect that an effective impact report can and should have is that it's a conversation starter: It's an opportunity to start a conversation with a prospective donor or supporter. To start a conversation with a longtime supporter or donor. To start a conversation with a potential partner. 
   
   So it's an entry point into relationships and it gives you an opportunity to say, hey, check it out, we just released this report. We're really excited about it because it showcases so many of the important stories that we want to make sure our community understands. Let me send that to you. And then afterwards, we would love to sit down for a cup of coffee and understand what about that report really stood out to you. 

We've seen this be a very effective strategy for opening conversations to prospective donors, to existing donors or supporters. And so if you were creating an impact report for a social impact organization, one of the outcomes or the results to be looking for is that you are excited to take this to your community and use it as a conversation starter.

Internal Alignment and Constituent Affirmation

There are two others that come to mind, which are maybe a little bit less measurable. 

• Thinking about your own team — just aligning a team, maybe there are new people on the team who haven't seen annual reports in the past, and this is reinforcing the work and the jobs that we're showing up to do. It's a morale booster, and that's a really positive impact. 
• For some social impact organizations, the constituents being served are also going to benefit from seeing that impact report. There's an affirmation or a sense of importance, perhaps, that would make them feel like they really matter. They are seen, this group is helping them, and they almost feel proud to be a part of it.

Your Impact Report Must Have a Digital Component

That leads to another element that is really important, especially today in 2025 — your impact report must have a digital component. It doesn't necessarily need to be digital first or digital only. More often than not, we are doing what we're calling hybrid reports that are some kind of print piece and some kind of digital piece that work together. Sometimes that print piece is just a teaser for the digital piece. Sometimes that print piece is a photo coffee table book that is something that feels special. That's not just a throwaway, not just an appeal, but something that is really a celebration of the good work that's being done.

A digital component is absolutely crucial for a couple of different reasons. 

• Because that's just largely how we're communicating today. And so it makes it more accessible. It's also easier to scale up or down. If you are going to produce a big hefty 70-page coffee table book, there's cost associated with that and not everyone's going to want that. And so there's some waste associated with that too. 
• The beauty of digital comes in the accessibility of digital, but also the power of the medium of digital, allowing you to incorporate audio, incorporate video, incorporate interactivity in a way that makes the report really come to life. 

Now, look, everything's digital today, so having a digital impact report is not some novel, exciting thing the same way it was even five years ago. And there is a place for really beautifully crafted, well produced coffee table book style reporting. That almost stands out a little bit more compared to digital today because so much is digital. But having both a print and digital component is basically a requirement if you're going to do impact reporting today.

A Case for Physical Reports

The unique take there is actually the physical piece. What's the use case? The first thing that comes to mind is an earlier example — if you're going to have a face-to-face meeting with a supporter, it's something physical to bring and it is a conversation starter. It's harder to bust out an iPad and flip through that over coffee with someone. And so that's certainly a use case. 

And in some cases, a really, really well designed coffee table book photo book might end up on a major donor's desk in their office or at home or something. 

It's really in person — when you are having face-to-face donor meetings or partner meetings or whatever. And there is oddly a novelty factor to it today when so much of our lives are digital and there are things that you can't really touch or see or feel in the same way. 

Everyone's had the experience of opening up a really beautiful coffee table book or magazine, and it's a slower, more intentional way of absorbing information the same way that reading the comments of a Reddit thread or an online article is not the same as sitting down and reading a fiction book. 

It allows for a different format, a different framework that allows you to probably capture people's attention in a little bit of a deeper way compared to our digital screens and devices — devices that are very sporadic and attention grabbing, but also splintered in terms of how our attention is being used.

Digital vs. Print: Different Strengths

If you send a digital impact report out, someone might start reading it and then all of a sudden they get a text message or all of a sudden they get an email and then they're out. And that can happen if they're reading a print piece too, of course. But print gives you the opportunity to do some deeper, longer form storytelling, whereas the digital gives you an opportunity to do some more interactive, immersive new media storytelling.

For example, we did an impact report for an organization called Equality Fund out of Canada. They do work with gender and women's rights and climate. And the first time we did an impact report with them, they were in this moment where they'd been doing a lot of internal planning. They'd been doing a lot of good impact work as well, but they were not very public in their marketing communications at that point. They weren't stealth or anything, but they hadn't done a lot of strategic communications in general, and a lot of their work had been theoretical. And they were at a point where they needed to embody that vision to actually showcase that we are doing this work. This is not just theory anymore.

And that allowed us to come up with a strategy and a creative concept that really lent itself to a digital experience. It needed to feel alive, it needed to feel immersive, it needed to feel fresh and new and modern. And trying to do that in print would've been possible from a creative standpoint, but it just felt the perfect format for a digital annual report or impact report. And that was a moment for them. 

They shared that with their community. It felt like this transition as an organization away from theory, away from strategy only into embodying this and celebrating that transition as an organization. And that was the first of a few impact reports we did with Equality Fund, and we chose a different theme and direction and all digital in this case. But that's an example of where really leaning into the benefits that a digital impact report can give you made a lot of sense.

The Minimum Viable Impact Report

One of the things worth wondering about from the Equality Fund example is what were the leaders thinking about that compelled them to jump to such a developed impact report and not test the waters first? 

The question is: what is the minimum viable impact report? How do you test if you can get those outcomes talked about earlier without putting massive amounts of time or money into something when you're not entirely sure where it's going to end up?

Build Your Impact Report All Year Long

Even if you're going to work with an agency like Cosmic or do it in-house, you're not necessarily going to start the design of it or the conceptualization of it right away. But you need content for the report. And to the point about the minimum viable approach — you should be doing impact storytelling all year long anyway. And so naturally, as you share those stories, certain stories are going to hit harder than others. You're going to get more natural feedback, natural response to some of those stories in a way that you can then earmark. These are the ones that people are really lighting up around.

If you're doing that motion anyway, if you're doing consistent impact storytelling throughout the year, consistent strategic communications throughout the year, you are assembling the raw ingredients that you need to build an impact report out of all of that. 

So it's a way to package up everything that you've already been doing and either repackage it, reimagine it, or turn it into a distilled experience. That way, if someone missed some of those stories — which, let's be real, no one's going to hear every story you're telling throughout the year just because of the nature of how this works now — they can experience them. 

So you can be testing the viability of impact storytelling and impact reporting, and even specifically what stories or what stats or what elements to accentuate in the impact report throughout the year. And in doing so, building out all the content and raw ingredients that you need to repackage into an impact report.

What's Different About Building a Digital Report?

Building an impact report throughout the year sounds great. But why would that be any different for a digital impact report than how an organization might've approached doing impact reporting 20, 30 years ago?

There are some fundamental similarities except that impact reports were born out of requirements-based reports. Here's our financials. Here's the letter from the executive director. And so it felt a little bit more like a formal requirement that was being checked than a creative opportunity. 

What we've noticed even in the last 15 years of observing the space, especially in the last eight years, is that even bigger brands are doing year-end reviews. So one of the most exciting parts of the year for a lot of people is: what's my Spotify year-in review going to look like and what are the top 10 songs? These are pretty common now. And so we're seeing it outside of the space — these expectations for what these year-end reviews or impact reports look like. And that's influencing the social impact space as well.

So that's the big thing. The digital transformation just opens up a lot more opportunities. So it doesn't need to be this stodgy boring thing. And this is honestly a broader trend in communications for professional organizations in general. We're moving away from these very “professional” stuffy, buttoned up modes and modalities of communication into more human relational ones. And that's just being reflected in all things, but even in how we're doing impact reporting.

The Power of Personalization

Spotify Wrapped is a perfect example. It totally changes the way you might think about your impact report. And it's something that you look forward to because you're engaged, at least as a consumer of music on Spotify. You're engaged with this service for a full year, and then you get to see what that looked like. And to translate that to social impact — that's incredible. If you have a group of supporters who are engaging with you at some level — granted, maybe they're not listening to five hours of your content a day but there's some level of engagement — and they get to look back on that at their year-in-review. 

Let's riff on this for a second because we have personalized these experiences. And what we run into as an obstacle is that oftentimes organizations don't have the same level of data that a brand like Spotify does around user behavior. But, if you tap into your donor engagement platform or CRM and you know what kind of engagement a particular constituent had with your organization, you absolutely can personalize that. And that can be extremely effective because it feels like, and is, a special report just for that person. It's not just a generic one that everyone gets the same version of, but you can even package it that way. Look at what you did with us this year. Here's your impact for the year. 

But you don't need to start there. That requires a lot more thought, intention, investment, technology, data — all those things have to come together for that experience to be effective. You don't need to go from zero to that. There's a number of steps along the way. But that individualized, personalized, your-impact-report approach is super compelling. And put that on the drawing board for sure.

For a place-based organization — holy shit. There's visitation and obviously digital engagement and event attendance, and there's a ton we could do with that. And if you are going to do something like that, make sure you don't only focus on that individual's impact, but connect the dots between their individual impact and the collective impact of the entire base of supporters. Because ultimately that's why we're doing what we're doing.

Distribution First

If you're going to do a big impact report — which you should — you have to have a distribution strategy in mind from the beginning. This is probably the most common mistake that we see with impact reporting and where impact reports go to get dusty — all this time and attention is put into finding good stories, curating those stories, figuring out how to frame the report in a creative way, doing great design on the report. And then the distribution strategy is we're going to email our supporters one time about it and then post about it on our social media channel. And that is not going to cut it today. 

And that's true for digital especially, but even when we talk about print, how do you get that in front of people in a way that is going to stand out? And some of that comes down to making something that doesn't feel like a throwaway. Some of that comes down to how you deliver that print piece if it's mailed or if it's in person. And that depends on the format.

But here's the point — you distribute your impact report many times, not once, and we'll get into exactly what that means. And also if you're smart about it, you can design an impact report that has longevity over the course of a year. It does not need to be this one-off splash thing that's here's the impact report, go check it out, you checked it out, great, done, back to the normal programming.

A Living, Breathing Report

It can be a living space. It can be a living, breathing entity that you can continuously, especially on the digital side, update. It doesn't need to be a static snapshot. It can be something that you continuously put people back towards and push people back towards and give them a good reason to come back towards.

Here's one example that's especially poignant about this. We recently released an impact report for an organization called WEDO. And the big first announcement that went off had pretty good traction. We were feeling okay about the numbers — they weren't quite exactly what we were hoping. 

And we said, okay, that's fine. Let's keep learning. But we had a distribution strategy for that report where we essentially repackaged all the major elements of that report into individual micro campaigns so that you essentially could experience the report without ever even going to see it because we were chopping it down and cutting it down into these bite-sized individual stories, individual experiences, and delivering that to people in their inboxes and in their social feeds.

So rather than just having the campaign be, go check out the impact report, it's live. And then a week later, by the way, did you miss the impact report? It's still live, go look at it — that's not a very compelling strategy. So how do you frame it? How do you package it instead?

This impact report had a past present future chapter modality. We broke down a campaign where we had the main announcement, and then week two was about the past, week three was about the present, week four was about the future, and then it continued on for a few weeks after that. Week two had three times the amount of conversion as week one, even though it was particularly about just one element of the report. 

Why did that happen? It's a little murky. There were many reasons, but essentially it got picked up and distributed through their network in a way that for whatever reason, the original announcement just didn't. And there's a certain amount of luck and chance to what pops off today in digital channels.

So, if you are going to distribute an impact report, the big takeaway is: A, have a plan for that, and B, do it in multiple steps over and over and over again, not in just one big announcement and hope that everyone sees that one big announcement.

Deliver Discrete Value With Every Touch

One take away from the approach where we chunked up the impact report and distributed it slowly, almost like a drip campaign, is that there was discrete value defined to the audience about each of these specific components we were sending out. So the contrast is, oh, we're putting an impact report up — oh, go see it, oh, go see it, please go see it, right? But each time you do that touch, you're not offering any additional value to your audience or to your consumers. But in that approach, each individual piece, each individual touch had a discrete value, had a discrete purpose, but it was all driving back to the same source material.

And actually to piggyback off that a little bit, this is a broader trend that extends outside of just impact reporting, which is that we all expect content in the feed right now. We don't want to have to go read the article or go see the impact report without first getting hooked as to why we should do that. So we're thinking a lot more about how can we deliver little tastes of that value in-feed — if that's an email or a social post — repackaging that down into a little bite-sized thing that provides an instant hit of value right in the feed. And that's going to make it much more likely that someone's going to click through to the full experience versus the point of the message and the contents of the message being an announcement. Go read the report now. And because we were able to do that, that was really effective, especially in that second week.

The Psychology of First Impressions

There’s a parallel here to unboxing experiences, where you can get a crappy watch from Temu, for example, but it'll come in this gorgeous box and it makes you feel the watch is much better than it is. 

There's the psychological impact of that first moment you're interacting with an impact report, whether it's digital or in person, and just that first impression, the blank response, so to speak, and how much that factors into ultimately how much they believe in the impact that you're saying. Seems like there's probably an academic paper to be written about this.

We're basically describing the concept of packaging, which you think of in the physical world as a box. But there's packaging in the digital world too, which is what is the headline? What is the hook? What is the overall design aesthetic? All these things we are subconsciously very attuned to today as we are becoming more and more discerning protectors of our attention. 

Key Takeaways

First of all, you should be doing impact reporting. It's important and it can have a huge positive upswell for your organization. And we've seen that happen time and time again. 

If you're going to do it, you should be outcome and results oriented around it. And the outcome should not just be: we completed the report, but there should be some strategic goals as to why you're doing that, whether that's dollars raised or conversations opened or staff being positively impacted by that experience. 

Whatever those outcomes are, be clear about those first to make sure that you're connecting those dots. 

And lastly, having a distribution-first approach to your impact report and having a strategy for how you are actually going to get that report into the hands and the minds of the people that matter.

Let's do more impact reporting throughout the year and some bigger awesome feature impact reports everybody.