Designing Impact Reports That Actually Work

Annual reports shouldn’t feel like an obligation — they should feel like a gift. But for too many nonprofits, impact reporting is still stuck in the past: flat, uninspired, and quickly forgotten.

In this episode, Eric and Jonathan unpack how to rethink your approach to reporting — and turn your annual impact story into one of your organization’s most powerful strategic tools.

➔ The secret ingredient of high-performing reports.
 ➔ The real ROI of a well-designed impact report — and how to measure success beyond the PDF.
 ➔ A simple way to start small: what a minimum viable impact report looks like (and why it’s enough).
 ➔ How digital and physical formats can work together to spark deeper connection with supporters.
 ➔ Why your report is only as good as your distribution strategy — and how to plan one that delivers.

If your reports are starting to feel more like homework than momentum-builders, this episode will help you reframe the process — and unlock new energy, clarity, and results from one of your most overlooked assets.

Don’t just report impact. Design it. 

Episode Highlights:

• [00:00] - Why impact reports must go beyond check-the-box compliance.
• [01:43] - Design choices, storytelling moments, and a surprising community favorite.
• [04:34] - Jonathan opens up about why even EDs can dread it—and how to reframe it.
• [06:16] - Why that one piece matters more than you think.
• [07:41] - Conversation starters, trust builders, and supporter affirmation.
• [10:57] Why your report must have a digital component and how to make print feel like a premium experience.
• [14:34] - When to go immersive, when to go tangible.
• [17:25] Build your report all year long. Treat stories and metrics as ingredients, not afterthoughts.
• [21:03] - Personalized impact reports are the new frontier.
• [23:32] - Why “post and pray” doesn’t work, and what to do instead.
• [26:09] - How chunking up content triples conversions.

Notable Quotes:

• "If your supporters only see one thing from you this year… make it count." – Eric Ressler [05:10]
• "I don’t want to produce a four-page pamphlet with pie charts… and nobody cares." – Jonathan Hicken [04:34]
• "You should be doing impact storytelling all year long anyway." – Eric Ressler [17:25]
• "This is your organization's version of Spotify Wrapped." – Jonathan Hicken [21:03]
• "You distribute your impact report many times—not once." – Eric Ressler [24:22]

Resources:

• Case Study - Equality Fund
• Article - The Benefits of a Digital Annual Report
• Article - How to Prepare for Your Digital Annual Report
• Article -Prove it or Lose it: Why Proof of Impact Matters in the Social Impact Space
• Article - Turning Stats Into Stories: Supercharge Your Social Enterprise’s Proof of Impact

Transcript

Eric Ressler [00:00]:

If we're going to be doing impact reporting or generating some kind of impact report or annual report, to me, the first criteria is that it should

Jonathan Hicken [00:06]:

Feel special If I'm going to have a face-to-face meeting with a supporter, it's something physical to bring, right? 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. What were the leaders thinking about that compelled them to jump to such a developed impact report and not test the waters first? That's the question that's going through my head right now. What is the minimum viable impact report, right? How do I test if I can get those outcomes that you talked about earlier without putting massive amounts of time or money into something when I'm not entirely sure where it's going to end up?

Eric Ressler [00:46]:

You should be doing impact storytelling all year long anyway, right? As you share those stories, you're going to get more natural feedback, natural response to some of those stories in a way that you can then kind of earmark. These are the ones that people are really lighting up around. You are assembling the raw ingredients that you need to build an impact report out of all of that. 

Eric Ressler:
Jonathan, one of my favorite types of projects to work on with our social impact clients is impact reporting. And we've done these in all kinds of different ways. The kind of 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 I thought it'd be really helpful to talk about for our listeners, how do you do impact reporting that actually works.

[01:43]:

I have some thoughts on it. I'd love to hear some of your experience about it. Let's do it. Let's go. So here's a couple things that come to mind for you when I think about Impact Reports, and maybe let's just define it, right? So we've talked about annual reports. This used to come in the nonprofit space as you released this kind of year look back, there's some kind of, I think even legal requirements around reporting your financials and your investments, et cetera, et cetera. And over the years though, that's kind of grown naturally into more creative forms and formats of impact reporting and impact storytelling. So what I'm not talking about here is the daily, weekly, monthly impact storytelling that you should absolutely be doing as a social impact organization. What I am talking about when I 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 I think that's the first thing that comes to mind for me is if we're going to be doing impact reporting or generating some kind of impact report or annual report, to me, the first criteria is that it should feel special.

Jonathan Hicken [02:50]:

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

Eric Ressler [03:03]:

That's the million dollar question. And I think that's where the creativity really comes in mind. And I think the way that I think about that is that there's different levers that you can push up and down to make it feel special. One is just straight production quality, production value, right? 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, or even just kind of how you frame it, how do 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 Impact Report special? Everything, anything? Nothing it it's all context dependent.

Jonathan Hicken [04:13]:

Yeah, I mean, it's one of my favorite parts of the job. It is one of my favorite parts of being in the sector in general is being able to talk about the world we're building or the society or the impact that we're having. I mean, it's such a beautiful exercise and yet sometimes as an executive director, the task strangely feels like heavy

[04:34]:

Or burdensome when it should be the most exciting part of my day and I'm reflecting live here. Why does it feel that way? And I think for me, sometimes it's frankly, it's sort of like an expectation that I need to adhere to the way impact reporting has always been done. And frankly, I don't want to produce a four page pamphlet with pie charts to talk about the simplest financial metrics that nobody cares about. And I feel like that expectation, and I think that's weighing me down. So I'm so excited to hear about some creative ways to do it.

Eric Ressler [05:10]:

I think that's a perspective that I've definitely seen out in the field. I think sometimes that comes from the fact that you already know about all this impact. So it feels almost like retrospective reporting. And I think one thing that's important to keep in mind is that for your supporters, they might have no idea about any of that happening. And actually I want to just interject really quickly with if your supporters only see one thing from you this year or whatever the time horizon might be, it might be this. 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 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.

Jonathan Hicken [06:16]:

There are certainly people who fall into my universe, so that's probably very true. And so I'm doing some deep introspection as we're recording this episode 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.

Eric Ressler [06:36]:

So I'm going to make a couple of claims or suggestions to our listeners here. One is that you should be doing impact reporting in general. Two, that 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. I think one a year is a really good general cadence and three, that 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 that we go through today, we can change a mindset of a listener away from that perspective and more towards how can we actually do impact reporting that makes it one of the most valuable investments we're going to make this year.

[07:41]:

So I have some ideas around that. The first idea around that is that you have to make sure that your impact reporting is outcome or results oriented. And what I 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? I think there's a couple of really big things that an effective impact report should and could do. One is the basic connecting the loop for supporters or perspective 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.

[08:33]:

So there's that kind of element of it is 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. So that's definitely one part of it. I think another outcome or result that an impact report that's effective can and should have is that it's a conversation starter, right? 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. I'm really excited about it because it showcases so many of the important stories that I want to make sure our community understands. Let me send that to you. And then afterwards, I would love to sit down for a cup of coffee and understand what about that report really stood out to you. So we've seen this be a very effective strategy for opening conversations to prospective donors, to existing donors or supporters. And so to me, if I were creating an impact report for a social impact organization, one of the outcomes or the results that I would be looking for is that I am excited to take this to my community and use it as a conversation starter.

Jonathan Hicken [09:54]:

There's two others that come to mind for me, which are maybe a little bit less measurable, but in my seats as executive director, I'm thinking about my own team also and just aligning a, maybe there are new people on my 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 kind of a morale booster, and I think that that's a really positive impact. I also think that for some social impact organizations, the constituents being served are also going to benefit from seeing that impact report. There's a sort of an affirmation or a sense of importance perhaps by seeing something particularly of the quality that you and cosmic produce that would make them feel like, Hey, we really matter, right? We're seeing and this group is helping me, and I almost feel proud to be a part of it.

Eric Ressler [10:57]:

I completely agree, and I think that leads me to another element that I think 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. I think 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 copy book or a photo coffee table book rather. That is something that feels special. That's not just like a throwaway, not just like an appeal, but something that is really kind of a celebration of the good work that's being done. So I would say that a digital component is absolutely crucial for a couple of different reasons. One, because that's just largely how we're communicating today.

[11:51]:

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. So I think 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 I do think there's a place for really beautifully crafted, well produced coffee table book style reporting. That almost stands out a little bit more in compared to digital today because so much is digital. But I do believe that having both a print and digital component is basically a requirement if you're going to do impact reporting today,

Jonathan Hicken [12:54]:

I think your unique take theres is the physical piece, to be honest with you, right? I wonder what's the use case? I mean, for me, the first thing comes to mind as an example you gave earlier, which was like, Hey, if I'm 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 I guess I could see that in some cases, a really, really well designed coffee table book photo book might end up on a major donors in their office or at home or something. But what are the other use cases for physical impact reporting?

Eric Ressler [13:34]:

I mean, I think it's really, it's definitely in person when you are having face-to-face donor meetings or partner meetings or whatever. And there is oddly kind of a novelty factor to it today when so much of our lives are digital and things that you can't really touch or see or feel in the same way opening up. I think 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. So I think it allows, it's 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 that are very sporadic and attention grabbing, but also splintered in terms of how our attention is being used.

[14:34]:

So for example, 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 I think it 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 are doing work with gender and women's rights and climate, and they were in this moment, the first time we did an impact report with them 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.

[15:24]:

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 I think would've been possible from a creative standpoint, but it just felt like the perfect format for a digital annual reporter 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 in celebrating that transition as an organization. And that was the first of a few impact reports we did with the Equality Fund, and we chose a different kind of 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.

Jonathan Hicken [16:45]:

That makes a ton of sense for me. And one of the things that I'm wondering from that 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 that's going through my head right now is what is the minimum viable impact report? How do I test if I can get those outcomes that you talked about earlier without putting massive amounts of time or money into something when I'm not entirely sure where it's going to end up?

Eric Ressler [17:25]:

I think this is a great segue into my next point, which is your impact report should be built all year long. And what I mean by that is even if you're going to work with an agency like us or do it in-house or whatever, 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 your point, well, what's the minimal viable approach to this? 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 kind of earmark. These are the ones that people are really lighting up around. And so 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.

[18:27]:

So it's kind of a way to just package up everything that you've already been doing and either repackage it, reimagine it, or just kind of distill it down into a distilled experience that if you've 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. 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 of the content and raw ingredients that you need to repackage that into an impact report.

Jonathan Hicken [19:04]:

So I think building an impact report throughout the year sounds great. And I think about the work we're doing at Seymour Center, and we are doing that work. We're collecting the testimonials and the metrics and stuff, 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?

Eric Ressler [19:27]:

Yeah, I mean, I think there are some fundamental similarities except that I think these were born out of more 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. And what I've noticed even in the last 15 years of observing the space, especially in the last eight years, is that, and maybe this is kind of influenced as I'm saying this out loud by the way, that even bigger brands are doing yearend reviews. So one of the most exciting parts of the year for a lot of people is what's my Spotify yearend review going to look like and what are the top 10 songs or what's my, who else does these? I feel like these are pretty common now. And so we're seeing it outside of the space these expectations for what these yearend reviews or impact reports look like. And that's I think, influencing the social impact space as well. So to me, that's kind of the big thing. I think also the digital transformation just opens up a lot more opportunities. So it doesn't need to be this stodgy kind of boring thing. And I think this is honestly a broader trend in communications for 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 I think that's just being reflected in all things, but even in how we're doing impact reporting,

Jonathan Hicken [21:03]:

The Spotify wrapped example was perfect. That totally changed the way I'm thinking about it. And it is, it's something that you look forward to because I'm engaged, at least as a consumer of music on Spotify, I'm engaged with this service for a full year, and then I get to see what that looked like and to sort of 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 music a day, but there's some level of engagement and they get to look back on that at their year review. Do you personalize these things?

Eric Ressler [21:40]:

I was going to say, let's riff on this for a second because we have, and what we run into as an obstacle here is that oftentimes organizations don't have the same level of data that a brand like Spotify does around user behavior in their case. But if you tap into your donor engagement platform or CRM and 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. Here's your impact report. That is kind of the gold standard. That's what you should be working towards in my opinion. 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. I don't think you need to go from zero to that. There's a number of steps along the way, but that kind of individualized, personalized, your impact report approach is super compelling. And put that on the drawing board for sure,

Jonathan Hicken [23:01]:

Like a place-based organization like mine.

Eric Ressler [23:03]:

Yeah,

Jonathan Hicken [23:03]:

I mean, holy shit. We could do, there's visitation and obviously digital engagement and event attendance, and there's a ton we could do with that.

Eric Ressler [23:14]:

And I think you can tie it into my recommendation 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.

Jonathan Hicken [23:28]:

Totally. Absolutely. Because ultimately why we're doing what we're doing.

Eric Ressler [23:32]:

So the last point I want to get to, if you're going to do a big impact report, which you should, is that you have to have a distribution strategy in mind from the beginning. This is probably the most common mistake that I see with impact reporting and where impact reports kind of go to get Dusty is that 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 in 2025. It didn't even cut it five years ago, but especially right now, we know that most people are not going to see most of the content that you try and get in front of them.

[24:22]:

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 I want to get to. You distribute your impact report many times, not once, and we'll get into exactly what I mean by that. 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 like, here's the impact report. Go check it out. You checked it out, great, done back to the normal programming.

[25:07]:

But it can be kind of 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. I'll share one example that's I think is especially poignant about this. We recently released an impact report for an organization called We Do, and the big first announcement that went off had pretty good traction. We were feeling like, 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.

[26:09]:

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 kind of past present future chapter modality. We broke down a campaign where we had a past present, 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 is 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 kind of pops off today in digital channels. And so if you are going to distribute an impact report, my big takeaway, 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.

Jonathan Hicken [27:21]:

Well, what I'm hearing is that in this approach where you kind of chunked up the impact report and distributed it slowly, almost like a drip campaign, to me, what I take away from that is that there was discrete value defined to the audience about each of these specific components you're sending out. So the contrast is, oh, we're putting an impact report up. Like, 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 it sounds to me like what you did in that approach is like each individual piece, each individual touch had a discreet value, had a discreet purpose, but it was all driving back to the same source material.

Eric Ressler [28:06]:

And actually to piggyback off that a little bit, this is I think 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, like 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 I think was really effective, especially in that second week.

Jonathan Hicken [28:54]:

All this is making me think of unboxing experiences, and you can get this crappy piece of whatever, a crappy watch from temu, but it'll come in this gorgeous box and it makes you feel like the watch is much better than it is. Right? I wonder about that, the sort of 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 there. Seems like there's probably an academic paper to be written about this.

Eric Ressler [29:32]:

Yeah, I mean, you're basically literally describing the concept of packaging, which you think of in the physical world as like a box. But there's packaging in the digital 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. And so I think that spending time thinking about the packaging is half the battle, right? Because if no one goes to read the report, then it doesn't really matter at the end of it. So just to summarize a couple big ideas. 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 then number three, having a distribution first approach to your impact report and having a strategy for how are you actually going to get that report into the hands and the minds of the people that matter.

Jonathan Hicken [30:51]:

Amazing. Thanks for walking us through that, Eric.

Eric Ressler [30:53]:

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