You will be able to learn from the findings of the report based on the information you will have gathered to write it,  which enables you to improve your effectiveness and achieve more for your beneficiaries.

Benefits can include:

• improve your day-to-day practice and efficiency
• identify which activities are most effective
• respond appropriately to the social issues you are trying to influence
• be open to feedback
• be open about success as well as failure
• make better informed decisions based on the above.

Show funders, supporters and others what you have achieved:

• Using the information in the report to market your services and publicise your brand awareness
• build your reputation and recognition
• be more attractive to potential funders
• be more attractive to new volunteers
• create a sense of achievement and self-esteem for your supporters.

The questionnaire on page 2 of this Kingston Smith Impact Measurement toolkit will help you to assess where your organisation is on its journey to measuring impact and your next steps.

There are no strict rules about what your impact report should include. It will depend on what you have decided you need it for, your service users’ needs, and the time and resources you have available to create it. To decide on your reasoning for writing an impact report, read more about the principles of good evaluation.

• Cycle of good impact practice 
• Kingston Smith Impact Measurement toolkit questionnaire (page 2) 
• Principles of good evaluation 

• What is an ‘impact’? What is the difference between input, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact? This Jargon buster will help you distinguish between the similar terminology.
• What is your desired impact or goal and how do you plan to deliver it? What is your theory of change that you plan to make?
• What do you need to measure and how do you collect it?
• Who are the people you are aiming to have an impact on? Are your methods of collecting information appropriate for them?
• What changes are they likely to experience? 
• How relatively important is each change, and which are the ones that you should measure?
• How can you measure the change?  
• To learn more about each of the plan/do/assess/review steps, you can work your way through NPC’s cycle of good impact practice.

• Jargon buster
• Theory of change
• NPC’s cycle of good impact practice

• When delivering the work and the impact of carrying out your organisation’s activities, how much change can you expect to happen?
• How much of this change is because of your actions?
• How long do you need to measure for?
• Collect the information you need. Consider both quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (stories) data. Take a look at this approach to data collection from NPC.

• User data: the kind of information, like participants’ age, that would be collected routinely when accessing or registering for services to check that they are eligible for support.
• Engagement data: usually collected throughout delivery e.g. the number of visits to an online resource, signing in sheet.
• Feedback data: e.g. responses to polls on social media, feedback after a session.
• Outcomes data: collected over time e.g. surveys, focus groups, interviews and observations.
• Impact data: this information relates to a much longer-term change, possibly across a whole community, with the inclusion of a comparison group. This is not necessarily appropriate for smaller organisations or programmes to gather.

• Surveys can collect both quantitative and qualitative data. More information about how to create a survey can be found here: The cycle of good impact practice: Surveys – NPC.
• Interviews can collect detailed information about people’s views, thoughts and feelings. More information on how to conduct an interview can be found here: The cycle of good impact practice: Interviews – NPC.
• Focus Groups allow you to find detailed information by talking to people in small groups who can interact with each other. More information on how to conduct research in a focus group can be found here: the cycle of good impact practice: Focus groups – NPC.
• Case studies can be a powerful way to tell a story that illustrates in detail the impact you are making. More information on how to develop case studies can be found here: The cycle of good impact practice: Case studies – NPC.

Creative methods such as drawings or videos are a less formal way of gathering information and can be particularly useful with children and people who might struggle to engage in a more formal manner. For more guidance on the best way to do this, take a look at NPC’s The cycle of good impact practice: Creative methods.

Observations can be carried out by researchers or volunteers in their day-to-day work with service users and are a good way to collect information that service users might not be aware of. This can work particularly well for children and people who are less able to communicate in more formal circumstances.

Volunteers can ask one or more of a range of prepared questions when an appropriate opportunity arises in an everyday situation, recording the response. You can find out more about this here: The cycle of good impact practice: Observations – NPC.

Photographs, videos and audio recordings collected over time create a great visual record and illustrate what you do very effectively in your final report.

• Choose your approach to data collection – NPC 
• The cycle of good impact practice: Surveys – NPC
• The cycle of good impact practice: Interviews – NPC
• The cycle of good impact practice: Focus groups – NPC
• The cycle of good impact practice: Case studies – NPC 
• The cycle of good impact practice: Creative methods – NPC
• The cycle of good impact practice: Observations – NPC

• You should have already made decisions about what you are looking for when designing the questions for your research. Analyse your data to make sense of the information you have collected by looking for patterns and themes then drawing conclusions.
• Collate and evaluate the quantitative and qualitative data you have gathered and combine the two to be able to demonstrate the nature of the change and why it has happened.
• Draw conclusions from the information. How does it compare to, for example, the national average, or someone not receiving your support.
• To further strengthen the validity of your evidence, you may wish to refer to other studies and research to be able to put your findings into context. Be honest about the limitations of your evidence and identify the negative and unexpected findings as well as the positive.

• You could assess the monetary value or Social return on Investment (found on p8 of Kingston Smith’s Impact Measurement Toolkit) of your interventions. This allows complex outcomes to be calculated in monetary terms. For example, a charity that aims to support older people to live independently would regard supporting their service-users so they do not require residential care as one of its outcomes. They would look at the known cost associated with an individual accessing residential care and compare it with the cost of their intervention. The Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) publishes unit costs for health and social care services each year. By using this you can calculate the monetary value of your service.
• Measure your wellbeing impact: take a look at this evaluating wellbeing – better evaluations for social change from Measure Wellbeing.

• NPC’s cycle of good impact practice: Quantitative data 
• NPC’s cycle of good impact practice: Qualitative data
• NPC’s cycle of good impact practice: Putting your data into context
• Kingston Smith Impact Measurement Toolkit: Social return on Investment (Page 8)
• PSSRU’s unit costs for health and social care services
• Measure Wellbeing’s evaluating wellbeing – better evaluations for social change 

Learn from your findings to help you improve what you do and increase your impact. Use this Inspiring Impact Measuring up tool/checklist with your trustees to assess their readiness to improve impact practice.

• Consider the format that you want to present your report in and the detail which is appropriate for the size of your organisation. Take a look at CharityComms’ ‘Creating an effective digital impact report: working with what you have’.
• Look at examples of good reporting practice to find a style and format appropriate to your organisation. Take inspiration from: OCAY (Older Citizens Advocacy York)  What Advocacy can do for you, Kyra: Our Impact – Kyra Women’s Project, North Yorkshire Sport: Our Impact – North Yorkshire Sport, North Yorkshire Revival, Charity Digital’s Six impact reports to inspire you.
• Write your overall impact statement. In it you should identify the broad, overall change you plan to make. This should be in line with your organisation’s mission statement and include your target group, the geographic location of the group, and the change you want to happen for that group. Be succinct and describe the change you are making rather than the work.

• a summary of your key findings and recommendations
• a brief introduction to describe what you are evaluating, why you are evaluating it and what methods you have used (e.g. surveys, interviews)
• the information about what services you delivered, how you delivered those services and what the outcomes were
• your recommendations and actions in response to what you have found out.

• bear in mind your audience when writing your report
• introduce your report by outlining the need and issues your organisation addresses
• create the story of your work to engage your audience
• give examples to illustrate your story and give it more personal appeal
• use individual case examples but also give an overall picture which encapsulates the scale of your work
• keep it concise
• keep it accessible – don’t use acronyms and jargon unfamiliar to your audience
• illustrate your report by using pictures, infographics, and other visual tools to make your report attractive
• publicise your report by sharing it with your trustees, staff, volunteers, supporters, funders, on social media etc. You may wish to feature your report at a launch or other event and cover it in a media release.

• Measuring up tool/checklist
• Creating an effective digital impact report: working with what you have | CharityComms
• What Advocacy can do for you
• Our Impact – Kyra Women’s Project
• Our Impact – North Yorkshire Sport
• North Yorkshire Revival evaluation report
• Charity Digital – Six impact reports to inspire you