Easy Ways to Improve Grant Reports
Poor unloved grant reports. I’m not sure anyone really likes them. So often they’re a last-minute check the box exercise in frustration for nonprofits, and they can be so much more!
Fundraising is often envisioned as a straight line from cultivation to request to donation – for grants a process that ends with the award letter. Once a grant is won it’s a program and under the purview of a different set of staff and a different set of concerns.
That line of thinking is a trap. Probably one designed by a poor exhausted grant writer who just never wanted to look at anything related to that last application ever again.
Try instead to think of fundraising as a cycle: a grant award leads to a program yes, but that program doesn’t create a new process, but feeds right back into cultivation. If you think of every new grant as a fundraising opportunity, reporting becomes not just a boring requirement to keep your donors happy, but a chance to make your next application a little stronger, and a new related application a little easier. So, how do you turn a report from an exercise in frustrated bare minimum data collection to a tool for engagement and fundraising?
Sidebar: reporting is not a perfect process. Too often reporting is an onerous, unnecessarily complicated process built on the assumption that nonprofits can’t be trusted with a donor’s funds. That is a separate problem to tackle. The following advice is for reports that are coming from a positive place of providing information and engagement with a funder who wants to learn about your successes, and where they can offer additional support to address your challenges. They’re out there, I swear.
Think about what has happened in the reporting period that got people excited. What made people pause for a minute in their work and share a celebration? This is report content gold. If you’re excited about something, tell your donors about it!
Put it in context. This applies to your celebrations and your challenges. You don’t need to write a thesis about the information you’re including but give people enough information to understand why you are including something (beyond just the fact that you’re required to include something). Why does it matter that you have a new partnership with the City Government? What will that allow you to do more of or do better?
Present your challenges as opportunities. For donors who present themselves as wanting to be a partner and a resource, take them at their word. Be honest about the challenges you have dealt with, what you are doing to address them, and how donors can help. This doesn’t have to mean more money; it can be expertise or connections. But give donors that chance to engage.
Present your successes as opportunities. Similarly, give donors an opportunity to see how they can build on your success with additional resources, again, be that money, connections, staff time, what have you. This is a great opportunity to show don’t tell – show donors where you are going, how that progress is exciting, and what you have the chance to do in the next year. Even if you don’t end up being able to submit a new application to this funder, having this written out will be super helpful for applications to additional funders.
Reports don’t have to be a missed opportunity. Look at your last few reports and see what you would tweak if you were thinking of a report as a cultivation opportunity. Try starting from there for your next report, and I bet you’ll be surprised at how much more dynamic your document is.
Of course, all of this assumes you have processes in place to get the information you need for a great report. Stay tuned for more on that subject!
