Rethinking

If you are budgeting for an annual or impact report and trying to work out what is reasonable to spend, the honest answer is that it depends entirely on what you are buying. The word "report" covers everything from a staff member in a word doc to a fully designed publication, and the prices reflect that. Here is a plain breakdown so you can work out what fits. The genuinely cheap option: doing it in-house If someone on your team lays out the report themselves, the cash cost i

A charity running one programme has one reporting problem. A charity running five has a different problem that is more than five times as hard, because on top of reporting each programme, someone has to make them add up to a coherent picture of the organisation as a whole. That second job is where most of the hidden effort goes, and it is rarely anyone's named responsibility. Every programme reports on its own island Each programme tends to build its reporting separately. Dif

Turning reporting into an ongoing product rather than a one-off deliverable suits some evaluation practices and agencies more than others. Plenty are set up perfectly well as project-based businesses, and that is a reasonable place to stay. These five signs are how you can tell which one you are. 1 - You deliver a similar report structure to more than two clients If your annual reports for different clients share a recognisable shape, with the same kinds of sections and the s

Most organisations comparing reporting options assume they are choosing between three separate things: a document they build themselves, a designer or agency they commission, or a platform they license. It is worth looking closely at what each one gives you, because a living report is built to give you all three at once, and usually for less than the other two cost on their own. A PDF built in-house This is the cheapest option up front, and it is genuinely the right call for

Most software vendors describe onboarding in abstract terms like discovery, kickoff and implementation. We would rather be specific about what the first fortnight actually involves, because "we'll build you a system" means very little until you can picture how it goes. Week one begins with the reporting you already have The first conversation is about the report you already produce. We look at what it currently contains, who reads it, and where it falls short. Most organisati