Impact reporting

Measuring impact is one job. Telling people about it is another. Impact reporting is the second job.

The workbook's definition is simple. Impact reporting is communicating the difference made by the organisation, or the social change, to the stakeholders.

It has no single form. It can be an independent impact report. It can be part of an annual report. It can sit inside a sustainability report. All three count.

What decides the form? Three things: why the assessment was done, what time and money were available for it, and who the report is for.

So a report driven by a rule follows the rule's format. A report for the organisation's own use can be a short standalone note, or a few pages in the annual report.

Reporting back is not just a duty. The workbook lists what it gives the organisation: a check of impact against its own goals, a learning culture, encouragement for staff and volunteers, trust and credibility with stakeholders, and lessons shared with others working on the same cause.

And it must be honest both ways. Negative impacts have to be reported too.

The definition and the three forms (Chapter 7, section 7.3.1). Impact reporting is communicating the difference made by the organisation, or the social change, to the stakeholders. It can take the form of:

• an independent impact report;
• part of an annual report; or
• part of a sustainability report.

The format and contents depend on the objective of conducting the assessment, the time and resources available for it, and the stakeholders it is documented for. Where the assessment is driven by a regulatory mandate, the report follows the guidelines laid down by the government. Where it is for internal use on a single programme, it may be independent or folded into the annual report. The generally used format is a detailed qualitative report covering objectives, scope, data collection and analysis.

What it does for the organisation (7.3.1). Five stated benefits: reviewing impact against the vision and goals the organisation set; creating a learning organisation whose people focus on results and improve services; encouraging employees, volunteers and board members by celebrating achievements; building trust and credibility with stakeholders; and sharing lessons, challenges and success stories with organisations working on the same cause.

The components of a report (7.3.2). The workbook asks for qualitative, quantitative and financial aspects, and for the report to be as short as possible while still meeting the principles of transparency and materiality:

Trends, and reporting failure. Annual impact reports play a dual role: they build a trend analysis of the NPO's or FPE's performance, and they provide a baseline and midline for the years that follow. Past performance trends are crucial for ongoing projects and let management adjust its practices. A positive trend implies the target population is being positively impacted and helps attract investment. But a dip must be reported too, along with its causes — which may be internal to the NPO or external, such as regulatory change, natural or manmade calamity, or shifts in the socio-political situation — and with recommendations or modifications.

Why some impact is harder to report (7.3). Social impact from a beneficiary's viewpoint is inherently difficult to measure because it cannot readily be expressed in money. The workbook grades the difficulty: emergency relief and basic services in sanitation, water and housing are easier to measure than impact on public policy, governance, freedom or rights. Societal transformation such as improving human rights or democratic conditions involves multiple actors and causal mechanisms still poorly understood. Even so, the workbook says it remains useful to try to measure what an organisation is doing and whether its strategies are working.

Once listed, it stops being voluntary. After an NPO or FPE lists on an SSE it must produce an Annual Impact Report, and for that report the Social Impact Assessment Standards issued by the SRO must be adhered to.

Illustrative NPO and figures.

Aashray Nagar Vikas Sanstha, Indore, runs three programmes. Its programme spend last year was ₹1,80,00,000. It reports in two different ways in the same year.

Form 1 — inside the annual report. For its ₹22,00,000 adolescent-health programme, funded from general donations, it devotes 4 pages of its annual report to impact: 3,100 girls reached, 68% reporting better awareness of anaemia, 2 case studies, and one line that matters more than the rest — attendance in the Mhow cluster fell to 31% and the programme has not yet worked out why.

Form 2 — an independent impact report. For its ₹1,10,00,000 listed housing-repair project, funded by a ZCZP issue, it commissions a full standalone report. That one follows the regulatory format: scope, sampling, methodology, the impact map, KPIs for outcomes, findings and gaps, testimonials, annexures, and an assessor's SRO registration number.

The trend that makes both worth reading.

Year 1 is the baseline; year 2 becomes the midline for year 3. No single year's report could show that climb. Three of them in the same format can — which is the workbook's dual-role point exactly.

And the dip. The Mhow cluster's 31% attendance is exactly what an organisation is tempted to leave out. Reported, it draws the honest cause — a road closure that put the venue 9 km from the settlement — and the recommendation that follows: move the venue, not the programme. Left out, the same problem reappears next year with nothing on record explaining it.

Chapter 7 (Social Impact Assessment Reporting, 11% weightage), section 7.3, is the source: the definition, the three forms, the five benefits, the components in 7.3.2, the dual role of annual reports and the challenges in 7.4.

Chapter 7's third sample question is a direct impact-reporting question: "Which of the following statement is false regarding social impact reporting?" — and the false statement is that impact reporting is restricted to being an independent impact report. That single answer is the section's most examinable fact. Expect also a question on what determines the report's format and contents (the objective of the assessment, time and resources, and the intended stakeholders), and one on the components list.

• Impact reporting is not restricted to an independent report. It may equally be part of an annual report or a sustainability report. This is the workbook's own sample-question answer.
• Impact reporting is the practice; the Annual Impact Report is the regulated filing. An unlisted NGO can do impact reporting and files no AIR. A listed enterprise must file an AIR under LODR Regulation 91E, covering at least 67% of the previous year's programme expenditure.
• Negative impacts must be reported. So must the causes of a dip, split into internal and external, with recommendations. A report of only good news does not meet the standard.
• Short, but transparent and material. The workbook asks for the report to be as short as possible while meeting transparency and materiality — brevity is not a licence to leave things out.
• The audit trail must record what was excluded, with reasons, not only what was included.
• Easier and harder are the workbook's own words. Sanitation, water and housing impact is easier to measure; policy, governance, freedom and rights impact is harder. Difficulty is not a reason to stop measuring.
• Annual reports give a baseline and a midline for later years. That is a reporting function, not a fieldwork one — do not confuse it with baseline, mid-line and end-line surveys in the field.