Key Reports Every Nonprofit Needs

No one is as booked and busy as a nonprofit’s fundraising staff.

For most grant professionals, reports often become an afterthought in a sea of competing deadlines, donor meetings, special events—the list goes on.

The sheer variety of reports can also make it tough for you and your team to streamline the reporting process. While one funder may request a detailed breakdown of grant spending, another might be interested in reading about community impact.

Say goodbye to the headache of hunting down essential information as we walk you through the most common nonprofit reports—broken down by category—and best practices for optimizing your reporting workflow for each.

Let’s dive in!

While there are many different kinds, in general, a nonprofit report is a comprehensive overview that communicates the value and impact of your organization’s work to your stakeholders.

We’re not just talking about your standard grant report here. Whether formatted as Word documents or digital presentations, reports are a rich resource that can serve several purposes beyond reporting on expenditures and summarizing projects to a funder. They can also:

• Share information about your organization’s mission, values, and activities. Whether people are learning about your work for the first time or are long-time supporters, reports help readers stay informed and updated.
• Strengthen your organization’s credibility by transparently sharing details about finances, activities, and impact.
• Assess the impact of your organization’s activities when it comes to achieving its mission and positively influencing your target audience. Reports also allow staff to step back and observe the real-time impact of their labor.
• Shape decision-making by sharing data and insight so leadership and staff can make informed choices when it comes to strategic planning and resource allocation. For example: Is spending on track? Does the program plan need to be adjusted? Do we have the necessary resources and talent to meet our strategic goals?
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As you can see, reports don’t just benefit funders. They're an untapped resource that can enhance internal communication, inspire stakeholder engagement, and drive continuous improvement within your organization.

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach, we’ll walk you through the key reports every nonprofit needs. We’ll also share tips for fine-tuning your reporting process in preparing them.

Financial reports provide stakeholders with a transparent account of how funds have been managed to execute proposed project outcomes.

Funders are most likely to request this information for grant reports, but financial reports are also crucial for board meetings, internal tracking for program budgets, and informing future funding strategies.

These reports typically fall under the wheelhouse of the finance team, but fundraising professionals should also be familiar with the financial performance of the organization so they can provide any necessary context to a funder.

1. Budget vs. Actual Expenditure

This report compares the planned budget with the expenditures of the organization in real-time. According to CPA Stanley Ituruka, Budget vs. Actual tracking is a vital tool that can help organizations catch any variances early on while demonstrating their trustworthiness to funders.

Pro Tip: When requesting a Budget vs. Actual Expenditure report from your finance or accounting team, specify the grant name, the project the grant is funding, the originally submitted grant budget, and the date range for expenses.

2. Cash Flow Statement

Another way for funders to assess your organization’s fund management capacity is with a Cash Flow Statement. These reports track the money that goes into (cash inflow) and out of (cash outflow) your organization over a specific duration; typically a grant period, quarter, or fiscal year.

A funder may request a Cash Flow statement to ensure grant funds are being spent responsibly and in compliance with the agreed-upon terms and conditions outlined in the grant agreement. A cash flow statement will typically include:

• Cash Inflows - The sources of income received by your organization, including other grants, donations, events, and other sources of revenue.
• Cash Outflows - A list of relevant expenses such as staff salaries, program expenses, overhead administrative costs like rent, and other direct costs.
• Cash Balance - The amount of cash available on hand at any time based on the difference between cash inflows and cash outflows.
• Cash Flow Projections - The forecasted cash inflow and outflow based on anticipated grant disbursements, donations, and planned expenses.

3. Grant Expenses Breakdown

The most commonly requested financial report is the Grant Expenses Breakdown, which details the allocation of grant funds across different categories. This is typically broken down into:

• Personnel
• Equipment and Supplies
• Administrative Costs

This itemized breakdown provides the funder with transparency regarding how grant funds are spent and demonstrates your organization’s fiscal responsibility.

Pro Tip: Utilize Instrumentl’s new Budget Spenddown to track grant expenses. Available with Professional and Custom Plans, Budget Speddown gives you a streamlined way to monitor grant finances by directly importing expenses. Budget Spenddown eliminates uncertainty over grant financials with intuitive visuals for smarter decision-making. What are you waiting for? Start your 14-day free trial today!

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4. Independent Audit

An Independent Audit (sometimes called an external audit) is a thorough examination of an organization's financial statements and records for the specified fiscal year and is prepared by an independent auditing firm or certified public accountant (CPA).

In keeping with transparency, these are a commonly requested supplementary document for grant proposals to help funders understand your organization’s fiscal health and financial management practices.

Your organization may also be legally required to conduct an independent audit depending on factors such as your organization size and revenue—make sure to check with your state laws and federal reporting requirements.

Audits are typically scheduled weeks to months in advance so your organization can adequately prepare. Here’s some examples of specific documents and information the auditors may request:

• Financial statements
• Budgets
• Payroll information
• Tax documents
• Board meeting minutes
• Details about grants and donations received
• Record and receipt of applicable expenses

🔐 Key Tips for Financial Reports

• Standardize your communication. Brainstorm with your finance colleagues for efficient ways to meet or request financial documents that fit in your respective workflows. A biweekly one-to-one meeting may suffice or assigning tasks in a project management platform might work better if you work remotely. Whatever you decide, make sure it seamlessly fits your workstyles.‍
• Give ample turnaround time. While reports like an independent audit may be static documents you can quickly retrieve, the other types of financial reports require some more time and effort for your colleagues to put together. Give the finance and accounting teams a heads-up of required reports at least 1 week (preferably more!) in advance.

A narrative report is a detailed written account of the activities, progress, and impact of your organization’s projects and programs. Here’s an overview of the most common types:

5. Progress and Final Reports

You’re probably the most familiar with these types of narrative reports, as they are a typical compliance requirement for grant funding. Progress (also known as interim) and final reports give funders detailed insight into the impact of their investment and are the primary way for them to learn about how to improve their grantmaking strategies and priorities.

Though very similar as far as the basic core content (summary of activities, successes, and challenges) there are also some key differences between the two. They differ in quantity and frequency, date range, and level of detail.

You may be tempted to only share the highlights in these reports, but take this advice from Mary Gladstone-Highland:
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“If you need to report on unmet objectives or targets make sure to be honest. Making up data or sugar-coating problems isn't advisable. Your grantors will see through those tactics. Instead, highlight how you plan to address the challenges and remain within your original vision for the project.”

Submitting well-composed reports on time reinforces your organization’s reliability as a grant recipient and maintains your good standing, ensuring your eligibility for future awards.

6. Evaluation Report

It’s also common for funders to inquire about evaluation, especially in final reports. Evaluation reports provide an overview of how a program or project performed in meeting its proposed outcomes. The focus is on metrics—how well did outputs meet outcomes, and what was the process?

In addition to reporting on evaluation findings, you may also be asked about your organization’s evaluation plan and how it was implemented.

Pro Tip: Prepare your evaluation plan early on as you’ll have to account for organizing and synthesizing raw data before including it in reports. You can do this internally or hire a consultant.

7. Impact Assessment

An impact assessment evaluates the broader, long-term effects and outcomes of a program or project on its intended population.

Utilizing quantitative and qualitative data, this report goes beyond immediate outcomes to understand how the program has contributed to changes in program participants and their communities. They provide key insight for future decision-making regarding your organization’s priorities.

Helpful Note: While this might sound similar to the evaluation report mentioned earlier, an evaluation report provides data about project outcomes and processes that an impact assessment can use as a starting point for drawing conclusions. For example, if you’re looking to assess a core program’s impact, you’d compare the participant survey results from past evaluation reports to gauge any changes or trends over time.

These can be a large undertaking for an organization, so it’s common for nonprofits to hire a consultant to help produce an impact assessment.

🔐 Key Tips for Narrative Reports

• Work smarter with Instrumentl’s Tasks feature. With Tasks, you can set up automatic deadline reminders for yourself and your teammates to complete internal milestones, submit LOIs, and submit all reporting requirements for your awarded grants.

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• Keep your reports in one place. If your organization uses a Cloud-based application system like Google Docs or Microsoft Word Online, create a central document that houses links to all of your narrative reports. Save time and say goodbye to the hassle of going through folder after folder for the specific document you had in mind.
• ‍Organize reports by categories that work for you. Whether it’s by year, program, or type of report, make sure you select a category to organize your reports by. If your organization runs a few distinct programs, it’s probably most beneficial to organize them by program name. Doing this allows you to quickly find and reuse relevant language from past narratives so you don’t have to start from scratch every time a report is due.
• ‍Solicit support when you need it. Unless you have a department staff to oversee this project, impact assessments, evaluation reports, and annual reports can be a huge task. Instead of adding to the already-full plates of your colleagues, consider pursuing a capacity-building grant to hire new staff, a consultant, or a firm to take on these projects.

In today's digital age, more nonprofits are leveraging digital reporting to communicate impact, engage stakeholders, and share a call to action. Dynamic videos, microsites, and other digital reports are efficient ways to quickly deliver essential details, and can also spread your organization’s story farther and wider.

In this Instrumentl webinar, ​Jeff Rum, Co-Founder of Storyraise (formerly Yearly) discusses digital reports as a new way to engage funders:
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“...what I've seen, which is really exciting, is that a lot of funders are open to getting reports in other ways, right? So, it could be a video or it could be a web-based report or an interactive component of your website. And so, when we say digital report, we mean something that's where there's a link, whether it's a website or a microsite, or something that you can interact with more than just a PDF.”

Read on for how to incorporate digital reports into your fundraising arsenal!

8. Annual Report

An annual report is a publicized summary of your organization’s milestones and achievements over the last year. Though these have been traditionally printed as booklets or brochures, today they are typically published as PDFS, online booklets, and interactive websites.

As opposed to catering to the specific needs of a funder, annual reports are meant to be widely distributed with the intention to:

• Acquaint new stakeholders to your organization
• Offer a touchpoint for existing donors
• Publicly recognize donors, partners, volunteers, and staff
• Inform community members about what your organization does

9. Board Meeting Presentation

Besides being your organization’s biggest fans, your Board of Directors oversee your organization’s operations and make key decisions related to your financial, programmatic, and fundraising strategies.

Board meeting presentations are vital to helping them make these decisions by sharing concise and engaging updates related to the focus of the meeting.

Unlike a five-page final report for a funder, your job within these reports is to present informative snapshots without inundating your board with day-to-day details.

For example, if you’re presenting a new fundraising campaign, you might want to share your plan with a visual dashboard that helps them quickly understand your vision and goals.

🔐 Key Tips for Digital Reports

• Gather inspiration from other nonprofits. If you’re not sure where to start, peruse digital reports from other organizations such as the Malala Fund's 2021 Annual Report or this 2018 Annual Report by Girls Who Code.
  
• Play around with new software. If web and graphic designers aren’t a part of your budget for your next board presentation, try your hand at data visualization with user friendly AI apps like Tableau and Infogram. Or try software solutions like Storyraise, created for nonprofit professionals like you.
• ‍Reuse and recycle grant reports. Reference your past grant reports when putting together presentations and annual reports. It’s much easier to whittle down existing language than coming up with something new.

While reporting often feels like a burden, sometimes all it takes is an adjustment to how you approach the process. Whether it’s trying something new with digital tools or updating the order of operations with your team, reporting doesn’t have to be a nagging task you avoid.

Besides, they’re more than a compliance requirement—they’re an opportunity to share your organization’s story and engage supporters, new and old.

What are you waiting for? Take these tips to shift your perspective and use reporting as a strategic tool for your organization’s growth and impact!