Practical guide

Which number do we show our funder?

You have lots of information and a report full of averages. Your funder wants to see just one thing: whether something changed.

Felipe SotoSeptember 22, 2026 · 5 min read

In 30 seconds

01Show one or two outcome numbers, not activity numbers.
02Always show how many people each figure refers to.
03Take the temperature often: you don't need an impact evaluation to show progress.

It's the question that comes up most in our conversations with foundations, and also the one we hear from the other side of the table, when we talk with funders. Organizations feel they have lots of data and none of it tells the story. Funders feel they get long reports that are missing the one thing they're looking for: whether something changed.

The problem: lots of data, no answer

The report almost always shows what the organization did: workshops held, people enrolled, volunteer hours. Those are activity numbers. They say you worked, but not what changed for people.

And when there is an outcome number, it usually comes as an average. You can't break an average down by region or by group, and it doesn't show whether the change happened in the people who actually took part.

Activity numbers

Workshops held
People enrolled
Volunteer hours
Materials handed out

Outcome numbers

Who changed a behavior
How many finished the program
What improved since the start
Where more support is needed

How to choose the number

In five steps

1
Ask what your funder decides with your report
Whether to renew, expand, or change focus. The right number is the one that helps them make that decision.
2
Pick one or two outcomes, not ten
What your program promises to change. Everything else can go in an appendix.
3
Show how many people it refers to
A figure without its N can't be read: 80% of 10 people is not the same as 80% of 1,000.
4
Count only those who really took part
Compare the before and after of the same people, not of everyone who signed up.
5
Repeat the same number in every report
Comparing over time is what turns a data point into a story.

A thermometer, not an impact evaluation

Many organizations believe that to show results they need an impact evaluation, with a control group and months of work. For day-to-day use, you don't. What helps is taking the temperature often: measuring the same thing, the same way, at regular intervals.

For that, the data needs to live in one place. When each site or each program reports in its own spreadsheet, pulling the progress together takes weeks and the number arrives late.

Go deeper

Your data lives in 20 spreadsheets (and that's why nobody can find anything)

Every program has its own form and its own Excel file, and the team spends more time looking for data than using it. Before you choose a platform, get your house in order.

That's what we did with an education program that works with preschools and schools: the data stopped living in hundreds of spreadsheets, and the team now sees progress across the whole program, with its goals, on a single screen. See the full case.

Before your next report

Write in one sentence what your program changes in people's lives.
Pick the number that best shows that change, and its N.
Check whether you can measure it the same way today across all your sites or programs.

If the answer to that last one is no, that's the first problem to solve, before any new dashboard or tool.

Felipe Soto