Good intentions aren’t enough to help the world. If you’re running a charity, knowing how to prove your impact will be an invaluable asset when it comes to raising money from individual donors and from funders who need accountability from the groups they fund. You can use a variety of tools to track your charity’s impact and make sure it is making the most of its funding.

What are your Goals?
Your goal should be to maximize your social impact by ensuring that you have a good fundraising strategy and are getting as much funding as possible. Here are some tips for maximizing social impact:
1) Make sure to set a mission statement and goals for your charity.

2) Fundraise strategically, making sure that you invest in what will help your cause most.

3) Have measurable goals so you can see how successful your efforts are.

4) Find out which organizations fund your charity’s type of work, and then apply for funding from those organizations.

5) Get feedback on how you’re doing by tracking responses from donations made to your organization.

6) Pay attention to where funding is coming from – it might be time to switch strategies if one type of donor isn’t giving enough money anymore or if one type of donor is no longer donating at all.

Monitor Progress
Monitoring grants and feedback, tracking budget spend, and advertising what you do are some ways you can ensure your nonprofit is maximizing its funding. You’ll need to create a monitoring plan that includes metrics such as how often you contact donors, how many gifts you solicit per month, or how many people volunteer. This will give you a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t so you can improve your efforts in those areas. One way to monitor community outreach is by counting memberships, number of volunteers and number of board members. You can also track these numbers annually or quarterly for trends in involvement.

Learn from Mistakes
The charity sector has always been a competitive business, with big corporates and big data. The problem is that charities are often tempted to exaggerate their impact in order to attract funding. Reporting on your social impact is important, but it’s also important to be honest about what you have achieved and what you haven’t. This way, your social impact will grow over time instead of being capped by early successes. And charities that do this consistently report higher funding levels than those who just report success stories.
So think about how you can measure what matters and then report it as honestly as possible.
And keep in mind that social enterprises have a responsibility to both deliver on their aims and to report their impact accurately. Accurate reporting is just as important as effective delivery. If your social enterprise isn’t delivering what it promised, report that too! Unless you admit that you can improve, you will never get better.

Create an Impact Report
It’s important to know that your charity is making a difference, and one way to tell is by reporting on your social impact. This can be done by keeping track of the following: How many people benefited from your organization’s work this year? What sort of impact did you create for them? What percentage of funds were spent on programming versus administrative and operational costs? You may also want to mention any challenges or obstacles you faced over the course of the year. Lastly, keep in mind that impact reports are useful not only as proof of your efforts but also as a guide for future projects. If you’re considering how best to spend your funding next year, consult last year’s report to see which programs had the greatest impact. There are two benefits here: it will help ensure that you have enough funding for those programs, and it will provide helpful information about what type of programs tend to yield greater success rates. This report doesn’t just serve to show that your organization is making an impact; it also shows you where you should focus your resources so that you have the greatest potential for social impact. Remember that your reports aren’t just documents for yourself; they’ll inform other charities who might partner with you in the future, and will make funding decisions more streamlined. Whether you need to report on individual donations or funding streams, every organization has some level of impact. And while most nonprofits don’t charge their supporters when they ask them to take social action, like donating time or money to your cause, there’s still some value attached – we might call it social impact – when someone decides to do something in support of your cause.