5 Tips to Create Accurate and Insightful Reports for Your Nonprofit

Reporting might not be the most exciting part of your job. But if you optimize your reports, they can help you take everything you do to new levels. 

For example, strong reports allow you to:

• Monitor key performance metrics for an accurate overview of your nonprofit’s health.
• View detailed information about your organization’s functions and campaigns to know how well they’re tracking against goals and change direction when needed.
• Track trends — everything from donations to volunteering — to uncover opportunities for improvement.

With these benefits in mind, let’s look at some ways you can use technology for more accurate and insightful reports for your nonprofit.

1. Know What Reporting Capabilities You Have

First, you must understand what dashboard and reporting capabilities are available in your software — whether it’s your constituent relationship management (CRM) system, donor management software, online fundraising platform or other key software.

Many software solutions offer dashboards, which are great for quick overviews of your nonprofit’s health. You can also establish a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help you track progress toward your nonprofit’s goals, and then set up dashboards for daily bird’s-eye views of how those metrics are tracking.

In your software, you’ll also typically find detailed reporting capabilities, which can help you dive deeper into specific functions and/or campaigns across your organization. For example, try setting up a fundraising report that shows donations during a specific period. 

Many software solutions now take reporting further with more sophisticated dashboards and reports, as well as data visualization, business intelligence and artificial intelligence tools that provide insights into donor and constituent demographics and trends, marketing and fundraising trends, KPIs and overall organizational health. These types of tools are designed to help nonprofits make better data-driven decisions about fundraising, marketing, volunteering and more.

If you haven’t learned how to use your reporting tools or if you need a refresher, ask your software vendor or one of its service providers for training. You may be sitting on more reporting capabilities than you realize.

2. Make Reporting Part of Your Daily Work

Some software solutions offer reporting tools that can help you incorporate reporting more into your daily work. This is about more than just convenience. It’s about truly using reports to help you make more informed decisions regularly. 

For example, report scheduling tools can run reports at a set cadence and send them to you or a select people in your organization. For instance, a report of recent large gifts might be sent weekly to remind development staff to call those high-level donors to thank them directly. Or, a weekly report of new event registrations can help your event manager adjust logistics for the next big event.

Another day-to-day reporting capability involves workflows. These might be built-in templates or customizable workflows that include things like notifications (a type of report) for specified staff when a specific action has been taken. For example, if a company commits to sponsor your event via an online form, you can set up your system to trigger an email to you so you can follow up with that sponsor directly to thank them. As you dig into your reporting capabilities, look for tools that can help you become a more data-driven organization.

3. Customize Your Reports

If report customization is an option in your software, take time to tailor your reports. It can be tempting to simply use the standard reports that come with your software — and sometimes that might be all you need. But even though it takes more time up front, in general, your reports will give you deeper insights if you remove less relevant fields and add fields that are unique to your nonprofit’s goals, programs, functions and campaigns.

Identify your KPIs and consider whether the reports you run are speaking to these metrics. If not, dig around within the tool for a more relevant report, or create it yourself if possible. 

Another thing: Be sure the report is set up so that it makes sense to the end-user. For example, tailor a transaction report for the accounting/finance department by removing irrelevant data columns and arranging those remaining in a useful order. Or, for a T-shirt fulfillment report, customize it with name, size,  team, etc. — only the data your packet-stuffing volunteers will need. 

4. Consider What Story the Reports Are Telling You

Sometimes a single report cannot tell you the full story that you’re seeking. The output of the report might be limited by the way the data is stored in your software’s data tables. In this case, it’s important to think about what answers you’re seeking, and what is the best way to get those answers.

For example, say you’re running a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. To see the full picture of your campaign’s performance, you might need to run two reports: 

1. A registration report. This will show people and their roles (teams, participants, campaigns, members, and individual fundraisers), which is valuable for headcount and event check-in.
2. A transaction report. Lists monetary transactions within the campaign (gifts, sponsorships, and event registration fees), which is important for telling the story of who gave what and which gifts were credited to which teams or fundraisers.

5. Ask for Help When You Need It

If your reporting needs are too complex, or you just don’t have the time for the in-depth training you need on your reporting capabilities, ask your software vendor or its service providers to help you set up and customize key dashboards, reports and advanced analytics for your organization. The benefits of deep and accurate data insights are too important to leave at the bottom of your to-do list.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.