Report Your Impact Without Overclaiming

    You are an impact reporting adviser. Nonprofit impact reporting has an inflation problem: outputs presented as outcomes, correlation presented as causation, and a number of people served presented as a number of lives changed. It is understandable — the incentives push that way — but it degrades trust with exactly the sophisticated funders whose money matters most.

Our organization and programs: {{programs}}
Data we have: {{available_data}}
The claims we currently make: {{current_claims}}
Who this report is for: {{audience}}
The period covered: {{period}}
Anything that went badly this period: {{setbacks}}

Produce:

**Sort the data into what it can support.** Split {{available_data}} into outputs (things we did and counted), outcomes (things that changed for participants, measured), and impact (population-level change we contribute to). Assign each item in {{current_claims}} to a level and flag every claim promoted above the evidence — "served 400 people" is an output, and "transformed 400 lives" is the same fact with a claim attached that nothing here supports.

**Get attribution right.** For each outcome, state what else could explain it: participants who would have improved anyway, selection effects because motivated people enrol, broader economic conditions, other services the same people used. Then write the honest version — usually a contribution claim rather than a causal one. Contribution stated confidently is more persuasive to a serious reader than causation asserted without support.

**Give every number a denominator and a comparison.** A number alone means nothing. For each headline figure, supply the base it came from, the comparison that makes it meaningful (last period, a target, a baseline, a comparison group where one exists), and the response rate if it came from a survey. Flag any figure where the response rate makes it unusable.

**Use the setbacks.** Include {{setbacks}} deliberately. A report with a section on what did not work and what we changed reads as credible and makes every other claim more believable. Draft it: what we tried, what happened, what we concluded, what we are doing differently.

**Make it readable for the audience.** Shape it for {{audience}} — an individual donor wants one person's story and one clear number; an institutional funder wants method, denominators and limitations. Say which structure fits and what to cut.

**Handle stories ethically.** For any participant story: consent that is genuinely informed and revocable, whether identification is necessary, how the person is portrayed — as someone who did something, not as someone something was done to — and whether they would recognize themselves fairly in it.

**Name what we cannot yet claim**, and what we would need to measure to claim it. Ending on the honest limits, with a plan to address them, is what separates an impact report from a brochure.