How do we write a charity impact report?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. An impact report is a voluntary document, and writing one well is craft, not law. Scotland: the same position, with no difference in principle; what Scottish law asks of the annual report is a separate question, on Step 15. Northern Ireland: the same position, with no difference in principle; the annual report’s own content is on Step 15.

Which document is the impact report?

Three different documents get called “the impact report”. Keeping them apart saves a lot of rework. This page assumes you have already written down what did not work and worked out what you can honestly claim.

• Your impact report. This page. An impact report is a voluntary document. In it, a charity sets out what changed for the people it works with, and what part its work played. Nothing in charity law in England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland requires a charity to publish one.
• The trustees’ annual report. A statutory document with set content. Establish which tier you are in and Draft the narrative sections cover it. Its public benefit content goes in the public benefit statement.
• A funder’s report. A condition of one grant, in that funder’s format. That is reporting to a funder in their format.

The mix-up runs both ways. Charities write their annual report to a funder’s template, or their funder report to the SORP. Neither works, because the three documents answer to different people.

One question sits across the line. The Charities SORP governs what goes in an annual report prepared on the accruals basis. It requires a summary of the main achievements at every tier, and an explanation of impact from Tier 2, where its operative text puts that duty.

At Tier 1, the SORP says the trustees should consider how the work made a difference to beneficiaries and whether it brought wider benefits to society. So a Tier 1 charity that writes about the difference made is on safe ground, and one that says nothing may be asked why.

The public benefit statement step sets out the detail.

What should a charity impact report include?

Include five sections: what you did, what changed and for whom, what it cost, what did not go to plan, and what you learned. This guide read the published reporting requirements of eight major UK funders side by side. The structure below is our own synthesis of what they ask, not a standard any of them publishes. Every one of them asks a version of the first three questions.

1. What you did. Set against what you said you would do. Several funders ask this almost word for word.
2. What changed, and for whom. In outcome language, not only counts of activity. Every funder in the set asks this as its headline question.
3. What it cost. Spend against budget, with any difference explained.
4. What did not go to plan. Half the funders ask for it explicitly, in their own words.
5. What you learned. What you would do differently, and what comes next.

The reason to use this structure is reuse. The “what changed” section feeds the achievements part of your annual report. All five sections map onto a funder’s form. You write the hard part once.

Which definition of impact does the report use?

A report should say which definition of impact it uses and apply NPC’s four words consistently. A report that uses “impact” loosely in its own headline has undermined itself before the reader reaches the numbers. NPC’s definitions, verbatim, are a good set to use:

• Activities: "Whatever actions you take."
• Outputs: "Products, services or facilities that result from an organisation's or a project's activities."
• Outcomes: "Changes in your target group(s) that you believe will contribute to impact."
• Impact: "The sustained change you want to see in your target group(s), which they will achieve themselves."

Separate outputs from outcomes from impact explains the difference between them.

Now the catch. The major frameworks do not agree on what “impact” means.

For NPC, impact is a point in time: the long-term, sustained end of a chain of change. For Impact Frontiers, it is about cause. Its definition, verbatim: “Impact is a change in an outcome caused by an organization.” Both usages are in active use, and neither is wrong.

So your report should say which definition it uses, in a sentence near the start. A reader who has met the other one will otherwise think one of you has made a mistake.

Contribution, not cause

Following NPC’s Code of Good Impact Practice, you should write “contributed to” wherever others plausibly played a part. Report-writing rewards confident verbs; resist them. Work out what you can honestly claim shows how to rewrite a claim.

The same goes for a social value ratio. If you quote one, give its scope beside it and let it stand alone. By the standard-setter’s own reasoning (a position we could read only in secondary copies), it should not be compared with another charity’s figure.

Dead and hijacked links in older guidance

Older charity guidance often links to sites that no longer serve what it cites, and one now serves online-casino content. This is easy to miss, and it can embarrass a charity in public.

Inspiring Impact was a sector programme led by an NCVO consortium. In the words of the Code that grew out of it, it “ran from 2011 until early 2022”. A great deal of older charity guidance still links to its website.

That domain has since been taken over. It now serves online-casino content. This guide confirmed that by fetching it directly on 7 August 2026, and does not link it.

The programme’s main output, the Code of Good Impact Practice, lives on at NPC’s site. That is the safe link.

A second, smaller problem: Social Value UK’s old website now redirects to another site, ISV’s. Its individual articles no longer load at the addresses other guides cite.

So before you publish, click every link in your draft that came from older sector material. Anyone writing from a template or a guide more than a few years old is likely to have at least one.

How to put the report together

These steps take the report from sections to publication.

1. Say which document it is. A voluntary impact report, for a named audience.
2. Say which “impact” you mean. One sentence, with the source.
3. Write the five sections in order. What you did, what changed and for whom, what it cost, what did not go to plan, what you learned.
4. Use contribution language throughout. Name the others who helped.
5. Check every link. Especially anything copied from older guides.
6. Publish it, and keep the working version for the public benefit statement and your funder reports.

Nothing sets a length for a voluntary report. Write enough to answer the five questions honestly. Template: Impact report skeleton (planned).

With the report written, the next step takes its achievements into the public benefit statement for your annual report. For a funder’s own form, go to report to a funder in their format.

Common mistake: structuring the report around your activities rather than the questions funders ask

Reports tend to be written from the programme outwards. Build it instead on five things:

• what was done
• what changed, for whom
• what was spent
• what did not go to plan
• what was learned

The same document then serves the public benefit section of the annual report and the funder report with little rework. That structure is this guide’s own synthesis of eight funders’ requirements, and is labelled as such.

Common mistake: rounding a contribution up into a cause

Report-writing rewards confident verbs. Overclaiming is described as the most common failure in charity impact reports and the most damaging to funder relationships. Write “contributed to”, and state which definition of “impact” the report uses, because the frameworks disagree. Good practice, not a legal requirement.

Common mistake: linking to inspiringimpact.org, or to socialvalueuk.org, from older sector material

Inspiring Impact was a prominent sector programme and a great deal of guidance still links to it. Its domain now serves online-casino content.

Social Value UK’s old site redirects, and its articles no longer load at their published addresses. The Code of Good Impact Practice survives on NPC’s site, which is the only safe link. Check every link copied from older material.

Worked example

Wrenfield Village Hall wants one document it can hand to its parish council funder and reuse for its annual report.

It starts by saying what the document is: a short impact report for the parish council and the village. It says it uses NPC’s four words and quotes NPC’s definition of impact in one line.

The sections follow the order funders ask for:

• what the hall did this year, against what it planned
• what changed for the people who use it, and who they are
• what it spent
• the heating repair that ran late and closed the hall for a month, and what the committee learned

Throughout, the hall “contributed to” things, alongside the parish council and the volunteers who run the lunch club.

Before it goes out, the treasurer clicks every link. One, copied from an old guide, points at the Inspiring Impact site. It comes out and the NPC link goes in.

The outcome: one short report whose sections map onto the achievements part of the annual report (Step 15) and the funder’s form (Step 16). It states its definition of impact, uses contribution language, and has no dead or hijacked links. Convention and good practice. The only legal element is the annual report content in Step 15.