¿Cómo muestra el impacto de su subvención a los financiadores?

A well-maintained grant file makes this an easy step in the process. The executed grant agreement is one way to identify the expected outcomes and outputs specified by the funder. Generally, during the pre-award process, the funder and grantee have agreed upon specific performance metrics and reporting for the grant award and they are communicated in the grant agreement. For Federal awards, the inclusion of these terms is required by the Uniform Guidance. If you are in the planning stages and have not received prior funding, the Notice of Funding Opportunity is a good starting point. It identifies the funders' expected outcomes and outputs as intended by the authorizing legislation.

One aspect often gets overlooked is the possible consequence without the impact you would create. If a certain issue isn’t addressed, what social or monetary cost it will create.

I tend to use a theory of change framework in my grants in part, because it allows me to clearly explain not only the direct outcomes I hope to achieve, but the strategic thinking behind why those outcomes are important. My grants focus on changes in behaviors among policymakers, so explaining clearly what we want to change, how we want to change it, and what is success have to be explained very thoughtfully. But I think this is true of other grants as well. Funder's want to know how you are thinking about approaching a program/grant to get to impact.

The clue to what impact the funder is looking for is hidden in plain sight in the response to LOI or the funder's website, or their RFI/RFP document. It also, sometimes defines what the funder's idea of project success is. Not that you have to force fit your project impact to any of it. But by being pre informed, the grant writers can align project goals and define the monitoring criteria at the outset.

Have multiple sources to “triangulate” the point you want to make. For example, if you want to show how your work improves students’ learning, you can have their test results (quantitative), teachers’ and parents’ feedback (qualitative), and students’ own rating (quantitative) to make your claim. Having pre- and post-intervention or comparison with a similar group that has not got your intervention can also reinforce the impact statement you make.

A well detailed grant report is an excellent way to show the impact your organization has in the community to your funders. Your funder may provide you with a set report template that will need to be filled out with the required data and supporting documentation, and it is imperative to maximize your report by visualizing your collected data with graphs, tables, very detailed written narratives, statistics, and client success stories. Some reports may allow for program photos or brochures from events and it’s a good idea to include these if possible to help your funders see the whole picture of the services your program(s) provide and how it aids in the growth and development of your local community.

I like to use a lot of examples and stories in grant reports, both of successes and challenges. And I do think including failures in grant reports is key, not only capturing impact. Part of the impact of the work is learning from it and adapting for future work, or providing lessons learned that the donor or its other partners can use. Results frameworks can be a good tool, but also can be overly complicated depending on what you have tried to measure.

The human stories of change are the meat of any grant or project report. Sure, the funders need to show numbers, but everyone will remember that one kid they helped, the one village they transformed, the one family that survived and the one community that changed - all because of their intervention. Don't hesitate to share stories and narrate incidents of change. It takes one to make one.

Numbers are always eye-catching, but they can’t tell the whole story. You may consider having a few really appealing and attractive figures that make your point straightforwardly (avoid those that need a lot of explanation for people to make sense of), and the elaborate with, say, human stories. For example, in an impact narrative, you can give a figure of how many people have been benefited, and then take one of them to share their story. So readers will see beyond the number and visualize there’s real people in this simple figure.

Incorporate findings into grant writing, planning, and implementation to further improvement and impact. Embrace adaptive management principles, allowing flexibility to adjust strategies based on impact insights. Establish feedback loops to gather insights from stakeholders, recipients, and beneficiaries, enhancing program responsiveness. Embrace innovation cycles, fostering a culture of experimentation and learning from both successes and failures to optimize your grant strategies and maximize impact.

I think that before you choose a model, it is important to understand what impact is and means to the particular donor and the nature of the project. To some it is yes Behavior Change while to others it is simply numbers reached. If this is not possible then it is important to marry the model you use so that there is accommodation for both. Otherwise for advocacy programs I prefer outcome harvesting and the TOC and or Log Frame for other programs. But sometimes I use both.