How can we collect impact data from grantees after we've funded them?

Getting the money out is the easy half of grantmaking.

The hard half starts twelve months later, when the team needs to know what that money achieved, and discovers that finding out is its own project.

The usual pattern is a flurry of reminder emails, followed by responses in every conceivable format:

• A two-page PDF from one grantee.
• A single paragraph in an email from another.
• A spreadsheet from a third.
• And silence from several more.

Each describes its impact differently, so there is no way to add it up into a program-level number. Which is exactly what the board and the CSR report require.

The instinct is to chase harder. But more chasing does not fix a structural problem: grantees are not being given a clear, consistent way to report.

We see a real difference when funders send grantees a structured progress report on a schedule. The same fields for everyone, tied to what they committed to at application. The data comes back comparable by design.

It also lightens the grantee's load. Filling in a focused form is far less daunting than writing a free-form report from scratch, which improves response rates.

The result is outcome data you can actually aggregate, and a far calmer reporting season.