How to report your company's social impact to a board

An impact report should say what changed, how much, who delivered it, which stage it has reached, and how you know. Give every result the same six fields, so a director can compare one line with the next and check any of them.

The outcome

What changed, in a unit a person can picture: school meals, days of clean drinking water, bottles removed.

The amount

How many, stated plainly and never rounded up.

The stage

Chosen, funded, delivered or evidenced, and never blurred.

Who delivered it

The organization that did the work, named.

The evidence

What backs the figure: a written confirmation, a delivery record, a rating.

The date

When the result happened, and when you last checked it.

Money spent shows effort. It does not show that anything changed. A board asking about impact wants to know what happened as a result, and a spending total cannot answer that.

Most large companies still lead with the money. In a 2023 analysis of how 100 leading companies report on their corporate citizenship, The Conference Board found that 98 percent report their inputs and 58 percent their direct outputs. "Only 21 percent report on the societal outcomes."¹

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation's logic model guide draws the line most frameworks use. Outputs "are the direct products of program activities." Outcomes "are the specific changes in program participants' behavior, knowledge, skills, status and level of functioning."² Meals served is an output. What those meals changed is the outcome.

Certifiers weigh it the same way. B Lab says that in version 1.6 of its B Impact Assessment, "questions measuring specific outputs and outcomes are more heavily weighted than questions about policies and practices."³

They are four stages of the same result, and a good report never blurs them. A result is chosen when someone decides where the money goes. It is funded when the money has been set aside or paid. It is delivered when the work happens. It is evidenced when you hold proof that it happened.

Blurring the stages is the easiest way to overclaim. A result that has been chosen but not yet delivered is real, and worth reporting, but "delivered" would be untrue. Label each line with the stage it has reached, and move it when it moves.

"Only claim the value that activities are responsible for creating."

Social Value International, The Principles of Social Value, principle 5: do not overclaim⁴

Ask the organization that delivers the outcome to confirm the figure in writing, and name them beside it. Then check how independent evaluators judge that organization, and quote their rating as theirs.

Evaluators already ask charities for this kind of evidence. Candid states that "at least one recent impact metric is required to earn a Platinum Seal."⁵ Charity Navigator shows a cost per outcome as part of its Impact & Results rating.⁶ GiveWell examines "charity-specific data in order to determine how well we can expect an individual charity's real-world results to correspond to results found in academic studies of programs," and looks back on some grants to compare their outcomes with its original assessments.⁷

Boards have reason to ask. In EY's 2024 survey of 350 institutional investors, 85% said that "greenwashing and similarly misleading statements about companies' sustainability performance is a greater problem compared with five years ago."⁸ A figure with a named source and a date is one a skeptical reader can check.

Report on the board's own cycle, using the same fields every time. We found no standard that sets a frequency, so this is our suggestion rather than a rule: a short update at each board meeting, and a fuller report once a year.

In each update, show what changed since the last one. A result that has moved from chosen to delivered is news. Say so, with the evidence that moved it.

Never present a partner's whole track record as your own result. If the charity you fund has reached millions of people, that is their achievement; your report counts only the part you paid for.

Never call a result delivered before it is, never round an amount up, and never leave out the date. If an independent audit has not happened, do not use the word audited. Say what checks exist today, plainly.