The Final Report
The final report should set the stage for your next grant request to a funder as well as reporting on the current project. But because reporting on the present grant is the primary purpose of the final report, let’s look at that first.
Rarely will everything you outlined in your proposal have gone exactly as planned in the execution of a program. That’s only to be expected, but the final report must give reasons for successes, failures, and near misses. Quotes from thankful clients sprinkled judiciously throughout the report will make it more real.
WORDS TO THE WISE
A published annual report makes a great marketing tool with funders, sponsors, individuals, and all kinds of other people you want to understand and appreciate your charity’s work. You should send a copy to every funder, but this doesn’t relieve you of creating a final report on your project or even your general operations. The details in an annual report usually fall short of what a funder wants to know about how their money was spent.
If you did a good job in your proposal of stating goals (results) and objectives (measurable accomplishments toward the goals), the report will be a snap. Your final report narrative should include, in relation to each goal and objective, …
• A statement of the original goal or objective.
• A description of who was served in reaching this objective, providing metrics whenever possible.
• An explanation of why and what the new objective was and how you achieved it, if the objective changed.
And in relationship to the program as a whole, the narrative should include …
• Any challenges you encountered and how you overcame them.
• The method you used to evaluate the program.
• The major lessons learned from conducting this program.
• Future challenges for this program and the problem it sought to solve.
• Any plans for continuation or adaptation of the program, including any funding received for a future period.
Funders have a vested interest in knowing of any problems or obstacles you encountered along the way and how you overcame them (or didn’t). From your answers, they can gain knowledge that will assist them in evaluating similar proposals they might receive and in advising future applicants. Be frank about what it took to carry out the program. Who knows: if it was much harder than expected to carry out the program, the funder could see that as a reason to give you a larger grant the next time.
The tone of your report should be enthusiastic, positive, and thankful. Receiving this grant was one of the greatest things to ever happen for your clients, and carrying out the program was a learning experience and a joy for everyone at your charity. Remember: you are still selling your program.
HOW TO SAY IT
Always make reports upbeat, and say something positive, even about a disappointing program. The staff at the funder must present your report to the trustees, and they don’t want to look as if they made a bad decision in recommending your charity for a grant.
The interim report was probably formatted as a letter. Because of its relative brevity, this was an acceptable means of conveying the information. Because your final report will be more in-depth (and closer in length to the proposal), a cover letter is appropriate, followed by the formal report.
The cover letter in this case should thank the funder one more time, point out one or two of the major outcomes of the program, summarize how the program did financially, and close with a statement that leaves the door open for submitting another application. An anecdote about one client’s experience of your program in your cover letter will put a human face on your program and engage the funder like nothing else.
You’ll find a full final report with cover letter, narrative, and financial report in Appendix H. This excerpt from a different final report (based on the program described in an executive summary that appears in Chapter 16) illustrates what I described earlier.
Final Report to the James and Mary Brush Family Foundation on a $10,000 Grant to the African American Literary Council
The James and Mary Brush Family Foundation’s $10,000 grant to the African American Literary Council had a significant effect on the council’s ability to sustain the publication of Black American Voices and to serve a wider public. We are pleased to report on how we achieved this goal.
In August, we hired direct-mail consultant Mark Jacobs to revamp the subscription appeal we had been using for several years. Mr. Jacobs was able to suggest a number of simple changes in the cover letter and subscription form that resulted in dramatic increases in income.
One of his suggestions was to decrease the number of choices offered on the subscription form. Fewer choices result in a higher percentage return. He also suggested we add one new option: to become a “Friend of Black American Voices” for an additional $10. He also taught us how to re-mail to the best names, thus further increasing the return with very little additional expense. The 50,000-piece mailing went out in late October.
The combined effect of the changes in the subscription package was a higher percentage return and higher net income. In fact, the mailing nearly paid for itself. Our subscribers now number 7,200, nearly a 10 percent increase in only one year. Just as important, 176 of the new subscribers paid the higher “friends” fee. We will work to cultivate these friends as donors with appeals to increase their contributions over the years.
In addition, we saw a slight increase in newsstand sales shortly after we launched the direct-mail campaign. We attribute this to more people knowing about our magazine and buying a single copy rather than taking out a subscription. Time will tell if some of these readers later become subscribers.
As a result of this direct-mail campaign …
• Subscriptions are up nearly 10 percent, providing a firmer financial basis for our magazine.
• We have 176 new names in our donor database.
• An additional 700 people per issue (including newsstand sales) read the work of our writers.
Your grant made all this possible. Yet much remains to be done. In the magazine business 30 to 50 percent of new subscribers typically do not renew, so to maintain the number of subscribers, and to hopefully increase it, we must institutionalize an annual direct-mail campaign. In addition, if advertising remains at its present level, we still need 10,000 subscribers for the magazine to be self-supporting.
Encouraged by the success of this new direct-mail campaign, we believe we can reach the magical 10,000-subscriber figure in three years. We have set ourselves a higher goal, however, of 12,000 subscribers so the magazine can begin to subsidize the local literary activities.
We would welcome a meeting to review this report with you and discuss the details of our future plans.
This report was pretty easy because the scope of the program was narrow. It’s also shorter than an actual report would have been, where we would have included more details on the changes in the mailing that resulted in so dramatic a change in return. We also would have enclosed a financial report and sample copies of the mailing along with this narrative. The cover letter would have been brief and enthusiastic about the dramatic results of the mailing.
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