Impact Reporting 2024: Foundations & Nonprofits
Storytelling, Systems Change, Strategy
About the Impact Reporting 2024 series: We reviewed 50 2024 impact reports across industries and sectors. This series looks at how organizations communicate through design, format, structure, frameworks, and proof points.
This grouping of 2024’s nonprofit and foundation reports covers diverse issue areas, including child health, food insecurity, global health, education, labor, climate action, and digital modernization. Across the board, the reports are not just documents that showcase good deeds. They are strategic communication tools, structured around outcomes, metrics, and forward-looking strategy. These reports provide strong examples of how design, storytelling, and strategy can collaborate to communicate impact in a compelling and actionable way.
Across this grouping, some clear trends emerge in both content and communication:
Storytelling Remains a Strength
Foundations are often strong in narrative and human-centered impact. Most reports in this group featured compelling stories, community voices, and strong visual imagery. Air Canada Foundation, for example, focuses on pediatric health and food insecurity, and its report is filled with emotive imagery and real-life stories from families impacted by their hospital transportation program and meal donations. Brighter Bites and the Clinton Foundation blend storytelling with scale, highlighting broad reach while grounding the impact in family and community experiences.
What sets the more engaging reports apart is not just the storytelling, but how well they connect those stories to broader systems change.
From Community Projects to Systemic Impact
Code for America presents its work as a national driver for modernizing government.
Alongside measuring meals delivered, dollars given, and people served, these reports also spotlight policy shifts, behavior change, and ecosystems influenced. For example, SHRM Foundation frames its work as building workforce infrastructure, Green Seal positions its certification system as a lever for transforming product safety, manufacturing, and retail supply chains, and Code for America presents its work as a national driver for modernizing government with language focused on effectiveness, real-time responsiveness, and scaling proven solutions across states.
Local Action + Global Relevance
The Rockefeller Foundation quantifies macro impact but ties it to program-specific examples in their “stories from the field.”
Some of the most engaging reports balance big-picture goals with on-the-ground examples. This helps audiences understand how global issues translate into tangible, local results. The Rockefeller Foundation quantifies macro impact but ties it to program-specific examples in their “stories from the field.” The Under2 Coalition ties regional climate action to the global policy agenda.
Future-Ready Themes
While not every report touched on technology, a few organizations introduced language and initiatives around digital modernization, responsible AI use, and tech policy readiness. Code for America, as expected, leads with tech-forward framing, advocating for scalable, modern, equitable digital services. GuideWell included the development of an AI governance framework alongside examples of how AI-powered chat systems are supporting virtual care access.
These references demonstrate that even in the nonprofit sector, digital responsibility and readiness are becoming essential parts of the impact narrative.
Designed for Data Sharing
Most reports in this group were visually engaging, but a few communication features stood out as particularly effective. Clear numeric summaries of key outcomes make reports more scannable and reinforce credibility by presenting key metrics in a format that is easy to digest. The Rockefeller Foundation report was a standout in this area. In addition to its long-form PDF, the foundation published a one-page summary that combined annual highlights with key lessons learned. This modular piece is highly shareable and allows larger audiences to engage with the organization’s work, including those who would not typically review a full report.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s one-page summary provides a highly shareable resource geared toward a broader audience.
Read the rest of the 2024 impact reporting series:
Inform Solutions is a creative services firm that amplifies the impact of innovators. Ready to launch your impact reporting program? Get in touch.
