OPEN PHILANTHROPY
Making Reporting Matter: How We're Rethinking Outcomes
By Haley Wicker, Director of Community Impact
If you are responsible for reporting at a nonprofit, you’ve probably felt the tension: outcomes reporting takes time, can feel high-stakes, and it’s not always clear what happens after you hit submit.
We know that many of the outcomes we care about related to improved health and well-being for children and families are shaped by systems and conditions that no single organization controls. That’s why we don’t expect any partner to “move the needle” alone.
So, a fair question is: why do we ask our partners to report outcomes at all?
What needed to change
For years, we asked partners to report outcomes mid-grant and again at the end. For a brief period, all reporting was paused while we updated our focus areas and refreshed our grantmaking strategies. As we revisited our reporting approach before our most recent grant cycle opened at the end of 2025, one question guided us: What information helps us learn and be better partners without creating unnecessary burden for our partners?
The biggest change we needed to make was getting clearer about our why. Historically, our outcomes process could feel burdensome. And to be candid, it didn’t consistently inform our decisions. Sometimes it helped us see challenges and identify where additional support might be needed. But too often, the data functioned as a checkbox: did this project meet its goals or not?
That’s not the role we want data to play.
What’s different now
Moving forward, we want to be transparent about how we will (and will not) use what our partners report.
We will:
Review reports on a set schedule
Bring themes and questions into site visits and conversations
Use what we learn to identify community-wide gaps and opportunities
Just as important, we will not:
Use data reported as a pass/fail judgment on an organization’s effectiveness
Use outcomes reports to make decisions about future funding
Why outcomes matter
Our shift toward more unrestricted funding over the past few years pushed us to rethink what we ask partners to track. When funding isn’t tied to a single project, we need a broader picture of what’s happening, and what’s changing because of it.
Now, in our application, partners select a small set of metrics to report.
*Outputs = the who and what (number of people served, contact hours, referrals made, etc.)
*Outcomes = the so what (what difference the work is making for the people and communities you serve)
During the grant period, partners report twice per year with brief updates on the outputs and outcomes selected.
We know not every outcome will shift in six months, and that’s okay. Over time, the output data helps us understand the scale of the work underway, and the outcomes help us understand if and how that work is contributing to change. This information helps all of us see patterns, ask questions, and learn what’s working.
How we’ll use the data
Here’s how we’ll use it:
1) Before site visits, we’ll review reports and come with specific, informed questions about what you’re seeing, what might be influencing the numbers, and what support could help.
2) Looking across reports, we’ll identify gaps and blind spots. For example, if few or no partners are tracking a certain outcome, we’ll ask why. Is the work not happening? Is it under-resourced? Or is it just hard to measure well?
3) We’ll track progress over time to celebrate wins, spot momentum, and learn from what’s working, even when big community indicators change slowly.
At least once a year, we’ll look at outcomes data at two levels:
What we’re learning with individual partners
What we’re noticing across our entire portfolio
Internally, this helps us refine how we support partners and where we focus. Externally, we may share high-level themes (not organization-by-organization comparisons) to help tell a clearer story about what’s changing in Spartanburg and where progress is still hard.
We’re still learning
Our goal is to make reporting more useful, more transparent, and less burdensome while helping all of us better understand what it takes to improve outcomes for children and families in Spartanburg.
This is a new process for us, and we expect to keep improving it. If you have ideas on how we can make this process clearer, lighter, or more meaningful, we want to hear them. Please email me at hwicker@maryblackfoundation.org — I would love to hear from you.
Haley Wicker is the Director of Community Impact at the Mary Black Foundation. In her role, she supports initiatives and partners advancing health and well-being in Spartanburg County. With a background in public health and a passion for community engagement, she brings over a decade of leadership to her role.
Open Philanthropy is a recurring column in our monthly newsletter dedicated to pulling back the curtain on how we make funding decisions, why we structure things the way we do, and how we’re always working to be a better partner.
