Most South African companies that fund non-profits expect a report on what their money achieved. Trialogue’s 2025 State of CSI research found that 71% of companies expected a report on the impact of their donations, and 64% of the non-profits surveyed provided one. A good report shows who you reached, what you did, what changed, and how the money was spent, and it is far easier to write when that information has been collected along the way.
What do CSI funders ask for after a grant?
Trialogue surveyed 70 companies and 110 non-profits for its 2025 handbook. Besides the impact report, “around half of companies expected access for visits (49%) and financial reports (47%) after providing funding.” On the non-profit side, 54% provided financial reports and 45% gave access for visits.
Measurement is now normal on both sides. Trialogue reports that “ninety percent of companies and 77% of nonprofit organisations (NPOs) reported measuring outcomes for all projects.” So it helps to be clear about what you measure and how.
What is the difference between outputs and outcomes?
Outputs are what you delivered: the number of sessions run, meals served or learners enrolled. Outcomes are what changed for the people you worked with: a child reading at a higher level, a learner finishing the course, a young adult finding work.
A good report has both. An outcome needs a starting point. If you only record where people ended up, you can’t show how far they came, so the most useful habit is to record the same few measures at the start and then at regular intervals.
What should a good impact report include?
Keep it short and honest, and make sure the numbers match your financial report. Most reports need these six parts.
- Who you reached. How many people, in which programmes, over which dates. Use the same counting rule every time, for example “enrolled and active at any point in the period”.
- What you did. The outputs, per programme, against what you said you would do in the proposal.
- What changed. The outcomes, shown as starting figures against current figures, with a sentence on how you measured them.
- How the money was spent. What came in for the programme, what was spent, and how that compares with the budget. If the grant was restricted, show that it was used for its purpose. Our piece on restricted and unrestricted funds explains why this matters.
- A story or two, with consent. One person’s experience brings the figures to life, but only with recorded consent. For children, that means a parent or guardian’s consent, and no real names in anything that leaves the organisation. A written data protection and safeguarding policy makes these decisions easier.
- What didn’t go to plan. Say plainly what was harder than expected and what you changed. It makes the rest of the report easier to believe.
What about B-BBEE socio-economic development (SED) evidence?
Many CSI grants are also counted towards the company’s B-BBEE scorecard. The B-BBEE Commission’s educational material on SED says that “at least 75% of the full value of SED contributions must directly benefits black people” (as written) for the contribution to be recognised in full. Where the contribution goes through a non-profit, the non-profit “must be able to produce either a B-BBEE certificate or sworn affidavit on its B-BBEE compliance.” The verifier also looks for acknowledgement of the contribution.
What each company’s verifier needs varies, so ask your funder early what evidence they want and in what form. Your accountant is the right person to help with the affidavit itself.
Why does reporting take so long?
Writing in The Conversation in September 2026, Associate Professor Wayne van Zijl of the University of the Witwatersrand described research with 21 non-profit stakeholders in South Africa, the UK, the US, Sweden and Uganda. One finding stands out: “One NPO spends two weeks each month just reporting to donors.” The problem, he writes, is that “each donor uses different templates to request largely the same information.”
You can’t change every funder’s template. What you can change is where the information lives. If enrolments, progress, money and consent are recorded once, as the work happens, then each report becomes a matter of choosing what to show rather than going back to find it.
How does Kaycie gather the report as you go?
Kaycie is a back-office system for South African non-profits. It doesn’t write your report or decide what counts as impact; that stays with your programme staff and managers. What it does is collect the pieces in one place, so that when a funder asks, most of the work is already done. Here is exactly what it records.
Programmes and enrolments
Each person you serve is enrolled on a programme. The enrolment keeps its status (active, paused, completed or withdrawn), a start date, the funder organisation if the place is funded, and an outcome: graduated, employed, started a business or dropped out.
Money linked to programmes
A donation can be linked to the programme it supports, and spending is signed off against a programme too. Each programme has a report showing donations in, spend out, the balance and progress towards its funding goal. You can also set a budget per programme for the year and see budget against actual on the Reporting page.
Progress reports
You design report templates with the questions that matter to you, using numbers, drop-down choices, yes or no, a 1 to 5 scale, dates, short notes and photos. Staff complete a dated report for each student, one at a time or for a whole programme on one screen, or by importing a spreadsheet. An attendance register records who was present at each session, and attendance appears on progress and funder reports. When a progress update is due, a reminder appears on Needs attention for the person responsible, and it ticks itself off when the report is saved.
Consent and photos
A consent register records each student’s photo and story consent and how it was given. In the media library every photo starts as “Do not use” and is cleared only when every person in it is cleared. If consent is withdrawn or expires, the affected photos go back to “Do not use” automatically.
The reports themselves
- Students-by-programme summary: averages and counts from the progress reports, per programme, with the option to compare against the previous period of the same length.
- Story report: a numbered, dated document built from the fields you have marked as suitable for stories. It shows starting figures against current ones and includes only students whose consent is current on the day it’s generated. It uses public aliases, never real names, and ends with a consent register.
- Funder evidence pack: pick the funder and the dates, and it lists the enrolments they funded, students served by type, outcomes, the programmes with their B-BBEE category, and the donations received for those programmes.
Across all of these, you set a smallest group size once (five by default). Below it, figures are withheld so that no child can be identified by elimination.
If a funder needs B-BBEE evidence, you can switch on an optional population-group field for students. It stays off unless you turn it on, only full-access staff see it, and funder reports show it only as totals, never beside a name, with small groups hidden. Kaycie doesn’t produce B-BBEE certificates or affidavits, so SED paperwork stays with you, your verifier and your accountant.
Programmes and linked donations are in every package. Student records, consent, progress and story reports, spending, the budget and the media library are part of Plus. You can see how the pieces fit together on the features page.
Frequently asked questions
How many South African companies expect an impact report?
In Trialogue’s 2025 State of CSI research, 71% of the 70 companies surveyed expected a report on the impact of their donations, and 64% of the 110 non-profits surveyed provided one.
What is the difference between an output and an outcome?
An output is what you delivered, such as sessions run or learners enrolled. An outcome is what changed for people, such as improved reading or finding a job. Outcomes need a starting measure to compare against.
How long should an impact report be?
There is no fixed length. Keep it as short as the funder’s template allows, with clear figures that match your financial report and one or two consented stories.
Can we use children’s photos and names in a funder report?
Only with recorded consent from a parent or guardian, and it is safer to use an alias rather than a real name in anything that leaves the organisation. Check your own data protection policy and get advice if you are unsure.
What B-BBEE evidence might a corporate funder ask for?
The B-BBEE Commission’s guidance mentions your B-BBEE certificate or sworn affidavit and an acknowledgement of the contribution. Their verifier may want more, so ask the funder early and involve your accountant.
Does Kaycie write the impact report for us?
No. It collects enrolments, progress, money, consent and photos as you work, and produces summaries, story reports and a funder evidence pack. Your team still writes the narrative and decides what to say.
Sources
- Trialogue Knowledge Hub, State of CSI in South Africa (Handbook 2025, published December 2025).
- Trialogue, R13bn CSI spend signals stability in a tough economy in 2025 (2026).
- B-BBEE Commission, Educational material: Socio-Economic Development (2024).
- Wayne van Zijl, The Conversation, Nonprofits spend too much time reporting to funders: a single universal template could help (8 September 2026).