Over the past six years, I’ve had the pleasure of running numerous donor surveys for United Ways around the country. Donor surveys are some of my favorite to run, as I truly believe that there is so much valuable information that can be gathered from donors and be used to guide a United Way as they plan for the future and what is best for their community.

One question that we ask on every donor survey, has always shocked me with the results. The question is this: “Do you feel like you understand the impact your contribution to United Way has made in your community?”

You may be thinking, “Well, of course donors understand our impact, that is why they give to us!” But that is where you may be wrong. Based on our research, most United Way’s have between 70% - 73% of their donors saying that they do understand the impact of their contribution. Which sounds good, until you realize that means over one quarter of donors do NOT understand the impact of their contribution. 

This statistic can be hard to hear. We all know how hard United Ways work to get the message out there about the good work that is being done. And to hear that a portion of your own donors don’t understand what it is that you do can be disheartening. But don’t lose hope. While there is no way that you will ever get everyone to understand your impact, there are things you can start doing now to help people understand. And one of the easiest ways to help people (specifically donors) understand what it is your United Way does is through I-A-R.

I-A-R is our formula for communicating impact. With this formula, you will be able to share your impact with donors in a couple of sentences that will be easy for them to remember.

I stands for issue. You need to first tell your donors what issue (or issues) you are working on. We recommend only talking about one issue at a time if you have multiple issues you are working on. So, for example, let’s say your United Way runs Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Your issue would be early childhood literacy.

A stands for actions. Once your donor knows the issue you are working on, in this example early childhood literacy, then you need to tell them what you are doing to impact that issue. In this example, the action you are taking to improve early childhood literacy is through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which provides books to children every month from birth to five years old.

R stands for results. After you tell your donors what actions you are taking to impact the issue, you need to tell them what the results of that action are. This can be done through either stories of those impacted or statistics. Ideally, you would have one of both. So, for our example, we would say that the results are that 500 children received books.

When you put it all together you end up with a clear, and short, explanation of what your United Way’s impact is, in a way that donors will remember. If your United Way has multiple issues that you are impacting, you can do this for each issue and then cater the issue you talk about to the person you’re talking to.

Of course, this formula works best when you only have one issue at your United Way that you are focusing on. That is what Issue Focused United Ways do. They first select one issue to focus on, then they figure out how they are going to impact that issue, and then they raise the money to do it. When a United Way only has one issue, the messaging is that much clearer.

I would encourage everyone to use I-A-R to create a couple sentence explainer on the impact your United Way is creating. Your United Way is doing amazing work for the community, make sure your donors know it!