Whether the currency is time or money, it’s essential for anyone who is engaging supporters, donors or volunteers to be able to illustrate the social impact of their campaign.

While debate might always rage as to how best to show off the social return on any cause investment, over at Cone Inc. the team has published a list that neatly summarizes six types of SROI reporting. The list is a great entry point for newbies who are planning and budgeting for an upcoming cause marketing, employee volunteering, or crowdsourced fundraising campaign.

The reporting types include:

• Ongoing Tracking – Where results are continuously updated in real time
• Interactive Impact Calculator – Where impact is shown through an interactive calculator
• Storytelling – Where impact is communicated by sharing personal stories of people who were affected by the issue and helped by the program
• Customized Mapping – A customized map shows consumer impact – locally or globally
• Mosaic – Consumer effort (making a donation, signing a pledge) helps complete a visual mosaic representing the campaign
• Social Math – Potential consumer impact is demonstrated through a simple, clear (often one-to-one) equation

What I like most of all is that the list makes impact reporting sound doable… not something far off, abstract, or difficult to visualize.

VolunteerMatch, for example, uses four of the six methods in sharing our successes. We’re doing ongoing tracking on our About Page, which update in real time. We have stories of volunteers and nonprofits. Though our Live Map we’re showcasing real local and national impact as it happens. And we use a custom “social equation” in our Annual Report — we call it our SROI — to demonstrate our annual social impact.

Come to think of it, our hosted solutions for VolunteerMatch Solutions corporate clients also have dynamic “thermometers” on volunteer dashboards — essentially, an interactive impact calculator. Which makes five ways VolunteerMatch is reporting on social impact.

Again, it’s a great list to get you started with your planning. But Cone advises managers not to forge that this is only part of the story of the program. As they put, these are all outputs (numbers and data), not outcomes (real changes in the world).  Most likely, there’s still some story left to tell.

What are you reporting for your campaigns? Share it with us.