Setting a reporting rhythm for your project

Why does a project need a reporting rhythm?

Without a rhythm, reporting becomes a panic at the end of each period. Staff search old messages, numbers do not match, and the donor receives a report that nobody on the team has read in full.

INTRAC, a centre for civil society learning, explains that organisations often produce many kinds of report during a project, so M&E teams commonly build a reporting plan that shows which reports are needed, when and why. A reporting rhythm is simply that plan, kept visible and followed.

Reports are not a goal on their own. INTRAC says they are a means to other purposes: managing the project, sharing learning, showing accountability to different stakeholders and recording recommendations so they can be tracked.

What reports does a project usually need?

INTRAC notes that progress reports can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, twice a year or yearly. Weekly or monthly reports mainly describe activities and finances against plans and budgets. Quarterly, half-yearly and annual reports are more analytical. They describe progress with evidence, achievements, failures, lessons and recommendations.

Your grant agreement sets the donor schedule. Add internal reports only where someone will read and act on them.

How do you build a reporting calendar in five steps?

1. List every report you owe. Read the grant agreement and any partner agreements. Include internal reports.
2. Name the reader and purpose for each. If you cannot say who uses a report, question it.
3. Work backwards from each deadline. Put the donor date on a calendar, then set an internal sign-off date, a draft date and a data cut-off date. Give partners and field teams earlier dates than your own.
4. Assign owners. One owner per report, plus contributors with their own deadlines.
5. Fix the templates. Use the same headings every cycle so people know what to bring. Our guide to writing a clear project report gives a simple structure.

A backwards calendar for a quarterly donor report might look like this: data cut-off on day 1 after the quarter ends, partner inputs by day 5, draft by day 10, internal review by day 14, and submission well before the donor deadline.

How do you collect the data once?

Many reporting problems come from asking the same question many times. Keep one tracker with activities, participant numbers, expenditure and indicator values. Update it weekly. When a report is due, you pull from the tracker rather than starting from zero.

Good meeting notes help here. If your team records decisions, risks and changes at the time, your report writes itself more easily. See our guide to meeting notes that make reporting easier.

What should you avoid when reporting progress?

INTRAC points out a common confusion: staff report both the activities done in a period and the changes that resulted in that period. But changes may appear long after the activity, and a change seen this quarter may come from earlier work. Its advice is to record changes as they are identified and explain how they came about. If a change continues into the next period, it is fine to describe it again.

In practice:

• Report activities and outputs by the period in which they happened.
• Report changes when you identify them, with evidence and how they came about.
• Keep these in separate sections, so readers do not mix them up.

How do you keep the rhythm in difficult settings?

In Myanmar, access limits, power cuts and weak internet can break a calendar. Build slack into internal deadlines. Let field staff submit short structured updates by message instead of long documents. Agree one language for the final report and translate only what you must. If the donor deadline cannot be met, tell the donor early and in writing.

What should you review each year?

Once or twice a year, ask whether each report is still useful. Who read it? What decision did it support? If a report is not used, change its frequency or remove it. A reporting rhythm should serve the team, not the other way around.

How EMPO can help

EMPO is a reliable, trusted training and consultancy provider and one of Myanmar's leading names in practical NGO training, with 1,200+ people trained and 15 partner organisations. We are based in Yangon, work in English and Burmese, and train online and in person across Myanmar. We run report writing and project management training, and can tailor a session to your team's reporting needs. See our training services or contact us.

Sources

• Reporting — INTRAC (Peter Allen), 2017