Bringing Data to Life: Using Video for Impact Reporting.

It’s vital for organizations to communicate their impact to their community, and most often, data alone doesn’t paint the whole picture. While your internal team might get excited about the numbers, charts, and metrics, it can be hard for an outside audience to derive meaningful insights from it all. How do you take something abstract and make it human?

That’s where video comes in.

By creating compelling designs to contextualize information, viewers are left with a more well-rounded understanding of the data, allowing them to feel emotionally connected to your organization's impact report. If your organization served 5,000 families over the past year, that number may not be immediately striking to viewers. However, showing a map with each family appearing as a pin gives your audience a better understanding of just how significant that impact is.

Another approach is to incorporate impact testimonials and relevant b-roll. If your organization has helped increase college enrollment by 20% over last year’s stats, that’s very impressive on paper. Pairing that data point with footage of first-generation college students thriving on their school’s campus, followed by a quick soundbite from one of those students explaining how their college education has changed the trajectory of their life, elicits even more powerful responses from your audience.

Here’s our approach to data-driven report videos:

• Treat the data like a character in a story.

  Build a narrative around the numbers that takes viewers on an emotional journey. Instead of simply saying $25,000 was raised, explain the initial problem you were trying to solve, how you approached the solution, and the impact you’ll be able to make with the funds. This information provides the necessary context for your audience to fully understand the how and why behind your efforts and impact.

  
  

• Design the video so viewers can easily absorb complex information.

  Video is the perfect medium for breaking down complicated or nuanced concepts. Graphic visuals such as illustrations, charts, and maps can provide at-a-glance context, allowing viewers to better relate to the data. Visual metaphors can also help—for example, instead of saying you provided 6,000 meals to your community, you could say you filled 1,000 refrigerators, creating a memorable visual.

  
  

• Fine-tune the tone to match both your brand and the prospective audience.

  It’s important to know who’s speaking and who’s listening, as that heavily informs the tone. If your audience consists of everyday people, you want to avoid technical jargon to ensure things are easy to understand. If most viewers will be from your industry, you can save time by using widely accepted jargon, acronyms, and other industry-specific terms. When speaking to policymakers, formality and professionalism might be more important. Keeping all that in mind, your organization should still stay true to its own voice, values, and brand.

Stakeholders need to see measurable results, but data can be dry and difficult to digest. Take your spreadsheet to the screen and make data-driven videos that bridge the gap between analytics and human emotion.

When done well, your annual report videos aren’t just watched, but felt—effectively communicating your impact and inspiring viewers.