Social Media Strategy The Non-Profit’s Guide to Turning Research Into 12 Usable Formats Mohamed Hamad June 29, 2026 » Blog » The Non-Profit’s Guide to Turning Research Into 12 Usable Formats The Non-Profit's Guide to Turning Research Into 12 Usable Formats - Table of Contents A report no one reads breaks a promise to the people in it The proof: one body of research, rebuilt for frontline caseworkers One report holds at least 12 formats. Here's how to pull them. Tier 4: Distribution formats that meet people where they are LinkedIn and Instagram want different cuts of the same truth If an AI can't read your research, neither can your future supporters Distribution belongs in the research budget, not next to it Eighty-four people sat down and told a researcher about problems an organization had been living with for more than a decade. They gave their time, and many of them gave painful stories. By the usual odds, all of that would have ended up in a long technical report that leadership accepted and almost nobody opened again. It went differently. Because the findings were written so people could see themselves in them, 300 staff across the organization actually read it. Doaa Abou Hussein, Principal Consultant at Kindred Purpose, shared this turning point during a recent With Wunder Webinar. For her, it points to a truth she has spent more than a decade refining: purpose-driven organizations have to change how they hand their research back to the people it’s for. She still remembers what happened after that report landed: “One by one, people were coming to me and saying, ‘Thank you. Thank you for sharing my story.'” The distance between those two outcomes is almost never about the quality of the research. It’s about format, and as Doaa argues, getting the format right is a question of whether you’ve honored what the community handed you. A report no one reads breaks a promise to the people in it Doaa has worked both sides of the report: the side that commissions them and the side that writes them. She describes the failure mode bluntly: “So much research is done, but then it just sits there and it’s forgotten and it collects dust and maybe somebody skimmed it once, then it’s not used again.” The reflex in a lot of organizations is to treat the polished 50-page document as the deliverable and everything shorter as optional marketing. Doaa flips that. Translating findings into usable formats, she says, “is not embellishment. It’s doing justice to the questions that you’ve asked, and it’s honoring the stories that you’ve just heard. Because if you’re not conveying those stories clearly and accessibly and in a way that people will want to engage with them, those stories are not actually going to drive change.” The stakes follow from who paid for the research. Communities spent time and trust on it, and staff spent months on design and analysis, so the value isn’t in how rigorous the document is. It’s in whether anyone can use it, which is itself an ethical obligation, not a nice-to-have. As Doaa puts it, “It doesn’t matter how rigorous it is. If it’s forgotten, it means nothing.” The proof: one body of research, rebuilt for frontline caseworkers Kindred Purpose was hired to produce a deep body of research on supporting newcomer women survivors of gender-based violence. The default outcome would have been a long technical report aimed at leadership. Instead, the team translated the same evidence into a plain-language white paper series written at a Grade 3-5 reading level, built specifically for the frontline caseworkers doing the work, many of whom were newcomers themselves. The depth and the evidence base stayed intact; only the format changed to match the people who needed it. The materials became ongoing training and reference tools, woven into how staff actually did their jobs. That is the framework in motion: identical data, entirely different outcomes, decided strictly by format. Here is how to execute it systematically. And the relief for a stretched comms team is that none of it means writing twelve things from scratch. You’re extracting formats from one body of work, not inventing a dozen new ones. One report holds at least 12 formats. Here’s how to pull them. Think of a single research project as raw material you can cut twelve ways, moving from the most complete artifact to the most shareable. Tier 1: Core formats for decision-makers The full report, methodology included. Doaa keeps the methodology even in accessible versions: “I think people deserve to know how this report was created and how the research was done.” The executive summary or briefing note, which is often the only thing decision-makers ever touch: “Here are your key takeaways, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Here are your key recommended next steps.” The modular policy brief, a standalone table of takeaways and recommendations that links straight into the relevant section of the full report, so an interested reader jumps to the detail instead of crawling through a table of contents. Tier 2: Tactical tools for frontline teams Plain-language guides and tools pitched at the reading level of the actual end user, the way the gender-based-violence series was built for frontline caseworkers. Role-specific two-pagers, so a settlement worker, a gender-based-violence caseworker, and a healthcare provider each get the version that speaks to their reality instead of one report aimed at no one. Infographics that carry the key stats and recommendations on their own. Tier 3: Story-driven formats for the community Case studies that let community members see themselves reflected, the effect that moved 300 staff to read a single piece of research. An article or blog series that breaks the findings into a sequence built around one story or insight at a time, which improves how much people actually read and remember. Community-member profiles that put a face and a reason behind the numbers. Tier 4: Distribution formats that meet people where they are LinkedIn posts for funders, peers, and decision-makers. Instagram content for reach and human connection. A newsletter and email feature that recaps the findings and links back to the full work, landing the research in inboxes rather than leaving people to go hunting for it. LinkedIn and Instagram want different cuts of the same truth Posting the identical block of text to every channel falls flat, because each platform asks for a different cut of the same research. LinkedIn rewards raw evidence and professional insight; Instagram demands human narrative and visual impact. As Doaa puts it, “What you post on LinkedIn might be slightly different content than what you post on Instagram, and that engagement has to be a little bit different.” Profiling a real community member earns its place here for a reason beyond reach. It shows your audience not only the finding but the reason your organization does the work at all, which is exactly the kind of evidence that builds standing in the sector. If an AI can’t read your research, neither can your future supporters Every accessible piece you publish widens the path back to the issue itself. “The more you post, the more it’s actually going to up your SEO and the visibility that you get,” Doaa says. “If you take that same content and repackage it into a blog post for your website, that ups your SEO.” The reach compounds across channels: LinkedIn articles and public web pages are indexed directly into search engines, which makes your findings discoverable by both people and machines. The 2026 stakes are sharper than search rankings. More and more people put their questions to ChatGPT and Gemini, and those models can only surface what they can crawl. Research locked inside an un-indexed PDF attachment is invisible to them, which means your organization’s hard-won expertise never enters the answer. The same findings, published openly across formats, make it likelier that an AI names your work and the community behind it when someone asks about the issue you’ve spent years on. Distribution belongs in the research budget, not next to it When distribution gets treated as a separate marketing line competing against research, it loses every time, which is precisely backward. Getting findings to the people who need them is the part of the research budget that decides whether the research does anything at all. Doaa ties this straight to the currencies non-profits actually run on, legitimacy and funding: “The more you’re able to demonstrate that on an ongoing basis, and it’s backed by solid research but presented accessibly, your legitimacy and people’s desire to support your mission is going to go through the roof.” Research that sits on a shelf wastes the community’s investment of time and trust, while research that reaches its audience builds the widespread credibility that justifies the next grant. The needle only moves when someone reads it Doaa draws the line clearly during the With Wunder Webinar: “The point of good research is to move the needle. If you’re really doing that to serve communities, it has to move the needle.” Completing the document was never the finish line, because the work only honours the people who built it once someone puts it to use. Twelve formats, mobilized from one report, is how you give those findings, and the community inside them, a real chance to be heard. import { injectHsEmbed } from ‘https://thirdwunder.com/wp-content/plugins/hubspot-content-embed/build/hsEmbedInjector.js’; const elementId = “hs-embed-client-inject-208848867934-9197”; const embedDomain = “https://21237790.hs-sites.com/_hcms/embed/208848867934”; const embedId = 208848867934; const options = { sendCurrentUTKAsParam: true }; injectHsEmbed(embedId, embedDomain, elementId, options).catch((err) => { // If the embed fails for some reason, just completely hide it console.error(‘HubSpot Content embed injection error:’, err); document.getElementById(elementId).style.height = 0; document.getElementById(elementId).style.minHeight = 0; }) Other articles you might like Why Your AI Content Strategy Depends on Infrastructure, Not Prompts Mohamed Hamad June 22, 2026 The Organizations Making Pride Real All Year Round Elizabeth Holloway June 15, 2026 Research That Sits on a Shelf Fails the Communities It Studied Elizabeth Holloway June 8, 2026 Where Non-Profit Teams Should Start with AI Adoption Elizabeth Holloway June 1, 2026 Videos you might be interested in Stop Writing Reports No One Uses Scaling SEO & Content with AI Earning Attention Through Human-Centred Video Storytelling About Us Our Work Our Expertise Digital Marketing & Communications Branding Web Design & Development HubSpot CRM WunderWorks Wunder LandBlog Webinars Videos Privacy Settings Search this website