Stop Writing Reports No One Uses

The TL;DR

In this With Wunder Webinar, Doaa Abou Hussein (CEO, Kindred Purpose Consultants) and Mohamed Hamad (Founder, Third Wunder) tackle a costly problem in the nonprofit and social impact sector: rigorous research that never gets used because it’s written for the wrong audience in the wrong format.

The big takeaways:

• A dense report is a design failure, not proof of quality. Rigour means nothing if the people who need the findings can’t understand them. Ask “Who is this for?” and “How will this change things?” before you start the research, not after.
• Design for real users, not an imagined academic reader. Frontline workers, community members, and decision-makers each need different formats. Splitting findings into a series, using plain language (sometimes a grade 3-5 level), and adding visuals dramatically increases uptake.
• Make findings actionable and visible. Put insights and next steps up front (executive summaries, briefing notes, tables), not buried on page 47. Often the most useful output isn’t a report at all, but a tool, guide, or infographic.
• Repurpose research for reach. Turning findings into blogs, LinkedIn posts, and case studies boosts SEO, AI search visibility, funder confidence, and community trust.

Bottom line: The value of research isn’t in the length of the report. It’s in what it enables people to do.

Webinar Transcript

Mohamed Hamad: Good morning everybody. How’s everybody doing today? I’ve got with me Doaa Abou Hussein from Kindred Purpose. She is the principal consultant of Kindred Purpose, a women-led social enterprise specializing in research and evaluation for purpose-driven organizations. Today we’re going to be talking about reports. Big reports that either live somewhere where, after you create them, nobody knows what to do with them, or after people read them, they’re forgotten. So today we’re going to be talking about how to create reports that people will use — that are actionable, functional, institutionalized, and operationalized. Doaa, tell us a little bit more about Kindred Purpose and how you got into this.

Doaa Abou Hussein: Thank you for having me. This is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart because I spend a good amount of my life writing reports and products to present research. I’ve actually been on both sides of reports. I’ve been on the side that commissions reports and I’ve been on the side that writes reports. I’ve just seen way too many reports go to waste. You see 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.

Before starting Kindred Purpose, I spent 11 years in the federal government. Over there I was writing reports, I was reading reports from different stakeholders, all that kind of stuff. But a lot of the stuff that we’re seeing is way too dense and way too long and unusable. There’s another layer of analysis that I have to do to figure out what it’s saying. And if the research isn’t helping me, it’s not helping the decision makers, it’s not helping those around me. So when we started Kindred Purpose, we were very adamant that the research that we do — we are a very research-focused firm — has to be useful. It’s not research that is just done for the sake of research. We’re not in academia here. We’re doing research that moves the needle. We’re doing research that helps change the actual reality for communities. That’s what I love about this kind of work. We’re seeing the needle move, we’re seeing actual action, we’re seeing actual impact. That’s my why. I love to serve communities and I serve communities through research.

Mohamed: Absolutely. At Third Wunder we work with a lot of nonprofits in the philanthropic sector and we come across a lot of reports. We always find that they’re developed and created for a very specific audience — the primary reader of the report. But considering that a report will usually have multiple stakeholders from different lenses looking at the data and the information, how do you go about synthesizing reports so that it’s easier for different people to look at the same information and the same data, but make it useful for them?

Doaa: You have to think about who your audience is before you start your research. Is this for decision makers? If it’s for decision makers, we need to be asking a lot of questions about which actions would potentially be taken. What’s the real issue here? How can we unpack the issue? How can we communicate why this issue matters? What are the issues that decision makers aren’t aware of and how do we bring those to the forefront? And not just bring them to the forefront — we don’t just want to list findings. We want to give decision makers actual next steps, actual recommendations that are practical and tailored to them. If you’re doing research for decision makers, it’s about helping them understand the issue in a very concise way but in a very impactful way. Then giving them the next step, because they don’t have the time to go and read a 50-page report to find the next step. The next step has to be right there, hand in hand — a little bit of context as to why you’re giving the recommendation, and right next to it, that recommendation, that next step, that actionable insight.

When we’re talking about a different audience, like a community — how are they going to interact with that research? Do they want to see their stories reflected? Do they want to see stats or stories or a mix of both? And what’s the best format? Maybe in that situation they don’t care as much about the recommendations as they do care about seeing themselves reflected back in what you’ve produced. So things like case studies, or a series that presents different stories and how this actually leads to an insight that’s driving change — you can present it in so many different ways that click for communities.

If we’re talking about frontline workers, maybe their recommendations have to be different than the recommendations that go to decision makers. And what they want to know and the depth of knowledge they might want is going to be very different. It also depends on the type of frontline worker you’re presenting to. At Kindred Purpose, we work with a lot of organizations that work directly with newcomers, and many of these organizations — settlement organizations — often employ newcomers themselves. So when we’re talking about presenting something for newcomers or for frontline workers serving newcomers, we need to adjust the whole language and setup so that it’s actually usable. The plain language level — we’re not talking university-level language. We might need to take this down to a grade three to five level so it’s actually accessible and usable. So it’s like taking all of this dense research, but packaging it in a way that will be legible and usable and insightful for that right audience.

Even for frontline workers, we have to think about what’s their role. They’re all diverse. Can we segment this? If it’s a frontline worker in a settlement organization versus a gender-based violence organization versus healthcare, can we create different pieces that directly resonate for them and showcase why it matters for them? Maybe instead of a 50-page report, you’ve got three two-pagers that are presented visually as an infographic and really convey the information very effectively. All these different stakeholders — you really have to think about how they’ll use it and go from there.

Mohamed: The biggest issue with creating really large reports is that it’s not always accessible. And the accessibility part of it is the most important part — how do different types of people or different groupings of people consume content or understand it? Some people like to read long reports, some people like to skim. Some people are visual. Some people like short-form summaries. Some people like case studies and stories. Repackaging all of that, but also keeping the core of the report and the data and the synthesized research, is pretty important. How do you work with the organization to really understand all of these different audiences and who you’re writing for?

Doaa: Before we ever start the research, we always sit down with the organization and we ask who’s going to be reading this. Because that reader — that’s everything. It defines how you shape your research, it defines your research methodology, it defines how you write the product, it defines the different formats.

And I’m going to let you in on a little secret: traditional reports may not be the way to go. You may not actually end up needing them. They may not be the right format for your audience. It might be unnecessary. Like that depth of writing — going 50 to 100 pages — if it sits on a shelf, does that even do justice to the work that’s been done, or the research, or the fact that you’ve gone into communities and asked questions? If it’s forgotten, it means nothing. It doesn’t matter how rigorous it is. So we always have a conversation about who the ultimate reader or user will be.

Then we ask why this matters to them, or why they’ve even commissioned this research. Because there’s usually another layer to their why. Is it because they don’t understand a certain issue and they’re trying to unpack it a little bit more and figure out how it’s going to shape their programs? Is it because they’re trying to get actual insights that change how their staff work with different vulnerable communities? Because that is what’s going to inform how we do the research and then the product from it.

Let’s say they want insights that drive how their staff work with vulnerable populations. That doesn’t necessarily have to be a report. That can be a tool or a series of tools or a series of guides or whatever it is. You can always add a little bit of context in the beginning of tools to convey the issue itself and the context. But that product is not a report — that product is a tool or a guide or something useful to that audience.

If we’re talking about unpacking an issue, and it’s at the decision-making level, and they’re trying to get into a new community they haven’t served before and they really want to understand the barriers — then maybe a report is a good format. They want that full story, all of that nuance. But you always need to add a summary on top of it, like an executive summary or a briefing note. Think about a briefing note for decision makers: here are your key takeaways, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Here are your key recommended next steps, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It could even be a table that, on its own, takes a really substantial report and all of a sudden makes it very readable.

Here’s another trick: you can always link between that table and the part of the report itself that unpacks that issue a little bit more. I love that because if they’re really interested in unpacking it, they’ll go to it. They don’t have to look for it, they don’t have to go through a table of contents. And that also makes reports even more accessible and usable for the audience you want to work with.

Mohamed: Everything’s pretty much digital these days. A lot of the reports that do get created are in PDF format or web format or get digested in different ways. Each of these formats has its own perspective and its own nuance and structure. How do you make this content searchable online — if it is going to be accessible to everybody — and consumable in a format that’s easy to understand? Going back to the beginning: when you’re creating the research, when you’re going through the research, how do you think about the end product from the beginning? And what are the types of questions you lead with when you’re talking to organizations?

Doaa: You always have to think about the end product from before you start, because that is completely contingent on the audience. Let’s say the audience is decision makers trying to understand an issue. Then we need to really unpack that issue. The questions that we’re asking in the research have to get at the why and who else has done this and what has worked for other people and what hasn’t worked — the barriers, the challenges, the risks. If the audience is decision makers, the questions you ask have to really unpack that issue.

Let’s say your audience is communities and they want to understand why a solution maybe isn’t working. You start to ask different questions. Let’s say it was some kind of intervention and you need to talk to communities and you want to make sure that they’re going to be reflected back. Your questions are trying to understand each individual person or each individual organization’s story. Your questions are different than if you’re just trying to understand an issue or understanding why something has been a specific challenge for, or completely inaccessible to, a certain group of people.

Your product for that audience isn’t necessarily just a dense report. Maybe it’s a report and case studies that you can pull up, or it’s a series of case studies, or it’s a series of stories that you’re posting. When you’re talking about that digital piece, that’s where posting that series comes in — maybe it’s a series of blogs or articles or whatever. There are so many different formats to share these insights back with communities. You have to really think about how you’re taking the questions you’ve asked and then packaging up the information so that people will also want to engage with this.

And it’s 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. Communities are not actually going to see themselves reflected in what you’ve created. Always having that clear linkage is very important. And I always say that there’s a very significant ethical responsibility when you’re doing research and going into communities, to accurately convey people’s stories.

Sometimes you’re going to have to aggregate stories here and there. But you want to make sure people will see this and be able to say, yes, I can see how my story is reflected here. I know that this has conveyed the challenge that I’m experiencing.

One example I can give you firsthand: I’d gone into an organization that had very significant issues for 10 to 14 years. I went and interviewed 84 people, did a survey, all of that. The report was a dense report, but it had an executive summary that summarized the key insights and the recommendations for decision makers. But 300 people read that report across the organization. That was really huge for me because they all saw themselves reflected in it. One by one, people were coming to me and saying, “Thank you. Thank you for sharing my story.” When we’re talking about research with purpose, research has to convey stories accurately, clearly, accessibly. If it’s not, you’ve missed the point.

Mohamed: This comes to the question of how do you work with the pushback from people who want to have very academic and rigorous reports? Because it’s been part of the institution and there’s an institutionalized view on how reports should be structured and how they should read. I see a lot of that where there are reports that need to be in a very specific format, but that also alienates a lot of people. Because of the Ask, and the legacy of the Ask as well.

Doaa: In my experience, I’m actually seeing a lot more organizations move away from that style, even within government, because they’re starting to see that those hundred-page evaluation reports are never being used again. What people are actually using is that little summary that has the recommendations. I’ve been seeing that shift for the past decade.

But for those that still want those very traditional academic types of reports — sure. There’s a way you can add the usability aspect. Instead of just structuring it as dense paragraph after paragraph, starting with your introduction, then your methodology, then all of that — no matter what, if I am writing a traditional type of report, I am adding in that methodology. I think people deserve to know how this report was created and how the research was done.

But I’m always trying to use plain language, because your audience, no matter who it might be, may not be as familiar with the subject matter as the researcher or the people who commissioned this research. So you always want to make sure: if this was handed off to somebody who’s completely brand new to the topic, do they get an explanation of what these terms are? Is there a glossary? Is there something that puts the insights up front? Can you create a summary section at the beginning? Academic papers often have an abstract or a summary at the beginning. Can we shape that into something really engaging? Or can we add complementary pieces to the final product?

Sure, we’ve created this more technical or academic type of report. Can we tack on an infographic summary? Can we tack on an executive summary? Can we tack on something that summarizes the recommendations — the key insights and the recommendations? Because that takes it from a report you’re going to have to sit down for a whole afternoon to read, and makes it something where you can quickly see those insights. That’s especially important if you expect it to go to diverse audiences.

A lot of it is just having these conversations with organizations and asking them how they expect these to be used and who’s going to see it. Is it just going to a funder, or is it also going to be seen by communities, also going to be seen by their own decision makers? And how can we tailor the final products to each of these final users?

Mohamed: When it comes to repurposing the content within a report, do you see things like social media playing a role? You mentioned articles and blog posts and variations of the case studies — but do you see social media having an impact, and any other forms of digital marketing? Do those formats resonate with different audiences in different ways than the report itself?

Doaa: Absolutely. I’ve done that myself for a few different organizations. Social media is also fairly diverse. 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. But it can actually increase the accessibility and engagement with the research itself and with your findings.

Certain things will resonate more. Case studies or narratives, or profiling a member of the community — that’s huge, because you’re able to show the visuals and show why a community is struggling. You’re not just showcasing the information or the insights, you’re also reinforcing to your audience on social media why your organization is doing the work that it’s doing. That’s a very big deal because it increases your legitimacy. It gives them a rationale for the direction that you’re going in, and it helps them engage with your mission.

If we talk about organizations in the nonprofit space, funding is a really big thing, and proof of impact is a really big thing. 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. I want really good causes to have all the funding and all the backing and all the community support they can get. So yes, by all means, take those insights, repackage them and let the world see this.

Mohamed: Absolutely. Making sure that people in all different spaces get to see the research and the missions is really key. And one of the things that is often overlooked is social media, email marketing, writing content beyond the report itself — and as you mentioned, tools, infographics, all of that. The richness of the information there, it’s a shame to have it siloed in a PDF that gets passed around in email and then gets lost in your shared drive somewhere.

Doaa: Exactly. You mentioned digital engagement and SEO. The more you post, the more it’s actually going to up your SEO and the visibility that you get. If you take that same content and repackage it into a blog post for your website, that ups your SEO — you’re posting, there’s engagement, you can share it with your newsletter audience, and that’s really going to grow your audience. Tack on all the LinkedIn content. LinkedIn is indexed to Google now, and I believe Instagram is too. Everything that you’re posting there does also increase your visibility. So why just create research that sits on a shelf, when it can completely raise awareness for the issue that you’re addressing and help broaden the community that’s backing this issue with you?

Mohamed: That is a very underlooked thing, especially now with search being augmented and enhanced with AI. People are asking more and more nuanced questions about specific topics. Having the richness of the data in different formats enriches whatever it is. When people ask a large language model like ChatGPT or Gemini very nuanced questions, having that content out there in different formats allows an AI to give back that nuanced answer — and also bring up the research and bring up who commissioned it and the report itself.

I’m going to say that if anybody’s got any questions for Doaa, we are towards the end of this webinar. This has been a very interesting conversation. I am fully behind you on being able to repurpose and restructure content for a digital audience. It’s one of those things I find more and more important as people are consuming content in different ways, wanting more information and visibility over the research that changes their lives and changes their lived experience — and who want to know that people out there in the social goods sphere and in the nonprofit space are looking out for them, that something is happening. It’s very empowering to know that’s out there and to have a bit of agency to understand how these things are happening.

Doaa: I also want to add that good research, rigorous research, does not have to be a technical product or published in an academic journal for it to be good research. 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. So making sure it’s usable in a way that’s actually going to move the needle — that’s what matters more than anything.

Mohamed: Absolutely. We are at about time. I want to thank you again Doaa for joining us today and giving us your insights and your thoughts on how to create research that people will use. It is more important than ever, especially these days, for people to know how their lives are changing and who are the good people behind the work that changes their lives. If you want to connect with Doaa, I’m throwing in her LinkedIn right there. If you want to follow her or connect to her or reach out to her and Kindred Purpose. At the end of this session we’re going to send out an email with a checklist. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the checklist, Doaa?

Doaa: The checklist walks you through what to consider before you start doing the research and then what to consider after you finish the research and you’re preparing the product. You’ll see that even before you start the research, thinking a