Nonprofit Grant Reporting Tips: Understanding Activity vs. Outcome Metrics

If your organization relies on grant funding, you know how important it is to collect data for your grant reports and proposals. But with all the other tasks on your plate, focusing on metrics can often slip through the cracks.

Tracking and evaluating your organization’s impact requires more than just counting heads or dollars raised—it involves a thoughtful approach to data that connects what you're doing to why it matters. When we talk with nonprofits about reporting to grantmakers, we often start by breaking down activity metrics and outcome metrics.

Understanding these two types of metrics can help you collect them more effectively. That makes grant reporting even easier, and as an added bonus, can help you refine and improve your internal processes.

In this article, we’ll break down the difference between these types of metrics, provide an example of a nonprofit and how they track metrics, and share some tips for building a reliable, process-oriented data tracking system.

What Are Activity and Outcome Metrics?

You’ve probably heard these terms before, but let’s revisit what they mean in a practical sense:

Activity Metrics answer the question: What did we do?

These are often quantitative and focus on the actions your organization takes—such as how many people attended a class, how many applications were processed, or how many partnerships were formed.

Outcome Metrics ask: Why did we do it? What was achieved?

These measure your progress toward mission-driven goals and long-term impact. They might include job placements, salary improvements, or qualitative feedback from participants.

While activity metrics are about implementation, outcome metrics are about impact. Both are essential—but they serve different purposes and speak to different audiences.

A Sample Nonprofit: Building the Future, Inc.

Let’s consider an example organization: Building the Future, Inc. Their mission is to empower women and create equal opportunities in the skilled trades. They accomplish that mission through an adult apprenticeship program. Participants apply, go through orientation and training, and ideally secure a job in a skilled trade.

This program offers a clear structure for tracking both activity and outcome metrics.

Sample Activity Metrics:

• Number of applications received and reviewed
• Acceptance and rejection rates
• Number of days required to process applications
• Number of courses held
• Number of employer partnerships formed

Sample Outcome Metrics:

• Number of participants who complete the program
• Job placement rates within 6 months
• Percentage of graduates earning above median wage in their field
• Participant satisfaction and testimonials

It’s important for Building the Future to track both types of metrics to secure funding and understand the effectiveness of their programming. And while it’s important to track both metrics, it’s also important to understand who is going to be interested in each piece of data.

Grantmakers may care about how many classes you run, but they also want to know if the program accomplished its goal of securing meaningful employment. Meanwhile, individual donors may be more concerned with hearing testimonials from program participants as they consider making another donation.

And of course, Building the Future wants to track how many classes they run, applications they process, and more to determine if they need to increase staffing or otherwise secure additional resources. This helps them ensure their programming is as effective as possible.

What About Output Metrics?

You might also hear about output metrics, which often sit between activity and outcome data. For instance, the number of graduates might be considered an output—it’s the immediate result of your program. Long-term job placement and economic mobility, however, are outcomes.

Especially in the early stages of a program, when longitudinal data isn't yet available, output metrics help bridge the gap between what you did and the impact you’re working toward.

Start With What You Can Control: Process-Oriented Activity Metrics

When you’re just getting started, activity metrics are often the easiest to track—and the ones you have the most control over. But to make them useful, you need a system.

As W. Edwards Deming said: "If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing."

A Simple Framework for Tracking Activity Metrics:

1. Document the process: Write down each step, even if it seems obvious.
2. Identify data collection points: Where can metrics be captured naturally?
3. Test and collect real data: Start with small batches and refine.
4. Analyze your data: Assess your initial data and determine early conclusions.
5. Iterate and refine the process: Where are the bottlenecks? Are you losing participants midstream?
6. Discuss with stakeholders: Make sure everyone is aligned.

Let’s look at the admissions pipeline for the apprenticeship program as an example of a process you can track. Each step is captured below:

Admissions Pipeline:

1. Application is received
2. Eligibility confirmed
3. Interview is scheduled
4. Interview completed
5. Application approved or denied
6. Language choice made for classes
7. Admission decision email sent
8. Registration info sent
9. Registers for orientation
10. Completes orientation
11. Completes first week of class

Keeping track of how many people proceed through each step can be a meaningful data point for grantmakers. But it can also be a way to track if something isn’t working well.

For example, if you notice a significant drop off between the number of applications received and the number of interviews completed, that may indicate a need to build additional capacity in the application review process. Or maybe you’re seeing a significant time delay between applications coming in and interviews being scheduled. That may also point to a need for additional resources.

Trust the Process

Whether you're using a spreadsheet or a dedicated project management tool, visualizing your data pipeline can help your team quickly see where participants are in the process and make sure everyone is on the same page.

In MonkeyPod, you can manage this by creating a Pipeline that captures each step of the process. Pipelines make it easy to see where your constituents are in any process, whether that’s a volunteer onboarding pipeline or an application review process. And because MonkeyPod offers unlimited users with all its subscriptions, you can make sure everyone in your organization is on the same page.

Whatever tool you use, ensure it's accessible to your whole team and built into your day-to-day operations—not tucked away in a forgotten spreadsheet.

Why It Matters

Even if your grantmakers don’t ask for every activity metric, these data points provide context for your outcome data. If fewer people land jobs this year, your activity metrics might reveal a staffing shortage or increased attrition early in the process. That’s valuable not only for internal learning but also for communicating transparently with funders.

And here’s a pro tip: when building your processes, track steps using binary (yes/no) indicators wherever possible. This simplifies analysis and helps create a clear pipeline view. It also reduces ambiguity when assessing the effectiveness of your process.

Final Thoughts

Capturing both activity and outcome metrics isn’t just about meeting grant requirements—it’s about building a smarter, more adaptive organization. By documenting your process and tracking what’s happening at each step, you empower your team to learn, improve, and demonstrate impact more effectively.

If you’re looking for a tool to help you track your constituents, manage your processes, and track your impact, MonkeyPod may be a good fit for you. Schedule a demo with our team to learn more about how our platform can help track impact and outcome metrics.