The Annual Report Process

Comic Relief UK annual monitoring report form: Guidance notes

These guidance notes are designed to support you in completing your annual report. You will also need to refer to your start-up form and your application, as well as your previous annual report (if you are in year 2)to complete this.

The annual report form should be completed after every year of the grant. It is the main way to tell us about your progress. These reports allow you to reflect on your progress and share your learning with us, and we use them to check you’re on track. We also use this information with that from other projects to understand what difference we are making and to help us raise money. It is important that you are open about anything that is not working,including your original plans, so that we can work with you to decide on next steps. We are open to you changing your targets and approach where these changes are based upon your learning and will better help you deliver your outcomes.

The annual report process

When you have completed your form please upload it to GEM. Your grant manager will review this in light of your start-up form.The information will be reviewed to ensure the following.

To check we have the information we need to understand your progress to date and for our marketing and communications needsand that all sections are completed clearly in accordance with guidance notes.
To see if you are broadly on track and where you are not, to understand why and understand your plan to address this.
To ensure you have a sound plan for the next 12 months in light of your overall purpose and targets for the grant.

We may come back to you with questions for clarification, particularly where progress has fallen substantially short of targets for outputs and beneficiary numbers. They may also ask you to revise and re-submit the form where appropriate. We can only release your next payment once the contents of the form have been agreed.

General points to note for completing the form

The form asks you to re-state and review the information from your start-up form. This will allow you and us to review progress against your original plan and you should not change these in any way when you copy them into the form.
Please complete the relevant fields with information from your application/start-up form/previous annual report form where specified.
Most narrative response fields have a maximum word limit. Please adhere to this do not feel you have to fill up the word limit for ever section. We are looking for concise explanations or summaries for each question, to provide the context for the remainder of the report.
Please do not add additional boxes or fields.
Where a number is asked for, please provide a single number only rather than additional words or two separate numbers. If you have multiple beneficiary groups we are still looking for a single total number of beneficiaries for each question field.
The information given on the form should also make sense to a reader who is new to the project.

Guidance by section of the report

Section 1: Reflections on overall progress

This section provides us with an overview of your progress, including your successes and the issues you have faced, what you have learnt and how you are using this learning. This space for you to reflect on your progress and to give context to the rest of the report. It is important that you are open about anything that is not working and where you are falling short of original targets, so that we can understand why and work with you to decide on next steps. We are open to you changing your approach where this is based upon your learning and will better help you deliver your outcomes.

1.1 What has happened this year?(maximum 350 words)

Please provide us with an overview of what has happened overall in the past year of the grant. You can refer to any key achievements and issues from the remainder of the report, whether this relates to outcomes, outputs or beneficiary numbers, or how the project has been running.

1.2 What have you learnt this year and how are you responding to this? (maximum350 words)

We believe that learning and improvement are integral to the work we fund. Weare, therefore, looking to ensure that you are critically reflecting on your progress and learning from this to improve the effectiveness of your work. Please tell us what you have learnt as a result of anything in the past year that has worked or not worked and how you are responding. For example, you might be conducting outreach in a different way, taking a different approach to working with stakeholders or developing other parts of the organisation to respond to issues. It might help to refer back to your original learning questions identified in your application form as we are looking for you to identify what you know now, that you did not at the start of your work.

1.3 What has changed in the external environment?(maximum350 words)

We understand that the context you are delivering your work in is constantly changing, whether this relates to the social, economic or political environment at a local or national level. Here, we are looking for you to tell us if anything has changed in the past year in the context you work within and how this has affected your work and ability to deliver as planned, whether positively or negatively.

1.4Any Other Business: Is there anything else you want to tell us?(maximum350 words)

Please only fill this in if there is something you want to inform us about which is not covered by the rest of the report and that you feel we should know about in relation to your grant.

Section 2: Beneficiaries

The aim of this section is to help both you and the grant manager keep track of the number of people you have helped, both during the year and since the start of the grant (which will both be the same figures in the first annual report), as well as how these numbers relate to the total number of beneficiaries you were planning to reach.

2.1Beneficiary numbers: How many people have you worked with overall?

Please complete the table with the information you provided in your start-up form.

Number of beneficiaries since the grant began

People benefiting directly and frontline workers benefiting: Please state the total number of unique beneficiaries that you have worked with (or engaged with) since the grant began. This is a cumulative total each year. If this is your second or third annual report please avoid double counting those beneficiaries that you have been working with for more than one year or across different reporting years.
Other people benefiting: We understand that you may not know the number (the precise number?)of unique beneficiaries here. Please provide a number of beneficiaries which you believe to be a reliable estimate for the number of people you have reached. This is a cumulative total since the grant began and should involve as little double counting as possible.

Number of beneficiaries in the past 12 months

Please state the total numberof people you have worked with, engaged or reached through your work during the past year.
If this is your first annual report, these figures should be the same as the number of beneficiaries since the grant began.
If this is your second or third annual report and you are working with people over different reporting years, this figure can include those who you are continuing to work with (i.e. re-counting them) as well as new beneficiaries. It does not have to be unique beneficiaries.

Target number of beneficiaries in the next 12 months

Specify how many people you expect to work with (or engage/reach depending on the nature of the work) for the next 12 months of your grant for each of the three beneficiary categories.
This can include new beneficiaries and those who will continue to be involved in the project.
Please specify ‘0’ if you do not expect to work with any people within that category.

2.2 Age and gender of people benefiting directly

Please only complete this section if you are working with ‘people benefiting directly’ and you have set targetsfor thisin your start-up form. Please re-enter this information here.
Number of beneficiaries since the grant began should be a cumulative total for the number of people (unique) that you have worked with.
Number of beneficiaries in the past 12 months should only include people worked with this year. If this is your second or third annual report and you are working with people over different reporting years, this figure can include those who you are continuing to work with (i.e. re-counting them) as well as new beneficiaries.

The totals should add up to the number of ‘people benefiting directly’ to date.
It is helpful to us if the totals add up to the number of ‘people benefiting directly’. However, if your beneficiariesdo not classify themselves within these categories, or would prefer not to say which they fit into, or if you are unable to ask for their gender or age, please use the category ‘Gender not known/defined differently’ or ‘Age not known’.)
If you record people’s age or gender according to different categories which overlap our own, please choose the best reflection of this and use this for the duration of your reporting. For example if your category is 55-70, this would be best recorded in our category of 60-79.

2.2Diversity and hard to reach groups: Which groups are under-represented in accessing or engaging with your services and how do you plan to address this in the next 12 months? (350 words maximum)

Please only complete this section if you are working with ‘people directly benefiting’.
We ask this because we are keen to ensure that the funding we provide to services reaches the broadest range of people from different backgrounds and that it is inclusive. We are particularly interested in ethnicity, sexuality, religion, gender and disability (as well as age and gender reported in 1.2). We understand that, depending on the people you work with and the services you deliver, there may be groups that are hard for you to reach.

Please copy and paste your response from your start-up form if this is your first annual report, or from your previous annual report if you are in year 2 or 3 of your grant)

How successful have you been in the past year? Which groups are under-represented in accessing or engaging with your services and how do you plan to address this in the next 12 months? (400 words maximum)

Please reflect on your plan outlined in your start-up form and tell us if this has been effective
Specify any figures or percentages for the different groups you identified to reflect diversity in your services. For instance, if you wanted to reach more people who are transgender or from a specific ethnic minority, specify the percentage of those in your service who identify as such and how this has changed over the past year.
We are particularly interested in ethnicity, sexuality, religion, gender, age and disability, those who are isolated and/or who live in rural areas, as well as those groups you identified in your start up form as ‘hard to reach’ in your context.
In this section, we are also looking for you to identify again which groups are under-represented in accessing or engaging with your work, who may or may not be the same groups you identified in your start-up form or previous annual report.
We are want you to outline a plan to ensure diversity and we will ask you to report against this again in your next report to us.

Section 3: Outcomes

3.1 Progress towards outcomes

The outcomes and indicators relate to those specified in your start-up form.
From your start-up form, please copy and pastethe outcomes, indicators, targets and numbers of people you expect to benefit.Please do not change these here and please only report on those outcomes and indicators you originally specified.
This is for you and us to reflect on the effectiveness of the intervention. However we recognise that change may take time, may not be achievable for everyone or it is often a complicated process involving a range of external factors. If you do have reflections on any over/under achievements or a change in the amount of progress people are making, please explain in section 1.
If this is your second year and you provided a new outcome in your first annual monitoring report, you must continue to report against your original outcomes, stating no progress and no new beneficiaries (but include the previous cumulative total of beneficiaries stated). You should report against revised or additional outcomes as ‘new’ outcomes in an additional outcomes reporting form.

In light of the targets you set for this outcome, what have you achieved this year and are you on track overall? (300 words maximum)

Here we are looking for a brief summary of what evidence of progress you have observed, according to the outcome and indicators you specified (e.g. this might relate to the people you work with, the community, policy change, awareness and attitudes). We are also looking for your analysis of how effectively you are meeting this outcome and the extent to which you are on track. Please include:

Evidence of progress you have from your monitoring and evaluation activities for each indicator. Please include the sample size or the number of people you collected data from as well as the number who have shown progress.
An example might be ‘Of the 100 professionals attending the training day, 70% received full marks for the awareness test, showing that 70 understand the issue’. In other words, we are looking for you to provide details about the monitoring data collected and with who. We are also looking for you to tell us how this relates to your indicators.
Remember that indicators are measures of the change your work is making, relating directly to your specified outcome; they are not about activities or deliverables.

If you have not observed the progress expected in relation to any of the indicators, or you have any further reflections on what has or has not been achieved, please explain this in section 1.

Number of beneficiaries since the grant began

Number of beneficiaries in the past 12 months

Only provide these numbers if the outcome refers to (or can be translated into) a number of people (any type of beneficiary or change).
Any types of beneficiary category can be included here.

The numbers should refer to those beneficiaries who have shown progress or engaged in relation to the specified outcome.Please only count those where you have evidence that the outcome has been met. For example, if you want to improve the attitudes of your beneficiaries and collected questionnaires which found that of 150 beneficiaries, 50% have improved attitudes, you would state 75 people benefiting this year. If you have an outcome to raise awareness of an issue and 150,000 people sign up to support a campaign, you can include 150,000 beneficiaries against this outcome.
Please also state the numbers of beneficiaries since the grant began. This should be a cumulative figure, refer to unique beneficiaries or involve a reliable estimation of this.
We will use these numbers for our own data needs so that we can demonstrate the difference our grants have made.

3.2 Do you need any additional outcomes or report on different outcomes?

Please only complete this section if absolutely necessary. This may be relevant if:

Your existing outcomes do not capture the difference your work is making.
Your monitoring tools will not provide you with the correct data.
You have found that your project is delivering additional outcomes/indicators.

If you need to revise any of your existing outcomes, add an outcome, or change your indicators, please use this section to do so. Please note that you will still be expected to include and report on existing outcomes and indicators for the remainder of the grant, as well as the new or revised outcomes. This may involve stating ‘not relevant’ on the formand/or including the last set of data reported against it. This is important for us to keep track of how your work developed compared to the projections shown on your start-up form and because we need to add the data together with other reports on an annual basis (for which we use this report separately to others that you have submitted).