We've all read an annual report that lists each grant made in detail, page after page of painful detail in some cases.  Ok, so they gave $2,000,000 to the Mr. and Mrs. Do-good Foundation.  I wonder what they were able to do with that money.   I wonder why they chose $2,000,000.  If it's such a good cause, why not $3,000,000?

These are tough questions to answer.  Often, the grantees themselves find it difficult to answer those questions, particularly in a way that a board member or potential donor can quickly and easily understand.  There are two issues at play, but both can be summarized with one word: context.

Big numbers are hard to interpret. Our brains simply aren't wired to handle them.  Try to picture 10,000,000 and 5,000,000 of something, anything.  Can you do it?  Can you picture them?  Most people can't.  (Now try to picture 10 and 5.  Easy, huh?).  And yet, read the annual report and you get a long list of big numbers with dollar signs in front.  Not terribly useful.

Furthermore, dollars themselves are pretty useless.  It's sort of counter-intuitive, but it's true.  It's the stuff you exchange them for that counts.  Tell somebody you gave $2,000,000 to a foundation that helps and they'll think "that's nice" and move on.  $2,000,000 could mean anything.  It could mean you helped pay some salaries.  It could mean you helped build a building.  Those might be useful things, but I may not be terribly interested in supporting the effort.  But tell them that your support allowed all 200 underprivileged students who applied to the local college but who otherwise couldn’t afford it to attend I instantly can appreciate what you’ve done.  I can identify with my own college experience and imagine what my life would have been life without it.

Context matters.   A recent article in Fast Company makes the case and provides a few good examples.  Is it worth 7 weeks of working without pay to stave off the next great depression?  If not, how many weeks would it be worth to you?  Regardless of your specific answer, the point is that you can probably get to one.  Try to do that with just a number that has 9 zeroes at the end.

Too often, we see organizations disseminate raw data as if its story is self-evident.  It rarely is.  When your stakeholders can't easily interpret the information you're sharing with them, it won't matter to them.  Put your data in context.  Make it real for them.  Make your data matter.