Your annual report exists. Your impact data exists. Your case studies exist. Your funder testimonials exist.
They’re just not on your website in one findable place.
They’re scattered through blog posts from three years ago, buried in downloadable PDFs, hidden on your About page in a small paragraph, or worse, only shared internally with your board.
Meanwhile, a potential funder is on your website right now trying to work out whether to give you £50,000. A journalist is trying to write a piece about your work. A corporate partner is deciding whether to sponsor your next campaign. A trustee is looking for evidence to justify your existence to the rest of their board.
They all need the same thing: proof that you do what you say you do, presented clearly, quickly, and credibly.
That’s what an impact page is for.
What an impact page actually is
An impact page is a single, dedicated page on your website that pulls together the evidence of your work in one findable, scannable, shareable place. It’s not your annual report. It’s not your About page. It’s not a blog post about a specific campaign.
It’s the answer to the question “what difference do you actually make?” – designed to be found quickly, understood in seconds, and referenced with confidence.
Done well, it does five things at once:
- Reassures existing supporters their money is being used well
- Convinces potential funders you’re worth investing in
- Gives journalists the facts they need to write about you
- Provides board members with material for their own advocacy
- Shows your team the difference their work makes
You don’t need a separate page for each of those audiences. One well-designed impact page serves all of them.
Why this isn’t optional anymore
The charity sector has changed. Funders are more selective, donors more sceptical, and everyone has less time to hunt for information.
Funders want evidence up front. They’re comparing multiple charities before applying, and they need to see impact data before they invest time in getting to know you. If they can’t find your impact clearly on your website, you might not make the shortlist.
Donors are cautious. After years of high-profile charity sector concerns, individual donors want reassurance before they give. A visible impact page signals transparency, which builds trust.
Journalists work fast. When a sector story breaks and a journalist needs a quote or statistic, whoever has the most accessible, credible impact data gets referenced. That’s your voice in the story – or someone else’s.
AI search engines cite what they can find. As AI-powered search becomes more common, the charities with clear, structured impact information get quoted when someone asks “which UK charity is doing the most on X?” The ones with buried impact data don’t get mentioned.
Your website is doing this work whether you’ve optimised it or not. An impact page ensures it’s doing it well.
What makes a good impact page
The best impact pages share some common features. Not all of them need to appear on every impact page, but the strongest examples include most of these.
1. Headline stats at the top
Big numbers, presented boldly, that answer “so what?” immediately. Not vanity metrics – meaningful figures that show scale and reach.
For NAPA, whose impact page I built recently, this looks like: 130,000 Activity Shed views, 4,852 NAPA News reach, 1,000+ resources developed. Numbers that tell the story of a professional body reaching its sector at scale.
For a homelessness charity, it might be: people housed, meals served, callers supported. For an environmental charity: hectares protected, campaigns won, policies changed.
The key is choosing numbers that show real work, not activity for activity’s sake. “10,000 Facebook likes” doesn’t belong here. “1,400 practitioners trained” does.
2. A clear organising structure
Don’t just dump everything on the page. Structure the impact around the key areas of your work.
NAPA’s page organises impact around reach, workforce, voice, influence, research, community, and finances. Each section builds a picture of a specific dimension of their work.
Your structure might be different – by programme, by audience, by outcome, by year – but there needs to be a structure. Otherwise the page becomes a list of disconnected achievements that don’t add up to a coherent story.
3. Real quotes from real people
Numbers show scale. Quotes show meaning.
A quote from someone who’s used your service, benefited from your work, or been changed by your intervention brings the numbers to life. Two or three well-chosen quotes throughout an impact page do more than paragraphs of prose about your values.
Make them specific, credible, and attributed (with permission). “One user said the service was really helpful” is worthless. “Music has reached people I’d been told weren’t reachable” – a real quote from NAPA’s page – is powerful because it’s specific and lived.
4. Case studies or examples
Data plus quotes plus one or two developed case studies gives the full picture: scale (data), meaning (quotes), and depth (case studies).
A case study doesn’t need to be long. A few paragraphs showing how one person, one project, or one campaign played out from start to finish is enough. The point is to give people something concrete they can visualise and remember.
5. Financial transparency
Where does your money come from? Where does it go? What percentage goes to charitable activities versus fundraising and governance?
You don’t need to reproduce your full accounts on your impact page. A simple breakdown with a link to full accounts is enough. NAPA’s page shows: 82% charitable activities, 12% fundraising and support, 6% governance. Simple, clear, honest.
This matters more than many charities realise. Financial transparency is one of the fastest ways to build donor trust, and a black hole around finances is one of the fastest ways to lose it.
6. A voice from leadership
A foreword or quote from your CEO, chair, or founder gives the page a human anchor. It’s the person taking responsibility for the numbers, connecting the impact to the mission, and speaking directly to whoever’s reading.
Keep it short. Two or three paragraphs is plenty. But include it – it changes the tone of the page from “here are our stats” to “this is what we’ve achieved together.”
7. A clear call to action
Someone reads your impact page. They’re convinced. Now what?
The page should end with a clear next step. Donate. Become a member. Read the full impact statement. Contact us. Whatever action fits your work and the audience the page is designed for.
Don’t waste the moment when someone has just been convinced by your evidence. Give them a clear way to act on that.
The stats you can use across your website
Here’s what many charities miss: your impact page isn’t just a destination, it’s a source.
Once you’ve done the work of gathering, organising, and presenting your impact data clearly, those statistics can be pulled out and used throughout your website to reassure visitors at every point in their journey.
On your homepage: Two or three headline stats near your main call to action, so first-time visitors immediately see evidence of your work.
On your donate page: Impact stats near the donation button, reminding potential donors what their money achieves.
On individual programme pages: Programme-specific impact data, taken from the impact page, showing what that particular strand of work delivers.
On your About page: A summary of impact with a link to the full impact page for those who want detail.
In your footer: A single powerful stat, always visible across the whole site.
In funder proposals: Screenshots or references from your impact page giving your funding applications credibility.
On social media: Individual stats pulled out and turned into shareable graphics, always linking back to the full impact page.
This is why building a proper impact page pays back. It’s not one page – it’s the evidence base that powers your entire digital presence.
Common mistakes to avoid
Vague statements without evidence. “We change lives every day” means nothing without numbers. Show the change.
Vanity metrics. Social media followers, website visits, and email list size don’t belong on an impact page unless they’re contextualised in terms of what those numbers enabled.
Out-of-date content. An impact page that hasn’t been updated for two years actively damages trust. Better to have a shorter, current page than a comprehensive but stale one.
No dates. Impact happens over time. Every stat should be attributable to a specific period so readers know how current the data is.
Buried in the navigation. If your impact page is three clicks deep in your About section, it’s not doing its job. It should be findable directly from your main navigation.
PDF-only impact reports. A downloadable PDF is fine as a companion piece. It shouldn’t be the only way to see your impact. PDFs aren’t crawled well by search engines, aren’t cited by AI, and aren’t scannable on mobile.
Over-designed to the point of unreadable. Fancy animations and complex layouts can obscure the message. The point is clarity, not visual gymnastics.
When to build one
If you’re rebuilding your website, an impact page should be part of the initial build. It’s easier to design the site with impact in mind than to retrofit it later, and the process of building the page forces valuable conversations about what you actually want to communicate.
If you’re not rebuilding, you can add an impact page as a standalone project. It’s usually one of the more valuable improvements you can make to an existing site, and doesn’t require touching the rest of the design.
Either way, it takes real thought to do well. Not because the technical build is complex, but because the strategic work of deciding what to include, how to structure it, and which numbers matter most requires proper consideration.
An example that works
For a real example, look at NAPA’s impact page, which I built recently. It brings together their headline stats, structured impact story across seven dimensions of their work, real quotes from members, a foreword from their CEO, financial transparency, and clear calls to action.
It also demonstrates one of the design principles that makes impact pages effective: the numbers count up when you scroll to them, drawing the eye and making the scale feel real rather than static.
The page took proper strategic work to design – deciding which numbers to lead with, how to organise the sections, which quotes to include – but the result is a page that serves multiple audiences well and can be updated annually as new data becomes available.
Getting started
If your charity doesn’t have a dedicated impact page yet, here’s what to do:
Start with what you have. You’ve almost certainly got more impact data than you realise, scattered across annual reports, funder proposals, board papers, and internal presentations. The first step is gathering it in one place.
Decide who the page is for. You can’t design for everyone equally. Choose your primary audience (funders? donors? partners?) and design the page around them, while making sure other audiences find what they need too.
Choose your headline numbers carefully. These are what people remember. Pick three to five stats that tell the story of your organisation at a glance.
Get quotes with permission. Reach out to service users, members, funders, or partners for short, specific quotes about your work. Written permission to use them means you can update the page freely.
Structure around your work, not your organogram. Your impact story is about what you do, not how you’re organised internally.
Get a designer or developer involved. This is a page that benefits from proper design – stats presented well, quotes given room to breathe, a structure that guides the eye. Don’t build it in a Word document.
The bottom line
Every charity website needs an impact page. Not as a nice-to-have, but as core infrastructure.
Funders need it to justify supporting you. Donors need it to trust you. Partners need it to promote you. Journalists need it to cite you. AI search engines need it to recommend you. Your board needs it to advocate for you. Your team needs it to feel proud of the work they do.
A well-built impact page pays back many times over in the trust it builds, the funding it unlocks, and the recognition it drives. In a sector where credibility and evidence matter more than ever, it’s one of the most important things your website can do.
If you’re planning a website rebuild, build the impact page in from the start. If you’re not planning a rebuild, add one anyway.
Either way, don’t leave your impact hidden.
Need help building your impact page?
Impact pages are a service I offer both as part of website rebuilds and as standalone projects. I’ll work with you on the strategic questions (what to include, how to structure it, which stats to lead with) as well as the design and build.
Get in touch to talk about what you need, or see an example of the impact page I built for NAPA.
