Can we report on people who asked to stay anonymous?

Yes. A referral logged anonymously carries no individual identity but still counts in totals and trends, so privacy does not cost you the reporting.

How long before a report is worth reading?

A quarter gives you volume. A year gives you seasonality, which is what tells you when to hold funds back.

Does this work for a grant application?

The same four sections answer most of what a grant application asks. Exports are available for the parts that need raw numbers.

Answer

What Should a Benevolence Report to the Board Include?

Dennis Ellis · September 15, 2026

Four things. How many people asked for help and for what. What you did about it. What happened afterward, including the times nothing did. And what your community asked for that you had nowhere to send them for. The fourth is the one that changes a budget decision, and it is the one most reports leave out.

The report most churches give

“We helped 47 households this year and spent $18,000.”

It is true, it is fast to produce, and it cannot be acted on. A board reading it has no basis for deciding whether $18,000 was the right number, whether it went to the right places, or what would happen if it were $24,000.

The four sections that can be acted on

1. Demand

How many people asked, for what, and when. Broken down by need, not by dollar.

Seasonality is the part worth showing. Utility assistance requests do not arrive evenly across a year, and a board that sees the shape of the curve will stop being surprised by January.

2. Response

What the church did. How many referrals, to which providers, by which method, and who on your team handled them.

The providers you refer to most is a short list and it is worth putting in front of a board. It is usually the first time leadership sees which four organizations the church is quietly depending on.

3. Outcomes

What happened after the referral. Served, partially served, or not served, with the reason.

Two numbers carry this section. The connection rate is the share of referrals that ended in someone actually being served. The median days to close is how long it took. Both are uncomfortable the first time and both improve once anyone is looking at them.

Include the ones that went nowhere. A report with a 100% success rate is a report where nobody recorded the failures.

4. Gaps

What your community asked for that you had nowhere to send them for.

This is the section that changes decisions. It is the difference between “we spent $18,000” and “forty-one people asked for dental care this year and we have no provider for it in this county.” The first is an accounting. The second is a ministry question, and it is the one a board is actually qualified to answer.

Where this comes from

None of it can be reconstructed afterward. A church that logs referrals but never records outcomes can produce sections 1 and 2 and nothing else.

CMinLink’s outcome and service-gap report produces all four: created and closed counts, connection rate, median days to close, outcome and reason breakdowns, and gaps by service category. It also breaks results down by where the request came from, so a church can see what its own website is bringing in.

The reason list behind each outcome is configurable per church, which matters more than it sounds. A report is only read if it uses the vocabulary the people reading it already use.

Common questions

Can we report on people who asked to stay anonymous?: Yes. A referral logged anonymously carries no individual identity but still counts in totals and trends, so privacy does not cost you the reporting.
How long before a report is worth reading?: A quarter gives you volume. A year gives you seasonality, which is what tells you when to hold funds back.
Does this work for a grant application?: The same four sections answer most of what a grant application asks. Exports are available for the parts that need raw numbers.