What a Reach Audit actually looks like.
Most firms describe their discovery process. We would rather show you one.
Below are excerpts from a Reach Audit built on a composite service area: an eight-county region, a Veterans program funded to serve it, and a year of outreach behind them. The organization is not real. The patterns are, because they are the ones we find most often.
Why we publish this
Three weeks and $8,500 is a real commitment for an organization watching every dollar of restricted funding. You should know exactly what arrives at the end of it.
You should also know what an honest assessment sounds like. This one tells the sample organization that most of its outreach budget went to its worst-performing channel, that its best channel was free and untracked, and that two of its six materials would not survive a safe-messaging review.
That is what we would tell you. We would rather you learn that here than after you have signed something.
Finding
62% of the region’s eligible Veteran population lives in three counties that received 8% of the year’s outreach effort.
The two counties receiving the most attention hold 11% of the eligible population between them. They are also the two counties nearest the program’s office.
This is the most common finding we produce, and it is almost never a failure of judgment. Outreach concentrates where staff already are, where partners already exist, and where someone once had a good meeting. It takes a map to see it.
Composite geography. County names and boundaries are invented. 24,000 eligible Veterans across the region.
| County | Eligible Veterans | Share of region | Share of outreach effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calder | 5,760 | 24% | 3% |
| Dunlin | 5,040 | 21% | 2% |
| Holt | 4,080 | 17% | 3% |
| Barrow | 2,400 | 10% | 9% |
| Ashford | 2,160 | 9% | 12% |
| Garland | 1,920 | 8% | 8% |
| Elmore | 1,440 | 6% | 34% |
| Fenwick | 1,200 | 5% | 29% |
Finding
Cost per qualified referral: $841. One channel accounts for 53% of spend and 26% of referrals.
| Channel | Spend | Qualified referrals | Cost each |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid social | $31,000 | 18 | $1,722 |
| Community events | $14,000 | 9 | $1,556 |
| Print and local media | $9,000 | 6 | $1,500 |
| Partner VSO referral | Not tracked | 31 | Not calculable |
| Search | $4,000 | 5 | $800 |
| Total | $58,000 | 69 | $841 |
The finding underneath the finding. The channel producing 45% of this organization’s referrals is the one nobody was measuring, funding, or supporting. It cost nothing because nobody built it. It is also the least stable, because it depends on individual relationships rather than a system.
The recommendation was not to cut paid social. It was to formalize and resource the partner referral network first, because that is where the return already exists.
Finding
The program is staffed for 400 active participants and currently serving 240.
160 unused slots, in a region with 24,000 eligible Veterans.
This is the number that reframes the budget conversation. The question is not whether outreach is worth spending on. It is what 160 empty slots cost, in unspent funding, in a renewal application that has to explain them, and in people who did not get served.
Finding
Six assets reviewed. Two flagged, one of them requiring immediate correction.
| Asset | Standard | Finding | Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Program brochure | Safe messaging, language | Uses “committed suicide” in the opening paragraph | REVISE — correct before next print run |
| Awareness social series | Framework: Positive Narrative | Campaign names stigma repeatedly as the barrier. Research indicates naming stigma in public messaging can reinforce it rather than reduce it | REVISE — reframe around the specific benefit of the specific action |
| Intake landing page | Accessibility, plain language | 14 required fields before a Veteran can request contact. Reading level grade 12.4 | REVISE — reduce to name and contact method, rewrite to grade 8 |
| Video testimonial | Safety, accuracy | Passes | PASS |
| Radio spot | Safety, language, resources | Passes | PASS |
| Partner one-sheet | Accuracy, accessibility | Passes | PASS |
On the intake page. This is the finding that costs the most and takes the least effort to fix. A Veteran who has spent six years avoiding this conversation, and who finally opens a form, will not complete fourteen fields. Every one of them is a place to change his mind.
The recommendation
Every Reach Audit ends with a scoped recommendation. It does not always recommend the full system.
For this composite organization, the sequence was:
- Immediate, no cost
- Correct the brochure language. Reduce the intake form to two fields. Add source tracking to the landing page so referrals can be attributed at all.
- Next 90 days, low cost
- Formalize the partner VSO referral channel. Build a shared toolkit, set a monthly touchpoint, and instrument it so it can finally be measured.
- Next 12 months
- Reallocate paid media toward the three underserved counties and produce localized content featuring Veterans from those communities.
- Not recommended this year
- A full campaign rebuild. The creative is largely sound. The problem is distribution and measurement, and rebuilding would spend the budget on the part that is already working.
What you receive
A findings document of 15 to 20 pages. A service-area reach map. A referral baseline with channel-level cost per qualified referral. A message risk register with disposition on every asset reviewed. A scoped recommendation with sequencing and cost.
Three weeks. $8,500.
If the findings do not justify going further, the baseline is still yours, and it belongs in your next application.
About this sample
This document is a composite. The service area, organization, and figures are illustrative, constructed from patterns we encounter across engagements. No client data appears in it, and no real organization is depicted.