Which Reports do Executive Directors find most useful?

Josh Bekerman:

The one that you work on for weeks that they never look at?  [;)]

Seriously though, I think this all depends on the organization and ED (they don't call me Captain Obvious for nothing).  For us I'm actually not sure which reports our ED uses, other than the official reports we generate for our board.  However, we are working on creating a dashboard-type report (not an RE dashboard as it contains information from multiple departments) for the ED, board and all staff.  Hopefully she will find this most useful as it contains information directly related to the annual goals of the ED and organization (YTD revenue, new/renewed donor counts, unrestricted revenue & expenses, donors by gift level, etc.).

The best answer to this question will probably come directly from your ED.  Ask what information they need to meet their goals and the organization's goals and mission. 

Ditto Josh's thoughts.  Totally depends on what they want to see and even what type of org you are will determine importance of various things.

Currently the one monthly report ED gets is one where I export all the $/# info and put into the format he wants report in.  Not really anything even close in RE. Otherwise it's just running as requested things like lapsed donor data, top donors, what they gave to last capital campaign etc. 

Other report we export and use the data from for development during the campaigns is the solicitor analysis report data repackaged info elaborate spreadsheet with team/division totals etc. I know he does look at that excel file also.