We review lessons learned in 20 years of tracking drought impacts at the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC). The NDMC began systematically collecting drought impact data in July 2005 and displaying it via a prototype Drought Impact Reporter (DIR). News stories were a main source of impact reports. The creators of the DIR also envisioned that it would be one tool in a larger reporting strategy, part of a suite of tools, which has come to pass, incorporating refinements based on feedback and experience. Some of the initial assumptions, stated or unstated, may have been optimistic: Dollar values are not readily associated with drought impacts unless it’s in context of commodity values or insured losses, so compiling meaningful statistics across sectors and scales requires use of less-familiar units such as “impact-places.” Much of the data exists is a description of a loss or change at a specific place and time, often reported in news articles. This event-based data tells us whether impacts occur for a given drought level at a specific location, and helps guide data collection for impact-based forecasting.