I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a webinar offered through Nonprofit 101: All About Annual Reports. An initiative of the Livingston, Graham & Martin philanthropy consulting group,
Nonprofit 101 provides workshops and webinars designed to help beginning nonprofit professionals develop the skills necessary to build effective nonprofit organizations and programs.
The webinar included strategies and helpful tips for nonprofit organizations on preparing and distributing annual reports. While nonprofit organizations are not required to issue annual reports, such publications can be an effective tool for engaging the public and building relationships within the community. An annual report can be a vehicle for sharing goals and outcomes of your programs, demonstrating transparency and accountability for donors and other stakeholders, and for telling the story of your nonprofit.
Recommendations from the webinar included:
- Appoint a project leader to oversee the process from start to finish and to coordinate the contributions of different staff members.
- Create a timeline for information gathering and publication of the report and be sure to adhere to it.
- Review samples of annual reports from other nonprofits and for-profit corporations. Take note of format, content, organization, and style in others' annual reports and brainstorm ideas for your own publication. Visit our PubHub repository for examples of annual reports issued by foundations, or see the resources below.
- Supplement facts and figures with stories about the organization's programs or those individuals you have served throughout the year.
- Make sure the report has a consistent voice. Have one person write the narrative or designate a single editor to revise and edit the final draft of the report.
- Keep it authentic. Use actual photos of staff at work or in the field rather than generic stock images.
- Segment audiences to determine who receives a print copy of the report, an electronic copy, or simple notification of its release.
For more resources on this topic, including links to sample annual reports, see our Knowledge Base article, Where can I learn more about making a nonprofit annual report?
For a listing of related books and articles in our library collection, search the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature for the subjects Annual reports or Nonprofit organizations--communications. Recommended sources include:
Hochstadt, Zach; Winton, Jennie. "Creating effective annual reports". Grassroots Fundraising Journal. Vol. 28 (Sept-Oct 2009) p. 2-5.
Taylor, Caroline. Publishing the Nonprofit Annual Report: Tips, Traps, and Tricks of the Trade. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2002.
Leroux Miller, Kivi. The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Stephen Sherman, Reference Librarian, Foundation Center-Atlanta
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