| TIPS ON WRITING
What
A Year It Was!
7 Ways to Boost the Power of Your Annual Report
By Joseph Barbato
It’s that time of year, and the groans of advancement
officers fill the air as they brood on the need to turn out yet
another annual report. Take heart. Imagine making your report
lively, interesting, and readable this year. Then do something
about it.
What if you presented the entire annual report in the voice
of a student offering his view of the past year?
How about sending out an engaging annual letter from your president
and referring readers to the detailed annual report posted on
your website?
Would your key audiences appreciate an odd-sized printed piece
that has more graphics than text?
Even if you must stick to the traditional annual report approach,
consider how you might strengthen this necessary document into
a marketing piece that engages the people you want to reach.
Here are some tips:
Be concise. Give readers interesting
tidbits of information. Let the up-front
sections of the major newsweeklies be your model, with their bright
headlines, tight anecdotes, striking quotes, and unusual photos.
Events and accomplishments, described in sparkling items over
a page or two, suggest an organization acting to achieve its mission.
Find a theme. There’s a thread
that runs through your group’s past 12
months. Find it. Hang your annual report on it. Maybe it’s
the fact that all your numbers are up, underscoring your growing
value to the community. Is your museum more hands on? Is the university
attracting a new breed of student? Has the hospital implemented
the new customer-service push across the board?
If your president has spent the past year talking about the
great challenge of finishing a dozen major restoration projects—and
your organization has successfully completed them—your theme
is obvious. Sometimes it is not so. Maybe the thrust of the past
year has been making your conservation group’s work “more
scientific.” In that case, you’ll want to find examples
of the new scientific bent in the various program areas.
The theme becomes a vantage to tell your story of the year past.
Using vignettes, simple charts, and graphics, you can work the
theme through your pages—even pages on non-thematic aspects
of your work. Don’t overlook maps—they can convey
information quickly and nicely.
Be novel. You may not want to turn
your annual report into a gift box that
opens up to reveal panels on each of your programs of the past
year. But depending on the nature of your nonprofit, you might
consider deviating from the standard look of a corporate report.
Unusual sizes allow you to use text and photos creatively. They
catch the eyes of people who normally toss annual reports aside.
If you opt for novelty, get your designer involved early on.
He or she will have fun coming up with options, some a little
different and a few outright zany. Somewhere in the middle may
lie the unusual way to report on 2004.
Focus on people. It’s tempting
to run a dozen photos of the new gallery,
gymnasium, or what-have-you that was completed in the past year.
Why not run one photo of the splendid structure and show us the
people who used it all year? What difference has the new library
made in the lives of students? Is the hospital’s new community
outreach facility making it easier for the elderly to get help?
How have five children made use of the new museum gizmos? Snippets
on the experiences of users can convey the value of your new facility.
Frame the importance of your work.
How do your advances of the past year
tie into the national picture in your field? Are you paving the
way for other colleges? Have you won national comment on how your
new facility raises the bar for the public health field? Or maybe,
if you are a community agency, your big effort in 2004 inspired
the mayor to take action that will benefit the entire city. Quote
the editorials and authorities. Let readers can see how your work
is improving life for others beyond your immediate area.
Celebrate donors. They can never receive
too much attention. So even
though you made much of them on the occasion of their gifts, select
a handful of major donors for special recognition in the annual
report. Donor profiles bring the stories behind gifts to life
and show the kind of committed people who support your nonprofit.
Let others with the potential to become major donors see that
their peers have put your cause at the top of their charitable
giving lists.
Avoid the predictable. Although you
can safely predict that all annual reports
will cover the year just past, there’s no need to offer
utterly predictable content. Do not run football-team pictures.
Do not run long, turgid recaps of the year’s achievements
by each division head. Be selective and highlight interesting
aspects of work that many readers may find boring. (Remember:
the report is not a brain dump on everything that’s happened;
it’s your discriminating analysis of the year’s highlights.)
Demystify the technical. Ah, those
last few pages of financials! Is there any
way to communicate in plain English that which a flotilla of accountants
and lawyers has rendered into mind-numbing gibberish? The answer
is yes. It takes work. Simple language, jargon cutting, pie charts,
and a respect for your reader’s intelligence—all of
these help. At the least, offer a succinct opening summary that
clearly explains what’s what when it comes to the numbers
for the year. Then, if you must, run a page or two in which the
financial boys do their entire shtick.
Finally, take time to write a bright two-paragraph teaser note
from your president that will be attached to the cover of the
report. The right words can get recipients to sit back, turn the
page, and start reading your fascinating story of 2004.
This article originally appeared in Contributions
Magazine.
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