If you don’t love your annual report,
why should I?
(An urgent plea for passion)
I just broke up with an annual report.
It was a passionate affair while it lasted. For six weeks, I could think of little else. I couldn't eat; I couldn't sleep.
It started out simply enough, just an unexpected assignment from a favorite client. I was led unsuspectingly into a small hallway where stood a table, a chair, and a broken cabinet full of unkempt volumes of forgotten lore.
"Tis some history," I muttered, "only that and nothing more."
But in moments, I was lost to a different world. Everything I learned got me more excited, and spurred me in new directions. I couldn't get enough.
"What am I doing?" I asked myself as hour after (unbillable) hour came and went. I began to resent every second I could not spend exploring my primary sources. I was like a teenager in my lust. I wore my heart on my sleeve.
I began to worry that my friends and colleagues just wouldn't understand. How could I tell them everything, so they could see how special my love was?
(Read part of the story at the bottom of this e-Blast.)
You get a new chance at love every year; don't blow it
Once a year, every nonprofit has a fantastic opportunity to express your love: for your cause, for your work, for your supporters. In a single document - your annual report - you can tell a powerful, emotional, meaningful story to everyone who matters to you.
The good news is: they are expecting it.
The bad news is: from long experience, they assume they will be bored.
Four messages that will get your readers to act
Annual reports take a lot of your precious time and even more of your (nonprofit's) budget. So let's not waste either.
Annual reports are never created for everybody. They are written for the people who can do your organization the most good. And that usually means donors (of both money and time), prospective donors, and people who can give you power.
When they finish reading your annual report, you want them to take action: to give, to give more, to renew a contract, to introduce you to other important people, to appoint the CEO to a prominent voluntary commission (and get him out of your hair), etc.
Four messages stimulate this reaction:
1. Here is a cause that will knock your socks off.
2. This organization has a unique, powerful, effective way to serve that cause.
3. Your support did/can make all the difference.
4. Thank you! No, I really mean it!
And then support each of those messages with content that will convince the reader.
You don't start with a boring letter
And yet, open almost any nonprofit's annual report and on the very first text page, there is a bloodless, bureaucratic, uninspiring and uninformative letter from the CEO. (If we're lucky, the letter is jointly written with the chairperson. If we're not, the chair has written another one just like it on the next page.)
If the CEO and chair are not excited and passionate enough about the cause and their organization's work to make a strong statement in the organization's premier publication to its key supporters, then how in heaven am I, the reader, to get excited?
As I've heard the incomparable Tom Ahern say often, "You cannot bore people into action."
There are a million ways to get the four messages across. Fantastic photos (especially of puppies and children), human stories, heartfelt testimonials, warm and 'you'-based writing, transparent financials.
Each piece of content should be measured by whether it fully and powerfully supports one of the four messages. If it doesn't, either fix it so it does or throw it out.
And there are another dozen or so "Golden Rules" of readability that you must follow: gripping headlines, easy-to-scan pages, short paragraphs and text blocks, minimal use of reverse and otherwise illegible (but pretty) type.
(It's the rare designer who knows or follows those rules, by the way. It's you who must insist on them.)
I don't want to overstay my visit, so here are some resources
We could spend hours talking about annual reports but I can see you need to get back to work. Let me offer some resources I've found really useful.
· You. You and I don't read long, boring, egocentric annual reports. Why do we expect our donors to? Start collecting annual reports that YOU love, on any subject, especially ones that motivated you to act somehow. Analyze why you loved it. Trust your instincts. Repeat.
· Me. I do a wicked good workshop on annual reports. Pull together a bunch of organizations and we'll spend an intense day going over everything (including yours). I also do individual consultations, and yes, even some award-winning annual reports themselves (see below).
· www.nonprofitannualreports.net/ I've never met Kivi Leroux Miller, but she's everywhere, and I almost always like what she has to say. There's a lot for free on her site, so don't feel obligated to bring your wallet.
· Lots of real-life examples. A rather fascinating website that gives all kinds of examples of ARs, by field. Not necessarily model reports, but great fodder for thinking.
· http://www.sidcato.com/ Everything AR, with a very smart motto: Number one goal of an Annual Report: "Its cover must demand, open me, read me!"
· Your annual report done for free? This group helps you do annual reports through pro bono volunteers. I have not seen any of their products.
· Will-your-annual-report-hit-the-recycling-bin-before-it-gets-read? Don't you love the title?
· A free booklet, right now! The Enterprise Foundation, a downloadable booklet on how to do annual reports
· The Mercifully Brief Real World Guide to Raising More Money with Newsletters than You Ever Thought Possible. Tom Ahern has come out with about a million books now, including a brand new one on case statements, which I cannot wait to read. This book is the single best guide to "scannability" I've ever seen. (No, I don't get a commission!)
Oh, yeah, the love affair
Are you really still here? A bit nosy, aren't you? Well, here in a few words is why I fell in love with Children's Friend & Service, a 175-year-old agency now celebrating its "terquasquicentennial".
In 1834,
The social fabric was thin. Blacks and women couldn't vote, among other absences of equity. Children were property of the parents, to employ as they wished. Government had virtually no stated responsibility for providing social services of any kind.
A
Within two years, Harriet came up with a revolutionary idea: she would open a home that would accept children who were abandoned or whose families legally relinquished "ownership".
Though Harriet died from cancer within the next ten years, her idea grew and grew. Children's Friend took in thousands of children until 1926, through the Civil War, through the ravages of child labor, and through World War I.
But it also helped pioneer responsible foster care and adoption, laws against cruelty to children (12 years after laws protected animals), the creation of the United Way, the emerging profession of social work, the growing understanding that government had a role and responsibility to help children, women's right to vote, the New Deal, the seventh White House Conference on Children (Nixon), and therapeutic childcare.
Remarkably, Children's Friend has virtually all its logbooks dating back to accepting its first child. I was able to read in the secretary's own handwriting about children being tied to coal barges, regular epidemics killing both parents and leaving young children behind, fathers abandoning families to go to sea or not returning from the many wars.
By the time I read about the agency choosing to become a charter member of the Child Welfare League of America in 1927 or Marian Wright Edelman founding the Children's Defense Fund in 1973, I could only consider the latter "newcomers".
Here, then, was the entire history of
Judge for yourself. Or request a printed copy from the amazing agency itself. The gorgeous design is by Gina Lisa DiSpirito at GLAD WORKS, who suffered me looking over her shoulder for hours upon hours.
Last year I loved something else. Next year?
Ahh, my infatuations are always short-lived, just like readers' attention spans. Last year I fell in love with the Wilmer Shields Rich Award-winning annual report we did at the Community Foundation for
Because if I didn't lose my heart putting it together, how am I going to win your heart as the reader?
Next month: hmmm, bequests or communications audits. I'll let you know.
Rick
