Annual Reports Don’t Have to be Dry as Dust

Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash Course: A 15-minute nonprofit crash course on fundraising and marketing best practices. Josh Kligman from Yearly was joined by Claire Alexrad from Clairification. Annual reports don’t have to be dry as dust. In fact, the most effective ones are not financial reports; they’re a story with the donor at the center. And they inspire action. Claire joined us for a discussion about how to get the biggest bang for your annual report buck.

You can read the discussion here:

We are live here Claire. How you doing?

Hi.

Well, thanks for for joining today want to welcome everybody and you especially Claire to Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash
Course where we spend 15 minutes talking to our favorite experts and nonprofit fundraising and marketing and all things nonprofit and it’s a quick section session, but we go deep on specific topics. And today we have Claire Axelrad of Clarification. Claire, thanks for joining today.

Thanks, Josh.

So I want to talk about annual reports and I know you talked about your thoughts to me as we were prepping for this conversation a little bit on on philanthropy and fundraising and I want to know what that means to you.

Okay, so my philosophy is philanthropy not fundraising and the idea of being that we’re all together on this pathway. Towards passionate philanthropy and your donors philanthropic journey begins with you. You are their guide or donor sherpa if you will and you’re guiding them standing along their side and your passion is expressed by making profound change happen. It turns out your donors passion is expressed the same way.

So your job and we’ll see today the job of the annual report is to match your passion to your donors passion sort of fan the flames by inviting them on a transformative journey, and when you think about it fundraising fundamentally is a value for value exchange and one side of the exchange is a hard metric the donors. Cold hard cash if you will, but the other side of the exchange is decidedly less tangible. It’s freely given gratitude from you and your organization.

It’s something that makes the donor feel really good about what they they did and hopefully what they’ll continue doing as you keep the value exchange going so this a conversation that’s ongoing between you and the donor should engage them and your annual report and all of your tools. Should do the same thing. They should not just sit there like a wet blanket, so I like to consider renaming the annual report.

If not on the face of the report itself then just internally for your own. Kind of sense of this might shift your thinking renaming it as a gratitude report making it all about your supporters and how grateful you are to them for making the work possible how appreciative you are for the accomplishments that they enabled rather than 2023 annual report.

You might consider a title like a gratitude report the year of philanthropy generosity report or just you make it possible. I think those are great ideas. I guess it comes down to personalizing the report or customizing the report to match your brand right and engaging with your audience of donors and others a little a little bit deeper so you can show them right off the bat before they even start flipping through it that that you you really want to you want to thank them so I like that concept of philanthropy over fundraising and get you it gets the wheels turning right and thinking about it different way.

So yeah, it’s an engagement report. Not a term paper.

Right, it right doesn’t have to feel so so stale and that can make it more engaging I think for for all the stakeholders and they get the board excited too with a little just a little bit of shift in in thought before you even start the process of building an annual report.

Right. So how do you think these types of reports and reports? Or whatever really great creative names nonprofit may come up with it to show that it’s an engagement report. How do you think they play into engaging with the actual donors?

I think you need to tell a story with the donor at the center of the story. That’s who you’re riding the report for it’s not for you. It’s not for your boss. It’s not for your program staff. It’s for those who are going to be inspired by virtue of reading it to learn more about you get further engaged with you get more passionately invested and ultimately seeing your praises to others who might join them.

So the way that you grab attention and compel people to read the report is to make it all about them. So there are several different types of emotionally resonant stories. You can tell one is client’s stories. And when you’re telling a client story you want to speak to the donors identity. So maybe they don’t have an autistic child, but they’re a parent so they can empathize.

Maybe they know no one with this disease, but they’re a caregiver for someone who is ill with something else. So they can relate to it. You have to touch people on a psychological level to inspire them to engage with you. You have to show them a way to find some greater meaning and purpose and then what you’re doing here is you’re becoming a philanthropy facilitator, which is a term.

I prefer infinitely above fundraiser. Facilitating philanthropy is a win-win. You make a positive difference in the donor’s life. They make a positive difference in the lives of the people that you are helping or the trees or the animals or whatever the other type of story is the donor story or the volunteer story or the advocate story and I like to showcase different constituents and how they make a difference and I used to include in my reports a spotlight several spotlights.

That would feature these people. People I thought would resonate with a range of key constituencies. So maybe it might be young parents. It might be widows. It might be retirees. It might be busy professionals and you can sprinkle these stories throughout the report. I used to do a why I care why I give feature and then you express gratitude for these people.

Yeah, so go ahead please. Well it was you know, you you sort of the third thing I was gonna say beyond the stories is just the language you use and I know you’ve heard this. I know that you had Tom Ahearn on earlier and he talks about you. He says you is the glue you want to use you and yours, so it’s always your support built. Five new food pantries this year because of people like you the museum is now open every fourth Sunday.

You planted 5,000 trees last year, you know, so It’s very important to stay away from not just we did this. You’re helping us. But even the name of your organization, you know. Last year the San Francisco Food Pantry helped 3,000 families blah, blah you you want to try to keep it as much as you can to you did this. And no donors just need to feel that their philanthropy is critical to the change. They’d like to see.

So, if you’re just using your report to paint this purely rosy picture of all of your accomplishments without crediting the donor then they’re going to go someplace else where they feel more needed. And I think they want to feel that that connection. So they understand the tangible impact. That’s that’s happening in their community and how they’re those donor dollars are being put to work.

So I heard this great example from someone I work with, about a playground coming into a community and nonprofit made that playground happen, but when they’re showing that impact back to their donors and volunteers and their board instead of just simply stating that hey this goes back to your your storytelling comments Claire but instead of simple, simply stating that our playground our playground made an impact. It changed lives.

It had results of X Y and Z go a little deeper with that story and fine the constituent like you said that it really affected like the individual boy or girl our group of children that that it changed and show their faces and talk about their specific story about how that that bigger initiative that bigger program that you ran at your organization helped affect them. And I think that’s what’s going to pull those lovers and make it a little more connected for the people that that gave that money and they may know that block that that playground lives on and they’ll say oh, yeah.

Okay. Now I see what this organization’s really doing because you can’t really assume that organ that that your donors. And the people following your marketing know the ins and outs of your organization like you do some may but most probably don’t and they just maybe gave money once maybe passively and there’s a future for that person to maybe come in and be a little bit more engaged.

I think that there’s a lot of distractions that people may have right now while they’re watching this the doorbell my ring because a lot of people are working at home like me the dog bark you’ll get a text message you’re competing with so many other messages out there outside of the nonprofit marketing and fundraising that you’re doing that it makes it hard enough. So anything you could do to stand out it’s great.

So I think Claire’s tips about storytelling and in the copy that you put into it and how you represent. Your organization is is really important. So You know, the more the more engaging you can make those reports maybe maybe they’re digital to do so and help help do help complement that written story with videos and social media.

No, I was just going to say, you know, you’re talking about the copy the compelling copy, but the other thing you’re alluding to is the compelling pictures. And you know when I started in development many many years ago. I had no idea what the term development meant. It’s kind of a made-up nonprofit term. I mean, you know, we see people doing construction sites and their developers, but it was because the people didn’t want to use anything that smacked a business so they didn’t want to say marketing and fundraising sounded a little grass so they came up with development.

So I’m going to took at that and I was like, what are we really developing here? And I thought you know, it’s kind of like
all these tools that they’re disposal. They have the photo paper and they’ve got the chemicals and they’ve got the scene and the tripod and the camera and all of this they’re trying to put it all together in such a way that they develop a photo that is so compelling the people want to jump in on it and that is really what you want to do with your annual report.

So not just gance copy people look at pictures first, and the reader should be able to see how they can partner with you to make a difference and then the emotionally moved to do so and that’s part of what the story does and you know, I’m sure you’ve heard studies show you have like three seconds to grab someone’s attention and eight seconds to keep it.

So you want these emotional photos that tell a success story? So the best photos are like one person a headshot big eyes looking right at the reader two people interacting close. Not a lot of white space in between add a caption which gives it a story context. Someone is struggling with a problem. They can’t escape. This is the solution that made a difference. This is how the donor stepped in to help. This is how the person’s life is different. Your communities life is different because you took action and you want them to be really high quality not stock photos.

You don’t want to see them in a frame at Walgreens. They should be photos of real people that’s worth investing in and then when you do pictures like infographics like a graph don’t don’t have it just like a list of financials, you know have a picture that people will look at and get their attention pull out quotes that have small photos or images next to them. So all of those kinds of things really are worth a thousand words.

You make me think of I think of Mary Poppins right where they’re looking at a painting and then they jump into it and then they’re walking around in that painting because then they feel like they’re really part of the picture and a Mary Poppins. They were but I guess in real life you can because there’s many calls to actions even if they’re kind of subliminal and not on the forefront with engagement reports impact reports and any reports and that’s looking for volunteers and different people and you’re in your community that can help you and if they see it all come to life like you’re describing Claire I think then and they’ll start to get let’s start to get what you’re doing.

I love that Mary Poppins analogy.

Yeah, it just talked into my head as you’re describing this. I don’t know why maybe I want to watch it, but I have a question here as we wrap up and I think it’s a good follow-up for you. Claire, Sydney asked do you have any examples of reports done?

Well, and I I think there’s lots and and we’re at a time here, but I think a good follow-up that we can do is is maybe I don’t want to put you on the spot, but maybe we can work together on a on another blog post that kind of covers the things that we’re talking about and we can show them done. Well by various nonprofits out there and share different engagement reports that that we really like or that you really like.

Yeah, and it does bear saying that if we can go just another minute. Yeah, what’s going on a minute that reports don’t have to be the traditional model that tends to run pages and pages and booklet form that has to look sleek and expensive and glossy and all of that. I mean if that is something that your constituents really expect then maybe you you want to do that, but right increasingly people are doing their reports digitally it saves it saves money.

It saves paper. It’s actually easier for people to access because people find stuff online you can attack attach a report as links to other messages it can get out there and live actually a lot longer.

And so if you’re doing it digitally then you can “Mary Poppinize” this up by having videos, you know, people can actually see it unfold. So, that’s one of the kind of exciting things that the digital revolution has brought to us. And we need to kind of get outside of the idea of thinking about this as a term report as something that’s dry as dust as as even report.

It’s almost like no, this is an expression of working action gratitude for all that the year brought and hopefully inspiring people to engage with us again next year. I think engagement through digital reports digital engagement reports digital and reports is where it’s at. And and that’s what Yearly does.

That’s our sponsor for today, Yearly is a platform for nonprofits to create those digital reports and this is Yearly’s Nonprofit Crash Course. I want to thank our guest today Claire Alexrad from Clarification for coming on we’ll follow up with examples, then we’ll figure out a way to get that back to this audience because I think this is a good ongoing conversation. It’s not necessarily A once a year. Here’s your annual report deal.

I think there’s a lot of Engagement that you can do with your donors to show them how you’re making an impact in your community throughout the year. So so we’ll get to those and Claire, thanks for joining.

Thanks went by so fast.

All right, we’ll do it again.

All right. Have a good day.

Bye.