Your nonprofit’s relationships with donors keep your organization running. From small thank you’s to large-scale donor appreciation events, managing these relationships should be one of your nonprofit’s first priorities. While each of your donor relationships is inherently unique and personal, you can still take a data driven approach when conversing with donors, especially in your annual reports.
Annual reports are essentially a year-long summary that you can share with your donors, so you should carefully consider how to present and edit key information to present your nonprofit positively and transparently. Additionally, annual reports provide an opportunity to gain increased buy-in from your supporters when done right.
To help your nonprofit put your data to use to improve donor relationships through your annual reports, this article will explore how you can:
- Convey Impact
- Set Attainable Goals
- Confirm Your Nonprofit’s Brand Identity
- Identify Key Donor Metrics
Remember that before you can start using your data, you’ll need a way to collect and store it. Assess your organization’s techstack to make sure you have key software platforms, including donor management tools. Then, review your data management practices, such as a professional accounting and bookkeeping system. With these in place, pulling data to share in your annual reports will be that much easier.
Convey Impact
Donors give because they want to make a difference through your mission. This means that putting their gifts to good use, fulfilling your mission, and conveying the impact you were able to make with their contributions will always be one of the most effective ways to keep your donors engaged.
You can even use your CRM to track individual impact for some of your donor segments, providing them with more information about their impact. For example, you might communicate to your first-time donors the total that new supporters gave to your cause that year, emphasizing the difference their specific contributions made. In turn, this might encourage them to continue giving and become a long-term supporter.
Your annual reports need to accomplish many goals, but accurately conveying your nonprofit’s impact from the year should be one of its first priorities. When presenting your impact in an annual report, try using the following strategies to engage your donors:
- Use images. Part of your annual report is telling the story of your nonprofit’s success over the past year. You can get your message across better and in a more memorable way with storytelling strategies and engaging images of your volunteers in action and constituents benefiting from your nonprofit’s work. Plus, consider helping supporters better visualize your data with charts and graphs.
- Show places of improvement. You can help your donors better conceptualize your annual impact by giving them something to compare it to. If you’ve had any dramatic improvements since last year, completed any major projects, or launched a brand new program, share it in your report.
- Provide both quantitative and qualitative impact statements. While sharing statistics and numbers is necessary for maintaining transparency and gives your donors a yardstick to measure your yearly impact by, there may also be situations where your organization should provide qualitative data to convey impact. For example, if your organization provides low income families with school supplies, share how many students you helped. You can then supplement this data with added information about the types of schools students are attending and the extracurricular activities they’re able to participate in.
Effectively conveying impact can also help your nonprofit instill a sense of progress for your supporters. When asking for donations and conveying impact, you’ll need to strike a careful balance between assuring donors they are making a difference but also that your mission still needs their continuous support.
Set Attainable Goals
To keep your mission on track, your nonprofit should regularly set attainable goals for your programs and initiatives. Doing so will help your organization use and allocate resources effectively and provide internal motivation for your volunteers and program leads.
Setting attainable goals for your mission can help your nonprofit establish credibility with your donors. If your nonprofit publicly announced any key mission-related goals in the past year, discuss them in your annual report, providing insight into your organization’s success if the goal was met and a reasonable explanation and plan to move forward if it was not.
Additionally, consider fundraising goals you’ve shared over the past year. These might include annual goals, specific campaign objectives, and internal development projects. For example, if your nonprofit ran a capital campaign, donors will want to know if their contributions made a difference in helping you accomplish your goals. This is especially true for your major donors, who invested the most in the project.
Coming short of a major fundraising goal can make your nonprofit seem financially unstable, potentially scaring away donation prospects. Choose goals that will inspire your supporters to give but are attainable with the right outreach tactics and fundraising pushes. After all, you can always set stretch goals—and surpassing a stretch goal is definitely good news that you could consider sharing as a part of your annual report.
Confirm Your Nonprofit’s Brand Identity
Annual reports are meant to share updates about your nonprofit with donors, but remember that they’re also a marketing tool. When considering your report’s design and how best to present your data, remember that your annual report also provides an opportunity to reconfirm your nonprofit’s mission and brand identity.
Getting Attention’s guide to nonprofit branding emphasizes that your nonprofit’s mission is the core of your nonprofit, and should include details about why your nonprofit exists, who you serve, and how you go about providing that service.
Your annual report should restate your organization’s mission and use this as an opportunity to thoroughly demonstrate the why, who, and how of your nonprofit. Doing so will help solidify your mission and your organization’s identity with donors, providing a new opportunity to display values that are likely to resonate with them.
When explaining what your nonprofit does and why it matters, add notable statistics and measurements from both the past year and of all time. This will help you connect with donors on both an emotional and logical level, giving them a frame of reference as they read the rest of your report.
Identify Key Donor Metrics
Before preparing your annual report, take a moment to view your donor metrics and how they have changed over the past year. Specifically, look into response and engagement rates to your previous annual report. While you should still be sure to create a report and share it with all of your donors, no matter their past engagement, you can take a more targeted approach by analyzing this data and tailoring your next report to your donors’ previous responses.
Create a more tailored annual report experience for your donors by considering their level of engagement. For instance, you can better appeal to your donors’ and their varying levels of interest by creating two reports: a short overview and a more detailed analysis. Here’s a further breakdown of these kinds of reports and how they could be used:
- Short overview. Not all of your donors have the time to sit down and read an in-depth report booklet. However, you can still keep them informed by emailing them a short one-page overview of the year’s accomplishments as a courtesy and making your full report available for download on your website.
- Detailed analysis. There are some donors who you should always send your full, detailed report to, such as your major and planned giving donors. Use these segments in your donor database to determine how many annual reports you should print and send personally to these key donors.
Additionally, consider using your annual report as an opportunity to upgrade donors’ giving levels. CharityEngine’s guide to monthly giving explains that many monthly giving candidates start off as annual donors. This means that sending a report at the beginning or end of the year can also serve as a reminder to donate and consider changing their giving cadence. From there, you can express your appreciation for all of your donors’ support and emphasize the difference monthly gifts make year-round, as well as the ability to set up automatic recurring donations.
Putting together an annual report can be a massive undertaking as you’ll need to prepare both the content and overall design. Fortunately, you can set yourself up for success by carefully recording and storing data all year long. Then, take your data and see how you can leverage it to create a report that accurately represents your organization and furthers your relationships with donors.
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A guest post from Philip Schmitz of CharityEngine. Philip Schmitz is the CEO and founder of cloud-services leader BIS Global, creators of the CharityEngine fundraising & communications technology platform. Founded in 1999, Phil has managed the vision and strategy for BIS’s suite of integrated business applications & hosting tools used by more than 400 businesses & non-profits.