Blog contributed by our partners at Nexxus Marketing.

Our nonprofit world is a fast-paced one—full of passionate contributors, meaningful relationships, challenges to conquer, and achievements to celebrate. Creating an annual report allows you to reflect on the past year and share exactly how your organization carried out its mission with members of your community. By communicating the details of your impact, you’ll be able to attract and maintain the support of more donors, volunteers, and corporate sponsors.

But it takes time and thought to put together a polished, comprehensive annual report. How do you ensure your efforts pay off and you produce a report that actually resonates with your stakeholders? In this guide, we’ll discuss steps you can take to set your nonprofit up for success, including:

1. Think Beyond Your Funders
2. Refer Back to Your Strategic Plan
3. Engage Readers with Stories and Data
4. Incorporate Multimedia Elements
5. Consider Enlisting Expert Help

While an annual report can come in a variety of formats, you can transform it into a powerful tool for outreach and fundraising by using your audience’s specific preferences and interests to guide your strategy.

1. Think Beyond Your Funders

It’s no secret that, in your annual report, you should thank funders for all their contributions to your mission. However, it’s important to take this opportunity to explicitly recognize everyone who’s played a role in your latest accomplishments, including:

• Staff
• Board members
• Volunteers
• Corporate partners

Fulfilling your mission is a community effort. By showing each stakeholder group that you value them, you’ll unite everyone under the umbrella of your nonprofit’s success and keep them invested for the long term. Consider gathering quotes from board members, staff, and volunteers regarding their involvement, why they’re passionate about their cause, and their reflections on the previous year.

2. Refer Back to Your Strategic Plan

As you prepare to assemble your annual report, take another look at your nonprofit’s strategic plan to identify which projects and achievements to highlight. Doing so ensures you can tie everything in your report back to your mission and demonstrate to readers how you’ve progressed toward your goals.

For instance, let’s say that your organization identified three strategic directions to focus on in its most recent strategic plan: expanding your membership program, improving financial sustainability, and improving the quality of services you provide. You can then use these strategic directions to organize your annual report—making sure you call attention to positive changes such as adding new member benefits, seeking out more diverse funding sources, and investing in software to make service delivery more efficient.

3. Engage Readers with Stories and Data

Beyond hearing about all the improvements and progress your nonprofit has made over the past year, your audience members want to know how these changes made a difference in the lives of those you serve. Include real-life stories to illustrate the impact you’ve made.

Double the Donation’s donor retention guide lists sharing impact stories as one of the top strategies for retaining donor support. Just be sure to obtain permission before featuring one of your beneficiaries in your annual report and provide an option to be included anonymously.

Use empowering language and position your supporters as the heroes of each story. Then, weave in relevant data points, such as the number of people you served, the total amount of donations raised, or other KPIs to back up your claims. For example, a wildlife rehabilitation nonprofit might explain that, over the past year, it was able to care for 2,565 animals in need thanks to the $360,000 it raised through donations and 25,000 hours contributed by volunteers.

4. Incorporate Multimedia Elements

Whether you’re publishing your annual report as a PDF on your website or building a dedicated microsite for it, get creative with how you present your content to catch your audience’s attention.

Consider these popular multimedia ideas to inspire your planning:

• Compelling images that visualize your impact
• Videos of beneficiaries, volunteers at work, past events, or donor testimonials
• Timelines that outline your accomplishments throughout the year
• Infographics that make it easy to understand statistics and data
• Animations that make reading your report more engaging
• Interactive maps that display your nonprofit’s reach

Whatever you choose to include, be sure that the style and colors match your nonprofit’s branding. By doing so, you’ll increase brand recognition and enhance the credibility of your annual report. Furthermore, make your annual report more accessible to all of your stakeholders by adding alternative (alt) text to your images and adding subtitles to your videos.

5. Consider Enlisting Expert Help

There’s a lot that goes into crafting an inspiring and impactful annual report, from pinpointing relevant data points to gathering powerful stories that capture the full extent of your nonprofit’s impact. However, the process doesn’t have to be overwhelming, nor does it have to put a strain on your staff’s already limited time. There are plenty of experts you can enlist to engage your stakeholders and plan your annual report according to their preferences and interests.

While researching consulting options, be sure to find professionals with specialized experience working with nonprofits. They’ll understand your needs and the importance of connecting with your supporters. According to Laridae’s guide on nonprofit consultants, these experts can lend their knowledge to support your organization in a variety of ways, such as:

• Strategic planning
• Communications
• Governance
• Human Resources
• Fundraising
• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)
• Finance
• Legal Support

A nonprofit consultant can not only take a significant load off your staff members when it comes to producing an effective annual report, but they can also apply the latest tips and best practices to help you maximize your results.

Your nonprofit’s annual report is so much more than a quick summary. This document is your chance to showcase all the remarkable work you’ve collectively accomplished in the past year, whether that’s investing in nonprofit management training to improve your team efficiency or launching a new project to better serve your community.

Then, once you have a report that will inspire supporters with all that you’ve done together, add clear calls to action (CTAs) to encourage further engagement. These CTAs could be anything from sharing your annual report to registering for your next fundraising event. This will set you up for even more successes to include in your next year’s report!