Right, we get it. You don’t have time to read the rest of the article.
So here’s the TLDR, in case you were rushing.
When I was studying my social work degree in the U.K., I spent years trawling through the annual reports of charities in Singapore, trying to figure out where they were seeing challenges in society, how they were tackling such challenges, and what progress on these challenges had been.
You might call me a nerd.
But I definitely was passionate about the social sector, and trying my best of ways to think of how best to contribute.
The myth about annual reports
Whenever we talk to charities about annual reports, we find that some of the most common misconceptions surround how the annual report is not usually read.
After all, if you look at annual reports, they might seem to be some of the most boring documents.
And why bother spending somewhere between 4000 to 5000 on designing an annual report? Is it really worth it?
Yet within the world of investing, annual reports are the key signal of a company’s health and whether a company is worth investing in.
But in charities, do annual reports matter?
I put it to you that they do.
Asking people to give into something they will never get back
If we think about charities, they are often asking stakeholders (like government agencies) and donors to trust them.
Few know if what they do will work.
But they show based on their track record that they can deliver outcomes.
That’s why the Government has trusted them over and over with millions of dollars in grants.
And that’s why being professional about how they communicate their impact through the annual report has been such a key focus of their work.
If we look at Allkin’s Annual Report 2023, they have clearly spent a large amount of thought thinking about what goes into this year’s report. Built around this idea of ‘bumping spaces’, signifying a term from community development where people naturally bump into each other.
What I found even more curious was that they invested in a creative agency to do an ‘interactive experience’, something you would find more from a listed company, than a charity.
It’s clear how important they see this annual report work as.
What can we learn from them in terms of templating?
The Commissioner of Charities Singapore has made a big effort in providing a template charities (and listed companies) can follow. Follow that (click to see the template) and you probably won’t go wrong.
But beyond just words on a page, are there better ways to write them?
Let’s take a leaf out of the best annual reports we’ve seen.
The template is simple.
Just include:
- About us
- Overview of Charity
- Welcome Message from the Chairman and/or CEO
- Leadership
- Highlights of the year
- Your work: Programmes and Milestones
- The Year Ahead
- Governance (Financial snapshots)
You would be quite safe with the format above. But what will make it different?
Read on.
Start with an overarching theme
If you remember the best movies you’ve watched, they often have a ‘red thread’ that ties them together.
Finding this for a charity’s year can be difficult, especially when the work seems to be in so many different areas.
Some mistakes we often see is just picking something. The other mistake is picking something that doesn’t fit the overall theme.
Children Society’s theme of 2023 was ‘Breaking Barriers, Building Dreams’, and this was deeply woven through their entire annual report.
If you look at their next pages, you would have seen that the motif of ‘breaking free’, whether it be through being thrown in the air by their friends, or having dreams like the trumpet to pursue, they allow for a much easier way of creating congruence throughout the annual report.
How can you pick better?
My advice? Structure the whole thing first with the template above, before thinking about whether there’s an overall theme.
When you write down in point form the different ideas you have for each section, you will slowly be able to think of some themes.
Bounce them off your boss, and you will quickly be able to pick something that works.
The Welcome Message shares (or reiterates) a visionary big idea
The tempting part of starting the annual message is to start with what you’ve done.
But that’s not visionary enough to be different. What’s going to differentiate what you say with what anyone can find on Google? If we are honest, for someone who does not regularly interact with your charity, the only place they can hear you speak is through the annual report. And that’s why moving away from what Michael Port calls ‘Expertville’ to Visionary Town may be something that works better.
If we look at Allkin’s Message from Chairman and CEO in their Annual Report 2024, we would quickly see that they had a big idea embedded within.
Since Allkin’s strategic transformation, we have made a shift from prescribing remedial solutions to co-creating inventive approaches alongside beneficiaries, with the end goal of uplifting them.
Allkin Annual Report 2023
Their big idea was moving from giving people the help, to creating the solutions with them.
When you’re thinking of your next message, take time to think about:
- A belief your organisation has that’s different from most others
Use stories to do ‘Highlights of the Year’
Facts tell, stories sell.
Just throwing more numbers about how many beneficiaries you’ve worked with over the year may not be the most effective. It might be more useful to actually tell readers a personal story of how you impacted them.
Often these stories are not hard to find.
All that’s needed is an ask.
Allkin also used stories to demonstrate their highlights.
Layering it for the Reader
As writers ourselves, one thing our editors always taught us was to ‘signpost’ what was being said.
We particularly enjoyed how Allkin did it.
They put up section breaks that highlighted how the annual report was going to proceed, and this helped them in being able to build something that was more organised.
When a reader reads, remember that they are probably skimming.
They are scrolling quickly through the screen, trying to grab little nuggets of information.
The report needs to make it easy for them to do that.
Short, sharp and punchy.
And that’s probably how you should keep your annual report. Fun, interesting, and not too dull.