Annual report Archives | The Better Fundraising Company

The following is a hand-picked guest post from John Lepp. Enjoy, and you can read more about John below.

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I know we like to believe that one of our donors is sitting in their armchair, maybe beside a fire, with a hot cup of tea and their beloved cat purring on their lap waiting… listening… for that clang and tiny screech as the metal flap on their mail box shuts, thus ensuring the safe arrival of your latest annual report.

We imagine them flinging poor Ron, the cat, off their laps and jumping to their feet! “WOOHOOOOO!!!! My charity’s annual report has ARRIVED TODAY!!!!”

Don’t we imagine that?

What if I could tell you 3 ways you might be able to get your donor to do JUST that, next time you send them your annual report?

1. Do you want to read an ‘annual report’?

Probably not.

68 pages of 8 point reversed type that adheres to your soul destroying, dumpster burning, graphic standards that some art director from a commercial agency put together and that you now must religiously stick to so that – lord forbid – you do not go ‘off brand’… whatever that means.

68 pages of all of the amazing things that every board member has ever thought of in their entire life about their fantastic accomplishments, page after page of stats, people holding big checks, figures, infographics, pie charts and names of your most important donors (ie: the rich ones). Do you want to read that?

No? Shocker.

Consider, my friends, the idea of a gratitude report. In a nutshell, a gratitude report is only as long as it needs to be. A report that tells your donors a love-filled story about something they made possible by their giving, is filled with plenty of you’s, shares the nutshell successes of how you continue to meet the needs of your mission with their amazing support and is inclusive of all donors.

Not just the rich ones.

2. Can you tell a fantastic story?

I have 3 examples.

i) From a women’s shelter. We were handed Ana’s story, written by her own hand, telling of her abuse by her partner. It was a story of how she found herself in a country without any support from friends or family. This story was not watered down by the head of comms or edited by a committee of 8 people in a circulated, tracked changes word file… It was her story – from her hand to our eyes. And I wanted to honour her without sensationalizing her.

This was the cover of the report.

White handwriting on a black cover. No logo. Do you want to see what she shares next? Of course you do. You can download the whole report here.

ii) For a hospital foundation. Getting your donor’s attention isn’t enough. But it IS getting harder to do even that every day. And if we can get their attention, we must reward them for it. For this gratitude report we started with a simple illustration of a bandaid, covered in cupcakes and put that on the cover. It says:

“Because of you, I’m not just a flexible bandaid. And, I know I’m not the sort of thing you’d find on the cover of a report, but here we are. I may seem like a small and insignificant player in the context of a hospital, but with your help, I have a big impact. You give me the power of healing many humans, big and small. I think of River. She came in last week with her mom for her COVID-19 booster. River was crying and holding her mom’s hand, but the moment she saw me, all covered in cupcakes, she stopped crying. We soothed her. You and I. (Ok, maybe the cupcakes had something to do with it too.) Thank you for giving me that gift.”

Fully utilizing the full universe of interesting voices around you (beyond the blah, blah blah of your professional leaders) can show your donors a different perspective to their giving that they might not be aware of. Also, make sure to focus on the big and small ways that donor gifts can make a difference.

iii) For a hospice. Focus on ALL your donors. This report focused on why donors, giving big and small gifts, care so deeply about this mission and cause. It is filled with the emotional WHY they care and give.

This is a fantastic example of social proof. Your donor is sipping her tea and feeling echoes of her own feelings and thoughts about her connection to the cause.

I especially like this report because we used the visual theme of a quilt. For anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting (and even if you haven’t), you would see these quilts hung around various parts of the ‘house’. These quilts are tributes and symbols of the lasting memories of those beautiful souls that have passed on while in the care of this organization.

You can download the whole report here.

3. Who should get it?

We typically do a small print run. Yes, that’s right.

We actually mail out printed copies of the report. We put it in a 9” x 12” envelope with first class postage with a cover letter attached to it and a personal, handwritten note, ideally from a board member or ED.

We only mail it to the TOP 20% of your donors. Since you likely are getting 80% of your revenue from these folks day after day, you can make the case that they are the ones that care the most about you. Mid level to high level donors, monthly donors, legacy donors, loyal donors (of any gift size) typically fall into this category.

For the rest of your donors that you have a mail address for, send them a postcard with an image of your striking cover, letting them know you have created something JUST FOR THEM and they can call you or email you (an actual person please) and ask for their own copy.

Yes, post a version of it on your website. Yes, email a link for it to your donors that you have emails for, with a personal email suggesting why they might want to look at it and why you would be more than happy to talk to them about it if they have any questions.

Do you want to create annual reports that you hate doing and no one wants to read?

Do you want to craft loving gratitude reports for your beautiful donors, these amazing humans that make your missions hopes, dreams and values come true?

Agents of Good are experts at bringing these reports to life – contact me, John Lepp, at john@agentsofgood.org if you want to talk about your next gratitude report that will leave your donors SPRINGING from their chair (and hopefully not harming the cat in the process!).

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Steven says: “The following is a guest post from John Lepp, the co-founder of Agents of Good in Toronto. John has the best understanding of how fundraising actually works that I’ve ever met, and then he ‘turns it up to 11’ by being a great guy to hang out with. You should subscribe to his blog here.”

If you’ve been thinking about no longer printing and sending your Annual Report, keep reading.

But for you “Steven, just tell me what to do” people, here’s the summary: if you have a good donor-centered newsletter, published multiple times per year, you don’t need to send your annual report to the vast majority of your donors.

Because they don’t need it. And in all likelihood, it’s a waste of money.

Annual Reports Meet a Need… in the PAST

My personal theory is that in the past, annual reports served a useful purpose for donors:

They made the organization look professional
They made the organization look like they are good at what they do
They showed some of the impact that the organization made

All good things.

But here’s the Main Thing: most donors, most of the time, don’t make their giving decisions based on whether an organization is professional or good at what they do.

Smart fundraisers have figured out that most donors make their decisions based on how you make them feel. On emotions.

(I should mention that annual reports are very good at generating one emotion in donors: boredom.)

A Better Idea: Make Your Donors Feel Their impact

How do you make donors feel strong emotions? Send them a donor-centered newsletter that focuses on the donor’s role in the work your organization does, not on your organization’s role. Tell stories of individuals, and tell the stories with emotion.

Those emotional stories that show a donor what her gift did are what makes so many people give gifts in response to receiving a newsletter.

Listen to that again: when you send donors a good newsletter, donors respond with gifts.

When you send them an annual report – no matter how good it is – what do they respond with?

Nothing.

So you get to pick. The choice is pretty clear.

The Two Mis-directed Arguments to Send Your Annual Report

There are two arguments against cancelling your annual report. Neither hold water (in my experience) and they go something like this:

“Even though donors don’t respond, we know they like it and it helps drive future gifts.” I have cancelled a bunch of annual reports over the last ten years. We have NEVER seen a drop in giving. Not even once.
“We must give it to Major Donors, they need it.” No, they don’t. They do need regular Reports on what their giving has accomplished. The annual report is, at best, an OK Report. What’s far better? Customized reports that are aligned with the donor’s passions and interests. Stories of beneficiaries. Pictures of beneficiaries. Meetings on site. Etc. All higher effort than sending an annual report, and all more effective.

The Real Reason to Keep Your Annual Report

There’s one very good reasons to keep your annual report:

You have some Foundation partners, and/or large grantors, who require an annual report.

Then, by all means, make them one. But figure out exactly the requirements and just do that. Don’t do anything else. And print it only for them (if they even need it!).

What to Do With Your Freed-Up Time and Money

Create a donor-centered newsletter. Or if you already have one, make and send another issue. A great newsletter will outperform – and cost less than – an annual report.

Another idea we’re seeing that’s working: about once a month, have your ED send out an email that tells the story of one beneficiary. Make it feel really personal. Strip out as much of your organization’s standard email formatting as you can.

If You Are Forced To Do an Annual Report

If the Powers That Be require you to make an annual report, try to make it a Gratitude Report.

I first heard this idea from Agents of Good in Toronto. It’s a bit of a mind-hack, because the simple reframing of the name helps people see that even though the content is largely the same as an annual report, the goal of the content is to express gratitude to donors for their role. So the “Letter from the Executive” gets written to express gratitude, rather than the standard chest-thumping. The headlines are written to use the word “you,” which makes the content more likely to be read.

But here’s the thing; I think a Gratitude Report is pretty much the same thing as a donor-centric newsletter. Both of them focus on the donor’s role, not the organization. Both of them give credit to the donor.

You can do either one. Do both!

If you can’t do that, do the work to get your annual report stakeholders – the people who feel powerfully about it – to clearly define the purpose of the report and how you are going to measure success. Then measure it to see if it achieves that purpose. And think hard to see if there’s something else you could do to achieve that purpose for less money.

I bet you’ll come back to two ideas: a donor-centered newsletter or a Gratitude Report.

A Big Opportunity…

If you’re still doing a classic annual report, you have a big opportunity in front of you. How are you going to use it?

Tag: Annual report

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