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A Report Is a Report Is a Report—Or Is It?

By Flickr user Dominic's pics
Along with falling leaves and various forms of holiday excess, autumn turns up the page on many nonprofits' to-do list that says "Prepare the Annual Report."

Annual reports make their appearance after the end of the fiscal year and can serve an important function as a recap of the organization's contributions to the community and a demonstration of the organization's stewardship of its resources.

The term "annual report" can cover a lot of variations. For some organizations, the annual report is a perfunctory couple of columns of numbers buried in the back of a newsletter. For others, it may be a showy multi-page document prepared with the help of specialists in accounting, copywriting, and design.

Marketing guru Seth Godin and the Community Leadership program at Canada's Dalhousie University both suggest that most nonprofits should view the annual report primarily as an opportunity to tell the organization's story. And a financial summary for the recent year is often seen as a required element in the report; not saying anything about finances in a document called "Annual Report" would probably raise the anxiety level of some readers—a result most nonprofits probably want to avoid.

Godin and Dalhousie are both cited in a recently updated entry in Idealist's Nonprofit FAQ, along with other comments from experts about what needs to go into an annual report. Timely help with planning the annual report is just one of the useful items to be found in this collection of Frequently Asked Questions covering every aspect of nonprofit organizations and their work.


This entry is by Put, the editor of the Nonprofit FAQ.