- As with everything, consider your purpose and audience before you begin. Publicly held companies and some nonprofits in some regions are required to produce an annual report for financial transparency. Other nonprofits and businesses often produce them to share relevant data and promote their missions. Before you write, make a list of what kinds of information you must legally include and what would be most relevant and useful to your audience.
- Organize your financial data first. This information won’t come first in your report, but you’ll need to understand it as you write the rest. If you’re a nonprofit, you’ll want to include an analysis of funding streams and an overview of your resource development plan. If you’re a for-profit business, make sure you include an income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet, as well as a statement to shareholders. Make sure you present your financial data in an easily digestible way. Include all necessary information, visual representations of the data, and a narrative.
- Include a letter from your CEO or Executive Director. This should be a high level overview of your finances and activities for the year, along with a message about where you’re headed. Strike the right tone for your audience. No nonsense shareholders may want a mostly factual narrative, whereas some organizations will do well to strike an inspirational tone.
- Write an overview of your business or organization. Include your background, mission, and highlights of your strategic plan, as well as an overview of your industry and industry-wide conditions. Describe your key products or services and your competition along with what sets you apart. Introduce your Board of Directors and/or management team. Briefly provide the results of annual SWOT analyses, customer and staff satisfaction surveys, and any other relevant data.
- Create a section where you can brag! Make sure you highlight your accomplishments. Focus on impact to customers, clients, and your community. Discuss new partnerships and products. How have you grown? This is also a good place to show optimism about the future, along with some practical steps you’re taking to get there.
- Analyze the business as a whole. For the sake of transparency, disclose both positive and negative information here. Talk about your goals from last year and whether or not they were met. Discuss your day to day challenges and triumphs.
- Thank your shareholders, customers, clients, donors, sponsors, investors, and anyone else who contributed to your success. Celebrate your community.
- Organize your information in the expected way: Letter from the CEO or ED, Overview, Highlights, Finances, Business Analysis, and then everything else.
- Make thoughtful design choices. In any document that has a lot of information, you want to choose a design that’s simple enough to not distract from the data. Make sure to provide enough white space and some graphic elements to break up long chunks of text. Consider having more than one format available, especially if you’re leaning towards print. Many people will prefer to read the report electronically. Additionally, interactive elements will hold more people’s attention for longer periods of time. At the very least, provide some sort of digital access. Consider interactive pdfs, responsive web pages, or a video of highlights that can be clicked to read the full report.
Substance and Style 