Guest post: 10 things to consider when designing your annual report

Linda Henneman, ThinkDesign

Over the years, I’ve been in charge of developing a dozen annual reports for large foundations. For some of them, I was lucky enough to work with ThinkDesign Group. Their award winning work is known for its powerful interplay of text and design. For this guest post on annual reports, it was a no-brainer to turn to Linda Henneman, creative principal at ThinkDesign.

My nonprofit clients are producing annual reports this year, despite the economic downturn. Together, we’re creating pieces that are appropriate for the times. Like them, you too may be faced with a complex story to tell, with only a few pages to tell it on—most likely on a trimmed budget.

While addressing the reality of the economy is important, it need not be all doom and gloom. Instead, your audience needs to know that supporting your organization’s work now is more important than ever. So focus on setting the tone through a reassuring voice and compelling design, and be assured you won’t need to break the bank.

Remember, an annual report is your chance to talk to the people who have been passionate enough to support you financially. So create a solid annual, they’ll appreciate it!

1. How to think about the strategy behind the annual report

• Yes, it’s a report addressing the past year, but make it even more useful by placing focus on the future.
• What’s your message? It must be aligned with the needs of your organization, concise, true in good times and in bad, and delivered with confidence. Your message should convey the essence of your organization.
• You’re talking to your supporters, but it’s also a great opportunity to talk to a new audience. Balance the “choir” audience and the potential new audience. Keep in mind that your supporters may also need help understanding the nuances of what you do.

2. Key leadership needs to be a part of the process

• This is true from the initial discussion to choosing concepts. This is a piece that is the voice and vision of the leaders. Hearing directly from them is critical in setting the right tone.

3. Bring the designer and writer in early, they’ll help spark the process

• The writer and designer can get the process started by being the outside voice and getting the focus off of the “internal speak.” Designers are problem solvers by training, and can offer ideas to overcome challenges. A good writer can inform the design and make the whole piece stronger, so get them on board from day one.
• Provide your design team with the details they need to make your annual report stand out.

4. Start Early

• Give yourself enough time, between three and four months. Forcing it into a shorter amount of time will only increase cost, errors, and stress. Your annual report concepting process can be a great opportunity to evaluate, revise, and reinforce your organization’s communications strategy.

5. The power of less copy & why writing shorter can be better

• Using minimal text with powerful images can make a strong statement; quickly. In today’s world, it needs to be quick. People are taking less time to read.

6. A great cover makes you think

• The cover should make you think. You should feel the urge to open it. And when you do, you get the payoff: your curiosity is satisfied.

7. Don’t neglect the mailing envelope

• The envelope needs to break through the mail pile. An odd size for a little extra “wow,” or try colored envelopes or add a teaser headline to spark interest.

8. What to look for in photos

• Photos don’t need to be literal—like people sitting around a table, working. Find more dynamic ways of telling your story.

9. Today’s green printing option

• Promoting green printing practices sends a powerful message and can motivate others to do the same.
• Choose a designer knowledgeable in eco-friendly paper and printing vendors. One that can help you make decisions on paper recycled content, vegetable-based inks. Look for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, renewable energies, efficiency in printing and press/paper setup.
• Be sure to add a simple line of text explaining how your piece was printed green, include all applicable “certified-green” logos.

10. Differentiate your report from others without breaking the bank

• It’s easy: a good concept, with strong messages, compelling visual, and clear, concise copy—and it doesn’t have to cost a lot to print. For instance, The Headwaters Foundation for Justice’s consistent, award winning annual reports are 2-color, use stock photography, and reprint efficiently on a sheet of paper.
• A good designer can help choose an appropriate printer for your specific project. Paper selection, production and printing techniques can all be ways to cut costs.
• Mailing cost is another area for potential savings. Consider smaller formats for lower postage costs.
• Order realistic quantities. It may be cheaper per piece to print more, but if you just throw them away it doesn’t save money or the planet.

Free tool of the week: Design Eye-Q

In a recent post on A List Apart, called In defense of eye candy, the author concludes this about attractive Web site design:

“The more we learn about people, and how our brains process information, the more we learn the truth of that phrase: form and function aren’t separate items. If we believe that style somehow exists independent of functionality, that we can treat aesthetics and function as two separate pieces, then we ignore the evidence that beauty is much more than decoration. Our brains can’t help but agree.”

This wisdom extends to all kinds of visual design beyond Web sites. Keep in mind that 2/3 of all the stimuli that reach the brain are visual, so the appearance of your communications is critical. Pleasing, well done design can play a big role in getting your communications looked at and read—no small feat in this cluttered world.

But many nonprofit staff aren’t  trained in visual design and may not know what to look for when they’re judging a designer’s work. Design Eye-Q to the rescue. Got an hour? Here’s a terrific free, 60-minute webinar that takes the mystery out of good design.

One in a series of great nonprofit resources produced by CauseCommunications, it will teach you the 10 questions you need to  ask when evaluating new Web pages, e-newsletters, annual reports, direct mail, or any other professionally designed communications.  You’ll learn about the different emotions that particular colors convey, what type face to use when, things to consider when you’re designing a logo, why eye patterns are important, and other valuable tips.

After reviewing examples of design evaluated by experts in this webinar, you’ll feel much more confident that you’re making the best design decisions for your organization and your audience. (Plus, it’s fun!)

Once you’ve done the webinar, you might want to check out Donor Power Blog’s Stupid Nonprofit Ads archive and Vincent Flander’s irreverant Web Pages That Suck (his checklists are very useful)–another source for what not to do and why. Then jump over to the Council on Foundation’s annual excellence in communication awards for an archive of some great designs in annual reports, magazines, reports, campaigns, and Web sites. The more examples you see of poorly done and well done designs, the better you’ll be able to judge what designers give you.

Free tool of the week: Tutorials on taking better photos

flickr/turkguy0391

In my last post, I encouraged budget-conscious nonprofit staff members to consider taking their own digital photographs instead of hiring professionals every time they need images for Web sites or publications.

But I also cautioned that those photos had better be good, or you really haven’t saved any money. You’ve just compromised the quality of your communications.

Spend 20 minutes a week on these few sites to become a much better photographer. As powerful as visual images are, it’s well worth the effort to master the basics of this art form. (Oh, and the first rule is READ YOUR CAMERA’S MANUAL!)

Start with Amateur Snapper’s 10 top photographic composition rules and Digital Photography Schools’ composition tips.

Then explore DPS’s 10 ways to take stunning portraits and idigitalphoto’s list of 60-second lessons to improve your photography.

Finally, check out 10 questions to ask yourself before you take the photo.

And don’t forget to explore free online photo editing applications like Picasa, Piknik, and Gimp.

NOTE: At long last I’ve added the page of nonprofit social media case studies I promised a couple of months ago. If you’ve got a good candidate to add, please let me know in a comment. Thanks.

31 ways for nonprofits to save money on communications

flickr/Daniel Y. Go

If you’re really chafing under 2009 budget constraints, try this exercise.

List all your communications projects for the rest of this budget year and prioritize each from the standpoint of how important it is in meeting your strategic communications objectives. Eliminate the bottom 20% of that list.

It may seem drastic, but it also might surprise you how little effect it has on your communications impact. There’s never been a better time to cut programs and products that don’t contribute significantly to your end goals. It can give you extra time and money to focus on more effective tactics.

Below are some other ways you can squeeze impact from a smaller budget. But first, a word of caution.

You’re top priority is always effectiveness. If you find cheap paper but it doesn’t do what you need it to do, or you find an internal staff member who can take photos but they aren’t high quality–those savings are not really savings. The goal is to explore small ways of cutting costs without lessening the impact of your communications. Keep that in mind as you look over this list of ideas.

• Cut down on meeting time. Free your staff up to get more work done so you have to outsource less. Eliminate most information-sharing meetings by using other kinds of internal communication. Meet only when you need a decision or action.
• Hold your staff accountable for managing their budgets. Monitor slippage and tie it to performance review.
• Attack all areas of cost, not just what you spend out-of-pocket. Look at internal staffing/overhead costs, and ask the tough question: Would I better off outsourcing this function?
• Curb your enthusiasm. Do what you absolutely need to do well. Then—only if you have extra time and money—take on new projects. This is a time to think about what you can take off your plate, not what you can add.
• Find volunteers, unpaid interns, or short-term lower-paid staff to keep up with the daily routine of maintaining relationships and accurate contact data, and doing follow-up tasks. Once the routine has been explained, these workers shouldn’t require a lot of supervision.
• Cull and update your mailing lists. You cannot believe how much postage you’ll waste if you don’t. Add “address service requested” to the mailing label of one of your newsletters (or another mailer) to improve the accuracy of your list.
• Be ruthless about which publications you really need to produce. Don’t rely on: “We’ve always done it this way.”
• Eliminate some of your printed publications and publish online PDFs instead, to save on printing and mailing.
• Group print jobs together to save on press time. This means you have to plan in advance.
• Have your printer/designer analyze everything from paper stock and size to number of halftones and colors to see if you can shave costs.
• For important publications, ask your designers to try to leverage free or discounted paper from paper companies.
• Take your own digital photos and video. There are plenty of online sources that can teach you to do this well. (My Thursday blog post this week will give you some resources for this.)
• Use free online stock photos. (See my April 16 post for sources.)
• Can you eliminate a conference or workshop and replace it with a less expensive webinar?
• Ask your board members if they know printing or design vendors who might offer discounts or even pro bono work to your nonprofit.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel unless you have to. Adapt the great ideas of others (but absolutely no plagiarism!) There are many places online to find design inspirations for all kinds of communications.
• Instead of attending professional conferences, make use of free professional development opportunities online in the field of communications (webinars, blogs, etc.).
• Use every free tool you can get on the internet—photo and audio editing tools, jargon finders, Web site analytics, PitchEngine, Google Docs, SlideShare, JS-Kit, and much more. (For ideas, select “freetools” on the ImpactMax tagcloud. I highlight a new free tool every Thursday.)
• If you’re still using a clipping bureau to track media coverage of your organization, use free online Google alerts instead. Set up alerts for your organization’s name and acronym, your CEO’s name, and other top executives’ names. You can also set up temporary alerts for special keywords related to your media relations tactics.
• If you’re considering using a low-cost, online vendor for emails, enewsletters, teleconferences, or webinars, be sure to take advantage of the free trials they offer to test their services.
• Small nonprofits may want to put wish lists for in-kind contributions in their newsletters (e.g., perfectly working electronics like digital cameras, video cams, printers, etc. and new office supplies—whatever is needed).
• If you need a quick, low-cost design, consider 99 designs, where you can hold a little online contest for a project.
• Talk to instructors at local colleges offering design courses to see if you can make the design of one of your major publications into a class assignment or contest. This takes advance planning to give instructors enough time to prepare. Be sure you control the final decision.
• Talk to journalism or creative writing program graduate program directors to explore what kind of talented writing interns you might be able to place with your organization.
• Cut spending on special events and galas. Think about lower cost events that have more of a programmatic context.
• Do more fundraising through email than higher cost direct mail. (But make it permission based.)
• Use free Web 2.0 media as alternatives to traditional paid communication channels. But remember, while they’re free, these media take staff time and thoughtful planning to use well.
• Use email news releases rather than printed snail mail. You save on paper, printing, and postage, and reporters prefer email.
• Explore partnerships with businesses related to your issues or in your geographic area. They can sponsor events, underwrite publications and advertising, etc. But know they will want recognition in return.
• Leverage your staff expertise. Encourage staff members to publish articles and accept speaking engagements to help you raise your organization’s visibility.
• Network, network, network. Partner and collaborate to cut costs. Share video cams. Share webmasters. Share copywriters.

What cost-saving ideas would you add to this list?

Thanks to LinkedIn contributors Janet de Acevedo Macdonald, Bridget Bevis, Jonathan Carter, Jill Eckhoff-King, Elizabeth Flynn, Jeffrey Kramer, Randy Milanovic, and Ed Peabody. Their smart ideas are part of this list.

CC photo credit: Daniel Y. Go

Free tool of the week: Stock photos online

flickr/naixn

What nonprofit isn’t hungry for great FREE photos for publications, online communications, and presentations?

I blogged a while back about flickr’s Creative Commons licensed photos, which can be used free with proper credit given to the photographer. But here’s a  list of other online sources for free stock photos, many of which are recommended by photographer Robin Good. It may take some time to find exactly what you’re after on these sites, but it an also save you photography fees in lean times.

Just a suggestion—if you use photos from any of these sources, it would be a nice idea to give credit to the photographer. These artists have been very generous to allow their shots to be used without charge for non-commercial uses. Return the favor.

• If you want to start collecting some great generic photos, go to iStockphoto every week and download their free photo of the week.

• For more than 100,000 free photos, go to the stock.exchng. It’s an impressive collection of high-quality photos taken by amateur photographers from around the world. (Good does mention that at times this site is hard to access because of heavy traffic.)

• FreeRangeStock contains a collection of free high resolution photos. All photos are already sharpened, distortion corrected, and color corrected. Some have been manipulated in Photoshop to make them more effective.

• All the images at Open Stock Photography come from Wikimedia Commons and can be used by anyone, for any purpose. A unique feature on this site is the color search where you can pick a color from the color wheel or enter the hexadecimal code to find images that match a particular color. The feature requires patience as the site searches the extensive database for matching colors.

• Images from fotogenica.net are organized into a handful of categories (lifestyle, business, computers, travel, etc.).

• If you’re after photos of textures to use in your work, check out Mayang’s Free Texture Library—a collection of nearly 4,000 textures, doors, windows, signs, paint effects, and aerial views.

• For free large format photos, go to FreeLargePhotos and drool over the gorgeous landscapes and many other kinds of photography—nearly 3,000 choices.

• The morguefile free photo reference archive provides more than a thousand free photos every month.

• FreePhotosBank has some great stuff in a range of categories–for instance 54 free photos of currency! Who doesn’t need dollar shots these days.

• FreeFoto is the largest collection of free photos on the internet—124,000 and counting, including 300 shots of textures.

• StockVault offers over 13,000 free images in categories like objects, people, nature, design templates, buildings, seasonal, transportation, etc.

If you use any of these, please let me know which are your favorite sites! Good hunting…

CC photo credit: Naixn

Free tool of the week: Picnik makes your photos perfect

flickr/cobalt123

One thing that always makes me cringe is when I see lousy photos used by nonprofits in their print and electronic communications. Photography is such a powerful medium—nothing makes an emotional connection with viewers more quickly. It deserves to be respected for that power and used to full advantage.

I know that’s not easy for many nonprofits that don’t have access to: 1) great photos or 2) costly photoshop software. But now there’s Picnik—a free photo editing site that can help you make your photos the very best they can be. It’s so creative and fun, you’ll feel like an artist! A quick registration process and you’re all ready to upload photos from your computer, Picasa, Webshots, Photobucket, Facebook, and other online storage sites.

Keep in mind, that no photo editing software can really make up for poor composition, a shot that “says” nothing, or a shot that is completely out of focus. But Picnik can do about everything else–change color, change size, sharpen, change exposure, get rid of red eye, rotate, etc. And there’s a free advanced editing option with most of these features that lets you move a little farther toward perfection. (Note: There are other free photo editing sites online, but Picnik is my personal favorite.)

You can also use the Create function on Picnik to give unique artistic treatments to photos (e.g., neon, drawing, sepia tone, b/w, vignette, grain, etc.), add text and graphics, use different framing techniques, and create collages and slideshows. Here’s a short how-to video.

It’s probably worthwhile to issue a little warning not to go overboard with photo editing. What you’re after for the vast majority of your shots is good composition, contrast, exposure, focus, and accurate color. You don’t want to distract people with unnecessary special effects.

For $25, you can upgrade to premium membership and become the DaVinci of photo retouch. It’s a pretty reasonable price and you get some great additional effects and tools, but small nonprofits may not need that luxury. There’s enough on the free site to keep your creativity flowing for quite a while.

Other neat features include a Firefox browser add-on that lets you take screen shots of any Web page and manipulate it in creative ways. (Firefox is a terrific, fast, free browser you can download online.) Here’s a short video showing you what’s possible with that add-on.

I encourage nonprofits to spend time making their photographs the highest quality possible. It really boosts the impact of your communications.

Don’t forget to download my new, free 20-page eBook on best practices in nonprofit Web site design!

DOWNLOAD HERE: Best Practices: Nonprofit Web Site Design

CC photo credit: cobalt123