196. Your Playbook for Creating an Engaging Digital Annual Report - Josh Kligman
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Overview
Meet Josh. He believes it's time for your annual report to undergo a makeover. In fact, he believes your annual report has tremendous potential to get your donor engaged and actually reading that report by leveraging digital reports, polls, videos, and the kind of attention-grabbing features you couldn’t include with your basic print version. Tune in and hear about the future of digital publications. We're also chatting about important annual report elements and the importance of digital storytelling🎧
Today’s Guest
Josh Kligman, Co-Founder, Yearly
“To me, the reports that really tend to break the mold use interactive or graphic elements. Tell a story in some kind of different format to stand out. And that’s where I think digital really can shine for nonprofits.”
Episode Transcript
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Episode highlights
Josh’s story and journey to where he is today (3:00)
An overview of Yearly and how nonprofits can leverage it (4:00)
The key elements to a great annual report (8:40)
How to create innovative and surprising annual reports (11:00)
Syndicating this content: use your annual report all year! (16:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Josh’s life (24:00)
Josh’s One Good Thing: Don’t give up. (27:00)
Powerful quotes
“I was working at a nonprofit building annual reports, and realized that our team was spending so much time and so much effort and budget creating the reports and didn't really know of, you know, a better way at the time.” -Josh
“We realized it was such a pain point for nonprofits and foundations, even associations to build these and have them look really nice and polished. We have to find a way for the playing field to be level so that all nonprofits can have that same great access to build something really nice.” -Josh
“We realized that nonprofits at that time weren't looking to spend extra money, because budgets were, a stopping point, really. We just decided, for now, let's, have our company, focus on making a free platform, and just give that access point out to as many nonprofits as possible, and then work on building a really great model for nonprofits do extra things with with more features down the line.” -Josh
“Your report should be a simple linear type expression of who your organization is, and how you affect your community. The reports have to tell a story, but need the basic components like an introduction from the head of your organization, information about how you use your budget throughout the year in terms of telling stories of the change made through programs and events, of course, followed by your financial expenses and revenue and thanking your donors.” -Josh
“To me, the reports that really tend to break the mold and find either those interactive or graphic elements to do so. Tell a story in some kind of different format to stand out. And that's where I think digital really can shine for nonprofit.” -Josh
“The idea of gearing up towards your Annual Report season is really taxing.” -Josh
“At the end of the day, you really have to think about what your audience wants to hear, and you're competing for their time.” -Josh
“Storytelling through a digital lens is different than print.” -Josh
“Each story that you're telling within your report, can be broken out and can be its own post, or can be a the beginning of a teaser that you have within an email that leads to a post on your blog.” -Josh
“What if you make a mistake? The best thing about digital is you just go back and correct it and refresh your page.” -Josh
“Building a report yourself is the next iteration of annual reports. You don't have to have this grand vision for what it looks. We did all that work for you already in the platform, you just have to have that idea of how you're going to tell your story.” -Josh
Connect with Josh and Yearly
LinkedIn / Website / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
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