Every year around this time, a well-intentioned nonprofit team sits down to produce its annual or impact report and runs headlong into the same production problems their counterparts ran into the year before.

The good news is that the most common pitfalls in report production aren’t production problems at all. They’re planning problems — which means they’re solvable, and they’re solvable now before your team gets overwhelmed with other pressing year-end pressures.

We’ve had the privilege of being entrusted with the writing and design of enough organizations’ year-end reports to recognize some common patterns that can derail even the best of teams. Here are the four that show up most reliably — and what to do about each one while there’s still time.

1. Treating design as the last step

Design should not be decoration applied at the end of your report writing process. It’s how your content communicates. Your annual or impact report’s structure and visual decisions tell a reader what matters and in what order. When design comes in after copy is fully approved, the result is almost always a compromise: copy that was written for one structure gets forced into another, important content gets cut to fit, and the finished piece feels like it’s working against itself.

The prevention move is a brief conversation with your designer — internal or external — well before production begins. Share your format thinking, the kinds of stories you’re hoping to tell, your rough sense of audience, and length.

(Looking for design inspiration? Here are 5 annual and impact report designs — including one we produced!)

2. Writing by committee

A report written by committee almost always reads like one. The voice shifts from section to section, and sentences get hedged into vagueness by well-meaning reviewers who each add a qualifier. Beyond that, decisions that could’ve been made in 5 minutes by one person take three email threads and a meeting to resolve. And somehow the final document manages to please everyone involved while moving no one who reads it.

Collaborative input is valuable. Collaborative decision-making over final copy, however, is not. To prevent this pitfall, name one person who will own the final editorial call. Others can give input in early-stage review rounds, but ultimately, one person should be trusted to accept or reject changes. Making the decision before report production kicks off eliminates the single most common source of production delay and voice dilution in the entire process.

3. Forgetting distribution planning

Organizations can spend weeks (sometimes months) getting their annual or impact report right, but without a clear plan for sharing the final product with their audiences, all that work might be for naught.

Treating distribution planning as an afterthought can present a huge, last-minute challenge. Beyond potentially not having email outreach lists prepped or having to rush a plan for accompanying social and promotional assets, your report’s fundamental visual design may be in jeopardy. Why? Your report’s distribution medium affects the format, which affects the content. A report designed primarily to live on your website looks different from one meant to be printed out and handed to donors at a year-end event. Will your report be viewed as a horizontal double-page spread? Or a single page at time in a vertical PDF? To avoid problems down the road, be sure your team is in alignment on how your report will reach its audience well before you decide what goes in it.

4. Producing for internal pride rather than audience need

This one can be hard to catch because it masquerades as thoroughness. Your program team wants their work fully represented, your development director wants to acknowledge every event they supported, and your executive director wants to include detailed explanation of a strategic pivot that took 6 months to execute. All these desires are understandable; however…

Reports produced for internal pride rather than audience need end up longer, denser, and less read than they should be. Prevent this pitfall with a simple two-question test. Before you gather a single piece of content, consider: who is our report for, and what do we want them to feel or do after reading? Between now and publication, evaluate every content decision against those answers. If a section can’t justify itself by that measure, it doesn’t belong in the report.

The Bottom Line

None of these considerations requires immediate action or final decisions today, but taking some time to think through them will ultimately help your team produce a truly impactful report, seamlessly.

Need support bringing your report to life?

Next Stage partners with social good organizations, from nonprofits and health care organizations to government agencies and philanthropic foundations, to produce impact and annual reports that actually get read — and acted on by the people who read them.

Our report work includes:

• Stakeholder interviews and community story capture
• Content strategy and message development
• Writing and editorial direction
• Graphic design and layout 
• Full-service production management from kickoff to review rounds to final distribution

If your organization is seeking a better way to tell your story this year, we’d welcome a conversation. Schedule a free consultation today.