 Thank you so much for joining this webinar. I'm excited because I love looking at annual reports when they call my email. I look at the pictures. I look at Aretha's stories. So they really, really do mean a lot. And so we have some special guests here to talk about what makes a great digital annual report. My name is Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here at TechSoup. If this is your first time here on one of our webinars, this is how you engage. We use the Q&A to type your questions. Feel free to engage in the chat room as well. Check your email. We're going to send the slides. The links. They're going to show a lot of links. We'll send the links out with the video replay within 48 hours. If you need the closed caption, it's already on. Just tap that CC button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. So I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to our guest speaker. We have Josie, CEO and co-founder of Yearly. So, Jos, welcome. Thank you so much for being here today with us. And Kelsey, hi. I'm going to turn it over to you guys. Yeah, thanks, Aretha. I really appreciate it. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here and pull up some of our slides. And we're going to talk about what makes a great digital report. And we're going to talk about it through the lens of storytelling for your nonprofits and thinking about what can grab all of your stakeholders' attention, not just donors, but boards, volunteers, partners, and all the potential that's out there, those potential donors and potential board members you might be looking for, and potential community and public and private partners. A little bit about me, I'm in Washington, D.C. My company is Yearly. And Yearly is a platform that can make nonprofits, digital end reports, impact reports, board reports, event recaps for your organizations. We are a member of TechSoup and we're on there with a special for you and your colleagues. And my backgrounds before I started Yearly over the last 10 plus years or so was at a non-profit called 4-H in the United States doing positive youth development, and I was on the marketing team there. And I created a lot of annual reports over the years and various impact and donor reports that went back to stakeholders all over the country, both nationally, regionally, and then very locally. And some of the biggest challenges that I came across was making sure that the brand that I perceived at the level of being in the office was the same as people that were experiencing the impact that we created, and those that were kind of on the outskirts that may be individual donors but may not have a great idea of what all the programming is like. And there's a way to tie that altogether. And I think that comes through your presence on your website, the visibility that you have in your community, and reports that you put out throughout the year. So that's your moment really to tell your story and to get that donor's attention or let's just say that stakeholders' attention that may not be following with every single post that you put out on Facebook or may not be following with every event you have in the community, whether it's in person or virtually, but wants to connect on some level. And that's your opportunity to grab them. And a digital report is something that kind of looks like this. Here's an example that comes out of a group on campus at Stanford University. And they did a really nice job of just setting up a cover page that explains that they're about to do a recap. And when I start to scroll, just like on a regular webpage, they loop me in right away by talking about what they did during COVID, which is what this report happens to focus on with a quote from somebody who is actually in the community in a picture. And then I can see some stats and so on. And we're going to show you today some really concrete examples of our favorite dozen or so reports that we've seen out there and talk about why we think they're great reports. But what digital can do is set up more engaging content. If you look here, we have a table of contents that you can click on and move around. And that extra engagement point, I think for those stakeholders allows the report to become a little bit interactive. And it's a lot different than a static PDF or printed report. And we'll talk about those reasons why. So that's a bit about me and about yearly and a little bit about what we're going to talk about today. I want to introduce you to my colleague, Kelsey, who's joining us from California, and she's on our customer success team. And she'll let you tell a little bit more about her role and what she's going to chat about during this session. Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm excited to be here today. I am based out in California. So there's a bit of a time difference between me and Josh here. But I serve as customer success specialists. I'm really here to help organizations get through to the finish line of building their annual report and various types of reports. So really here to just walk everyone through the platform and just help guide you. So I wanted to share some different examples of things that I've seen this year that I really loved and really how to keep your audience engaged. Yeah. So we're going to we're going to come back to that in a few minutes. And Kelsey is going to walk you through her like top four examples that she's seen out there for really engaging digital reports. I want to focus on the storytelling to start. And I have a little recap of everything that I'm about to talk about. So this is a little bit of a cheat sheet. So don't read this or hear me kind of rattle off these five bullets and then hang up because I'm going to go into the details of each one. But I really like to cut to the chase, especially when I'm sitting in webinars, I want to know, well, what's the come? What is this really about? So we're going to lead up to these great examples who showed you one there, but we'll show you a lot more and we'll focus on specific aspects of it. But they they all have something in common. And that common thread is the really detailed storytelling that they have. And I think they're really great at identifying lead characters in the community that are part of the nonprofit that are that are telling those stories in their actual reports. And those stories are really, I call them family oriented. And what that means is that that the the stories have these lead characters that are closely related to the impact that was made, because it's one thing to talk about your organization and the the the changes that have happened to your your community or your stakeholders, because your organization is so great, that does mean something. But it means a lot more if you can tell that story through the lens of the people that were affected by your cause and how those donor dollars and those grants have affected those specific individuals. And I'll give a good example of that in a little bit. We'll also talk about engaging moments that the people reading your reports will remember. So I think that's through items that you can embed within a report, which is, as we'll show you a simple copy and paste of video and social media that already exists out there, that you already have, say on your Facebook page or on a YouTube channel, or somewhere else that you can include in your report. The best reports that we've seen that are web based are not long format with lots of text, and we'll show you those examples. It's a summary with short format text, and it's complemented by things like photos, maybe some infographic style big bolt metrics, like we did 100 great things this year, video and social media. Then we'll talk about saving time and money. And that's really simple. I mean, creating a report through digital is much quicker, especially when it comes to proofreading. I know that when I created reports in the past at a nonprofit, and I had lots of edits, like that's a spelled the donor's name wrong or even worse, a board member's name wrong. I didn't, you know, back then I had to go tell the graphic designer who was that like a small advertising agency type group that we need to make all these changes and send them over to another person. In this case with digital, I can either do it myself or tell the colleague that I have to have these edits, but at least I didn't go and print something with a mistake. I actually had a colleague, I think it was a boss actually, on the marketing communications team I was on, telling me that there'll always be one mistake in a big, big project like this that you make, like let's say spelling someone's name wrong. But it's really quick and easy when you're creating a webpage to go back and change that error before that person or maybe anybody really sees it. And of course with digital, you don't have to print either, which saves a lot of time and budget as well. So we'll also talk about examples within these reports that I keep mentioning of great introductory welcome letters or maybe even videos, what those stories look like, and how they're told through a copy of photos, video, and social media. Then there's a tracking of it and that comes down to the metrics so that you can say, all right, our whole team put in this effort of finding the stories and putting together the outline of what the report should look like. And we put in all this effort and then we promoted the report and what happened next. Are people reading it? I think the old way of creating reports is that you get it out there, you bring it to that meeting. Maybe there's a conference or a networking event that you have, let's say you're meeting with a potential donor and you leave that report as a leave behind. You don't know that they're opening or reading it, but one distinct advantage to digital reports, no matter how you create them, is that you can see how many people viewed it. And then there's tools like Google Analytics that make it really simple to see where those views are coming from, how much time people are spending on your report. So let's say you ask for donations through an annual report or an impact report. When that's done, you can look at how many people viewed it, how long they spent looking at it, where those views came from, and then you can say, all right, well, we had $1,500 in donations because of this specific effort from the report. You tie all that together and say, all right, we spent X number of hours creating the report. That's a good return compared to last year. Or if you've never done a report like that before, then you have your benchmark or baseline for the following year too. So we'll cover a lot of these things through examples. And I want to get into the storytelling because that's what it's all about. And what you see on the screen here is really a presentation that we created within the yearly platform. I keep a table of contents on the side. I'm going to take you through the storytelling now. And I want to start with what makes a great a great report. And a great report is certain components there, but the storytelling is going to be really important. There's a quote that a colleague of mine, Jeff, had shared with me once. So I'm going to read it to you here. Telling the story of your brand will immediately help set you apart from your competition. Your story is what makes you different and can help potential customers trust and become invested in you. I think one of the first things I learned when I came to work at a non-profit before yearly was that I had to rework the framework of that word competition. But there's a lot of great causes that people could give to, and donors are deciding where to put their dollars. And they're time too, not just with volunteering. But as I'm sitting here giving this presentation, I mean, my phone is off, but it could still buzz 10,000 times. And then I'm going to look at it afterwards, or what if the doorbell rings? Or what if somebody sends me a message through Slack and it pops on my computer? Or the preview of the next email comes through? Or I could be holding these notes that I have here for the presentation and drop them on the floor. There's all types of distractions, I think, that you're competing for. Just like in the for-profit world, there's lots of commercials and ads and think of how many messages you see every day. You're competing for your donor's time to read a report or just give a simple message about what you're doing or asking to volunteer or donate just as others are competing for your time. So if you could tell a story that is extremely unique to your brand, that's where you're going to get the attention. And that's why I think that's a great quote about storytelling setting your organization apart. So when that kind of trickles down to how storytelling can function within a great digital report, number one here you see on the right side of your screen is to tell the story behind the programs that you have. I think that kind of starts with setting up, and I have this label just below here, but a table of contents here with a firm outline. So once you figure out your theme, you're figuring out what your table contents is. And to me, this is really at these bullets. You're starting with an opening statement that's a letter from an executive director, maybe a board member, somebody influential at the top of your organization, telling everybody how much you appreciate their support. But then you're going into those stories behind the programs. And I kind of like to think that one section in a report, whether it's digital or not, should be dedicated to each one of your programs. And that's where you can tell the story of those programs. We'll get into the some ideas behind that story that have to do with this idea of a lead character, I mentioned before, with an example in a few minutes. But then you're going to get into highlighted events or anything that's happened in the community that could be part of the stories within each program or separate. You might have a gala, let's say, whether it's some sort of virtual version of that or in person. And that could be a section of a report, and then financials. And then you want to thank everybody too. So you have your donors and your partners and an honor roll. And then wrapping up with how to get in touch with you, or maybe an ask to donate. But within all that, a nice combination of short format text and photos. And then maybe some videos and showing some social media posts might be really important. So I'm going to tell a story now. I'm going to give the brief version of these New York Jets tickets story that you see on the bottom of your screen. And these are tickets from 1993. And I'm going to share a story behind these tickets to kind of prove the point that I mentioned about memorable instances and having maybe a piece of this presentation stand out. So I think it was really 1987 that I started to go to New York Jets games with my dad. So I grew up in New Jersey, right outside New York City. And my dad had season tickets for years and he would go with his dad before that. And every Sunday, when I got a little bit older, starting with this season, I was in a religious school Sunday school. And I knew the game was on at one, but I wouldn't be home until a little after one o'clock. But when there was a home game, I somehow convinced my dad to pick me up early and then we go to the game. And then I started saving tickets that year and would keep the tickets. And I still clearly have them to this day along with many others. But at the end of that season, we were going to a game and it was a huge game. I mean, it was a playoff game and we were all excited. We're almost there. It's the month of January. It's freezing out. So we decided that we would bring this big, big jug of hot chocolate and bring that for tailgating. And we were almost at the stadium and there was a lot of traffic and we were cutting it a little bit close, right? Because he picked me up early. He let me leave early and, you know, we were trying to make it to the game on time. And we realized we forgot the hot chocolate. But we didn't just forget the hot chocolate. We weren't sure if the stove was on at home or not. So we thought the hot chocolate, which we made on the stove, was just sitting there burning. And this was what, 1993. So we didn't exactly both have a cell phone that we can just take out and call someone else at home and ask if the stove was on. We had to turn around and go back home. And to us, I mean, that's just, that's devastating. I mean, we were just as concerned about being late for the game as we were whether the stove was still on or not. So we went back home, the stove was not on, and we got the hot chocolate, which was definitely secondary at that point, whether we had it or not, rushed back to the stadium and got into our seats just before kickoff. And it was a great game and they won. But the memory of all that really sticks out and ties to the story of all these tickets that I have collected over the years. And, you know, I don't know what I do with these tickets to just kind of sit in a shoebox. But I took a picture from here because I thought it'd be a great story that's personal to me. And I think those types of stories that tie directly to you or your organization in passing along those to your, to your stakeholders in a report is what makes them memorable. And that's going to stick out from, you know, any other story that they could hear about similar organizations that are in your community, where they might already be donating their dollars. I'm just going to pause here to see if there's any questions in the chat because I can't necessarily see them all. But if anything comes up, Aretha, you can just, you chime in and let me know. And I'm going to move on here. So I like to talk about the science of storytelling too. This ties into all the distractions I mentioned that, you know, any of us could have that go on while other people are trying to get our attention. And that's just this, just general concept that there's a lot out there that other people are consuming. People want what's being delivered to them to feel like a story as this particular research is saying, and consumers are processing things really, really quickly too. So, you know, this is a nice summary they have here in the middle of your screen to keep it short, deliver content that's linear, and to show, don't tell. I mean, showing, don't telling is something that I think you see even storytellers that aren't using video as examples, like I think back to Oprah Winfrey and her show. I mean, she explained things so well that you felt like you were there. So anytime you have the opportunity to show with great examples, you know, you're certainly going to have a leg up. This is another nice quote I like on the bottom of your screen. As more brands make move toward content marketing, cutting through the noise is more vital than ever. Our brains are built to connect compelling stories. So here we have Blake. Blake started a company called Tom Shoes. And if you're not familiar with Tom Shoes, his company decided to donate one pair to someone in Africa, one pair of shoes to somebody in Africa that really needs shoes for every item that's purchased. So in April of 2011, he decided that he would ask everybody in his office to go barefoot for the day. So everybody came to work without shoes on to really connect with the mission of Tom Shoes. So that mushroomed into this day called One Day Without Shoes. That became a campaign for Tom Shoes, and it's now an annual event, and it made Tom Shoes a bit of an icon. The whole promotion, the whole campaign is done through storytelling, which simply means a little bit more to everyone. And you know, you can't, you know, feel except you can't feel to not be touched by something like that, which is that message behind that story that children in poorer countries need shoes to stay alive. And that's the that's the story that Blake told with Tom Shoes. There's a similar story from Patagonia. And Patagonia is one of the strongest brands in the world. And they've been in the news a lot lately, if you've been following. And that's stories that the founder and CEO has given away most of the company and, you know, really turned in turned it into somewhat of a nonprofit. But they have a brand where there's really passionate followers. And they have a program called this, I think it's called the stories we wear. And their marketing and the story that they tell to their customers and the people that follow Patagonia tie into caring for the environment. And they tell stories about how the clothes that their customers wear, I think they're from the customer point of view, the clothes the customers are wearing while they went hiking to do this and that and the environment were really impactful. So they had people kept coming back to their website and their social media feeds to to continue to tell those stories. So, you know, they got really personal, personal, and that's how people connected to the brand and that ties into into memorable moments. You know, this really ties into reports. And again, we're going to show these examples really soon. But there's pieces of your reports that will be stories of the these characters that you already know that are that are representing your nonprofit. Those those individual stories can be pulled out and used in social media and an email marketing as well as the the lead for your report. So as you go and promote reports, you'll be able to talk about John or Cindy in your community that's doing X, Y, Z representing your nonprofit, you know, read more about it here. You're going to get a lot of content out of all these stories that you're producing your annual reports across social media and email that will lead to a call to action for people to click and read your reports. I think that's going to be that's going to be powerful as well. So there's a theme in everything I'm saying, which is to show and not tell and to be specific and not to be general. So when we say to choose a story that connects with your audience, a lot of organizations and businesses try to focus on the most general story possible to appeal to as large of an audience as possible, because you may be thinking, well, let's try to get as many donations or as many volunteers or much as awareness as possible. And I think sometimes that that's skipping over the details. And a good writer knows that the more specific detailed and personalized story is the more it can appeal to larger groups of people. And it also may appeal to a narrow audience that you care about more. And that's that's important, too. So it may seem counterintuitive, but I think it makes sense. And I've seen it work well. And those details are where the life of the story is. It makes your story feel as real as possible and fleshed out and alive. So these extremely specific stories will likely resonate, especially in an age where people are really craving more authenticity. So I mentioned lead characters before. I want to give an example of a fictitious example of an organization that put a new playground in their community. So this new playground goes into the community and it's really needed because it's getting kids to do X instead of Y and they're getting exercise from it. And then it's time to publicize it. So you take a picture of it and you put it on your nonprofit's Instagram post. And then there's Facebook post and you're getting good reactions from it. So it goes in your next newsletter. And it's there. Everyone drives by it and they see it in the community. So that's wonderful because that could lead to more programs just like that and has this great snowball effect. And it also goes into your into your end report. That's the general version of it. And there's nothing wrong with that. But there's also getting down to the people that your playground has affected most. And that's the kids that are using it and those parents. So my suggestion is thinking about that longer narrative that goes past the idea that the playground is in the community and people will drive by it and see it or they just kind of scroll through the social media feed. But a report like an annual report is an opportunity to go a little bit deeper and talk about that one child from their point of view or that one family that really is utilizing that playground that went into that community and to talk about how it's affected them. Because those memorable moments about how maybe they get up in the morning and the first thing they do before they go to school is go to that playground where before you know maybe they didn't have anything to do. Whatever that situation is you can find it and start talking about that. And I think that's how you can bring in your stakeholders and engage them a little bit deeper into why you really needed a playground there and they'll get it and they'll get it a lot faster and see what the outcomes are from that. So what makes a good story specific make it detailed make it really personal personal like we've been talking about and you know the connection matters. So there's the authenticity of it taking your audience on you know a journey that's kind of filled with emotion and that could be done you know within reports by writing it could just be a picture you may already have a series of posts you've done on Facebook and Instagram that kind of tell this you don't have to rewrite everything that you've done to create a great annual report and this is a good rule for marketing in general you can recreate you can recreate what you already have on social media through or in email marketing if you create newsletters through other marketing channels like a report you're just presenting the stories in a different way that you may already have. So I think that takes a sense of what could be overwhelming off the table because you can repeat a lot of stories throughout the year because not everybody's going to see the same story that you tell you know over and over you'll hit you'll hit some different audiences and if there's some overlap you know that consistency is okay and then the next year you'll you change it up with them with different stories. So there's eight steps that we always like to coach nonprofits are good ways to get started with the storytelling process and and this works best for digital so you come up with that idea of what that story is and then there's some research involved I mean you may have to think about you know who that family or those kids are that are really enjoying the playground and and and why why they're using it and figure out the details there you know that user-generated content or those stories from your your stakeholders are not always easy to find if you have them already you're lucky then you're kind of writing it up and mapping it out in terms of what it would look like and then you're gathering those images that will go along with it that's step five you know and then laying it out visually is step six that could be on a piece of paper that could be in a platform like this yearly where you're literally dropping in images and text everybody's got a different creative process on how they want to get started and then you're sharing it out but then it's not done there I think you know that's a point where you get to step eight which is hearing that feedback before you do it again next time or you know whether that's the next annual report next year or you know you have an event coming up and you want to recap that in a report for future community donors that support it and keep making your process better and we'll share this report afterwards through the great team at TechSoup so everybody has a copy of this so I think you know a great place to start is to identify those stories and think about who your lead character is going to be and really start writing it. I'm just recapping what I already said at the top of this hour which is this process to tell a great annual report and what that table of contents could look like and again we'll make sure to email this out. So I want to give my colleague Kelsey a chance to jump in here and we're going to start to show some examples and these examples are going to come in the form of some tips to show how you can kind of innovate maybe even copy what some other nonprofits are doing so here's some of Kelsey's favorites in action from Erty. Tell me if I'm wrong Kelsey but Erty published digital annual reports is that right? Yes they are already published. All right great so I'll cue this one up here for you. Perfect so first I want to showcase Youth Ottawa's 2021 Gratitude Report. This organization empowers youth throughout their city and beyond to reach their fullest potential by providing support and mentorship so kind of what Josh was speaking to highlighting your programs is crucial and I think they did a really great job at this so Josh if you can jump to their program highlight section. Yeah so we'll find that in the table of contents here good thing I don't have the French version okay. Perfect so as you scroll through this section of their report they do a really amazing job at telling the story of each one of their programs and how that's really impacted their community. They also if you see that like blue bright blue text they have links to the programs to their websites that's really awesome to really engaging so that if you wanted to learn more you could jump right to their website and learn a little bit more about that particular program. They also include various YouTube videos that you can watch from right within the report so that's definitely engaging gives you a better insight as to what exactly took place with that program and as Josh was speaking to it makes it a little more personal as well as engaging and then they also have some quotes in this section as well along with various videos so I think they did a really awesome job at keeping the the reader engaged. So our next example is coming from Forte Foundation their mission is to launch women into fulfilling careers and that's through access to education professional development and a community of successful women. So Josh if you could jump to their our impact section here they do a really great job at sharing some personal quotes along with images of who these quotes are coming from so it gives you a great perspective on how this organization has impacted these women personally and then if you keep scrolling Josh they have some really great statistics as well just to really emphasize that impact that they've had within this community. Yeah I agree Kelsey I think these kind of big bold metrics as I sometimes call them are like it's a nice way to be succinct because it could go on and on about diversity day attendees, listy attendees and maybe they do later but this is a place where if I'm just kind of glancing through this or flipping through it as a potential donor or someone who might want to partner with this nonprofit I could just kind of see a nice snapshot and it probably didn't take them very long to to create something like this. Absolutely. So Josh for our next example this one comes from Saban Vaccine Institute and they've expanded research and access to vaccines during the pandemic so they had a really great impact the last few years if you could jump to their section supporting immunization professionals as leaders. All right. Perfect. If you scroll I think it's towards the end of this section I thought this was really awesome that they included a podcast within their report so this is another interactive way that you can engage with your readers. It gives an extra element to the report you're reading various copy and you're seeing images but for people who do like the audio this is another awesome way to include an interactive element to your report. Yeah that's really creative it's nice to mix it up with video or in this case audio so that's a nice touch. Yeah and so for the last report that I'm going to share today comes from climate generation where their mission is to empower individuals and their communities to engage in solutions for climate change. So if you want to jump to our growing impact I want to say it's the third section yes. So I really love how they designed their report they used a lot of color and eye catching elements to really keep the reader engaged so I thought this was a really beautiful designed report they keep their text pretty limited again with those kind of bigger stats to catch your eye and give you a really good glimpse at what they've done over the year. So this is another awesome example. Yeah they also try not to do too much so they say 700 participants in a three-part virtual event series you know that's the headline if you want to read more you can click it'll open a new tab and then they go on from there and I saw an independent private school in the northeast do something similar with their honor rolls so they had the donor list but they didn't want people to have to thumb through hundreds or thousands even of names in each section because they had them all categorized so they just summarize the name of the section and thank people and then if you want to see your name you'll click it opens a new tab and then they had everything listed on a different webpage there so that most people can get through the report and they wanted people to read the sections past that so that's why they did that and I assume they did the same here so they don't have to bog it down with too much content that you don't you don't need to read upfront but if you want to dig deeper then that audience can yeah that's great thank you Kelsey so I'm going to show a couple examples over here as well on my side that I thought was really great this is a report that comes from the Catholic Community Foundation of New Orleans and this is an impact report that they created last year summarizing some impact they had in in 2020 and I'm going to jump down to a section and a little further here that they had you know I think in that spirit of having brevity with the with the copy and letting the copy work alongside images together to tell I should say right to show a whole story they did a really nice job here it's really hard I think to be in a place where you can summarize you know your your your mission and what it stands for when you're talking about your programming but as I scroll through here I think they they did a nice you know job about that they they talked about like they're giving circle for instance and what that meant to take that you know virtual you know they're thanking people they're giving the right metrics where they need to but it's only a few sentences and I'm really getting the point as I as I as I go through here without being bogged down with with too much copy and I think that's what I keep bringing that up because I think that's what people are used to with a webpage I mean they're used to having really user-friendly experiences that has a lot of imagery and doesn't have long long long articles and that can be included it just needs to be we did in in in the right way so this organization did a good job of that they also had some nice colors as they go through which is not only eye-catching but they kept it consistent throughout with their brands and this is a kind of a full screen video similar to what Kelsey was showing you in another example we have quite a few questions in the chat I mean in the q&a did you want to answer some questions yeah perfect thank you let's pause here and I'll I'm just going to bring this report to the to the top so I can move to that next and I'm going to answer all the questions right now okay I don't want to miss Tracy she had a question much earlier in the chat what is the best platform to use to create and share the report I think you got to answer for this one yeah so all these reports were created with yearly the website is yearly dot report and yearly is a platform for nonprofits to create reports just like what you see here it's it's not only the only one out there that will give you a webpage at the end but yearly will host the report and you can drop in all this type of content really easily you don't have to be a graphic designer by any stretch um if you work with a designer that's great I guess you'll have a little leg up with college imagery um but it's a simple way to get to get everything out there and is it best if I why don't I roll through some of the questions here I can see them on my screen now awesome great all right so Stephanie has a question is there an ideal time frame or time process for building out any reports say we need to have it within a month uh when should reorganization start what would that timeline look like uh I think you know one month so just about four weeks is is pretty typical um and that's when you're starting to collect the content and do all the writing and everything I think going into that four week time frame you really need to know what your your theme is and your table of contents so that you you're ready to start sourcing all that content and do the writing and putting it together I think the longest part is the editing part at the end you know you think you're ready to uh to publish it and you're gonna share it with colleagues and they may have 77 corrections or edits that they need to make then you find out oh I spelled the donor's name wrong or whatnot and you're just kind of going through that editing process a lot but it's quicker and easier with digital I can say that but I would give yourself at least that amount of time and then you click a publish button and the publishing process is it's just about you promoting it out there you take a link and you're emailing it out to everyone and promoting on on social media don asks in the digital storytelling process you write uh write you write and do the script before your storyboard plan isn't that backwards I think that's something that we found is worked for us and and clients in the past um I think that the writing in our mind is more of uh I guess we should say outlined on so you might be right there um and then you're going into the story boring saying first this then that and then you can do all the detail writing so that's absolutely right Sean asks how can you use YouTube from someone else copyright permission everything on YouTube is public um as long as they allow the uh the link to be uh shared so it's on YouTube that means it's public but there's a share button within the video and then there's a pop-up on that YouTube has it says how do you want to share this and you can send someone the link or you can click embed code and if that embed code is there the owner of that video is allowing you to embed that video on any website so you can copy that embed code and then paste it within yearly and it pops right right up there if that person that owns the video is not you and they take that video down then that video would be removed from from your report uh another question have y'all found that folks on cell phones have faster or slower view times they can easily see stakeholders on cell phones scrolling through quickly and missing content I think it's the same as as every other type of mobile consumption where um you know they're if they're really interested in the content and they're paying attention and you keep their attention um I think video and photos is a way to keep their attention longer on mobile I haven't found that the view times are faster or slower than on cell phones but that's that's a good point and you want to keep that audience in mind um you know I think mobile is somewhere between a quarter and half of the views that a lot of nonprofits are seeing with digital reports Sean asked how important are color palettes in your report if you're if your brand consistency and your brand guidelines are important to your nonprofit then it's really vital that you use your color so within this platform yearly you can save all of your colors Sean and then as you design a report you can have your font be a certain color your exact brand color background images etc so you save all that within a brand kit same with your fonts and photos so that they're all right there and then you're keeping that consistency as you go question from uh gate I've noticed that they're all hosted on app.yearlead.report software or is there a subscription required uh it is there's a free trial at yearlead.report that anyone could check out there's a discount code for nonprofits under two million a year through TechSoup that you can check out on the TechSoup website that gives you 50% off and um uh gate you also ask if it's compatible with WordPress how does it work I appreciate all the questions you can embed the actual report within your own website when you're done and yearly will host it in the back end or it just lives on the yearlead.report URL and send that out to everybody let's see so we have another question from Stephanie what should organizations have ready to plug in to building a digital report so I think that your um table contents will define your outline I would always say financials for last assuming you have those you know audited by like an independent accounting firm or CFO or fractional accountant or fractional CFO um but I would kind of have a executive letter from you ready to go thanking everyone for a great year and saying how important it is that um that you have their support and then I would have one section for each one of the programs that you have where you're telling story about those programs and then uh you know like a donor the place to thank your donors like an honor roll or donor section if you have partners I would thank your partners and that could be a series of logos um your financials as I mentioned you know just in terms of revenue and expenses I mean your 990s really where you're doing that real um you know financial uh exposure I guess but your typical annual report is shown if you want to do an impact report on one particular movement um you know you don't really need to have the financials there Deborah asks I really like the idea of a digital report what do you suggest for converting this to a print copy for those who prefer to have paper in here I get this question every single day Deborah I think that some organizations say oh I have that one board member that wants to hold it in their hands or I have a few donors that um write checks because I send them the annual report in the mail every year I'll meet with them I think the future is digital I think that um that'll take some time though for everybody to be on board with with that idea I did a um a talk I have on a program called um non-profit crash course with Lynn Wester from the donor relations group um and Lynn is the donor relations guru she made a comment saying that her parents are I think she said 84 and they do everything on their cell phone right and I was thinking when she said that oh all right well my dad's uh my dad's 72 and he uses everything on his iPhone um and I think there's more people that are okay with digital than than we all think and that we shouldn't discount that having said that there are people that prefer paper no matter what their age Lynn also went on to say it's not an age thing um you know there's just audiences that prefer that like like you're saying Deborah so we do have a button that you can click in a plan called yearly premium that converts it to a a PDF it's for um you know for those that want to have a few copies that you print on your office printer and get them to just put people not necessarily for commercial print because it's not formatted for that Alyssa and thank you everyone for the answer for all these great questions um there's a whole bunch more so I think these are worth going through because if one person's asking them a lot of people might be thinking them and along with the presentation I'll share any examples that we may or may not get to so everyone can have the links to all these reports if anything I think it's great inspiration that you're just thinking about um you know your own reports and and what other nonprofits are doing and these run the gamut with different industries uh Elizabeth says my organization works a lot with clients who wish to remain remain anonymous how can you tell a specific detailed story to donors while keeping client identity anonymous I mean having worked with a lot of youth development stories um you know there are a lot of laws and policies that we had to follow um when I was at 4-h where we really needed to make sure that in our marketing that um whether we had permission or not we were really intentional about how we wanted to represent um children and that's probably I think the hardest audience segment to think about um not that you had to be anonymous but you had to be really intentional about identifying people and in that case we use uh a first name and in some cases we didn't we wouldn't necessarily give the geography or the age and every situation was was different um so it depends on the specific situation um but I think you could be detailed without talking about their name or the geography um you know maybe you just give a first name so you can identify them but you can still talk about what they did and how they felt and how they were they were impacted and get the story across uh Jennifer asked does yearly also allow for a printable version for non-computer users my organization sells a lot older donors that don't have internet so that's that audience that I was talking about before yes um it's not necessarily for commercial print as I said but that's because images that look great on your screen like the one you're looking at right now I couldn't take to a professional printer and print a thousand of those and have them stitch and spend a lot of money on it it's not high res enough it's certainly a high enough resolution for our screens right now and looks great and it'll look fine if I print it out my office because I need two dozen of them um but um that's about it but yes we do we do allow for just that all right Tilly asks any advice on shifting culture within an organization that hasn't prioritized either reporting or PR and where's and where there is staff resistance to doing this so I think that's um that that culture shift you know could be coming from you know an old school way of thinking because if this certain way of doing reports has been done like this for the last X amount of years depending on how long your organization's been around um and it works just fine it's worth doing that for the future I think there could be a slow transition transition to shift that kind of culture um the organization I shared with you before with the examples from the Catholic Community Foundation of New Orleans um did just that they needed to still print some um but they also knew that sending out these uh postcards in the mail letting people know uh a digital and report was available was a nice way to ease their audience into it so that could be something um Tilly that you could suggest where use paper to target your audience to say like you know even like an ad almost oh well here go to this link and then um they'll start to expect over time that more things will become digital I think that PR is a separate um a separate issue um but I think the proof is in the pudding you just have to find someone that's willing to test it once and see what the results are like and with digital and PR is the same way you can track and show the metrics and say all right well these are the results and compare those results to whatever the old way was that you were working on and and show them that way I mean they won't be able to deny that getting more donor dollars and have more people view a report is um is not a better way you know to to do things so that might be a good try Lucille said what software was used to create these visual digital and reports that's yearly which is your at yearly dot report the seal the website is yearly dot report and number two Lucille says frankly I'd rather read the substance of a report without having to wade scroll and click through so much stuff and photos aren't there others out there like me why go through all the other effort with photos if people are like me and want to read the substance and executive summary most of the reports that we see out there are like the ones that that we're showing you you know I think that's mostly because when people are are looking at websites even on your own nonprofits website they're seeing photos and videos that display through many different mediums what your impact is I think there's different types of learners out there um some are really visual and want to see those kind of interactive elements and I don't think there's anything wrong with having some longer text we've been there it might be a nice combination of it I guess I'm overstating the point because if someone lands on a webpage and it's all text for all the sections it could be a little overwhelming so I think you have to find the right balance but don't think about what you want to ask your nonprofit audience mainly the donors the people that are going to read it what they want to see because they're the ones that count the most adiva asks is there a mechanism that if someone clicks on an embedded video podcast or a list they will come back to a report don't want to lose someone if they click on a link so every link within the yearly platform opens a new tab so they don't lose that they don't lose their place that's for hyperlinks for embedded videos like you asked adiva or that podcast example there's things right there in the report they're not leaving the report so that you can you can you can watch say like that youtube video right there on the screen within the report which is great thank you for that all right lila asks which publishing or hosting software would you recommend I think that what you're looking at right now is is a great platform and yearly dot report does have a discount with tech soup I think that there's there's other ways to do it but it's either expensive or really time consuming expensive route is to go hire someone or an agency to create custom web page web pages for you or you go to other web page producers and create everything from scratch we created yearly because we were nonprofit marketers that wanted a way to have nonprofits of all sizes create really polish marketing fundraising documents and that's why you see on the left side of your screen here it's a section that's why there's a table of contents with which is that built in and that's why there's templates for nonprofit executive directors and nonprofit leaders to present an introductory letter already formatted formatted so that's why yearly is formatted for nonprofits let's see I see another question here from um Tilly can the digital report be exported into other formats such as a pdf so you can export it into a web-based pdf like I mentioned before I think sharing the link to it on social media is another way that you can share it you're not exporting it in that case but if you think about all the stories that you're telling within the report you know those in itself could be posts that could be promoting your report and that's how you kind of share it and thank you Stephanie for the link there in fact to Tilly it's a link here in the in the q&a or anybody wants to see it to a resources section on how to actually print out your reports Greg asks how well does the report print if someone would like to create a hard copy the resolution of the images will be the same as what you see on the screen so perfect for local printing when you just need a couple copies that you print in your office or like FedEx Kinkos in the UPS store not for commercial print or professionally bounded reports because you need a lot of changes there to the to the resolution of the images this is digital first and pdf would certainly be secondary so that's why I structured that way another question here does yearly also allow for a printable version for non-computers I think we went through that one already here my apologies David asks is there any research on the donation return for different designs of reports not for designs but we've gotten a lot of anecdotal feedback so far there's an organization that's in Washington DC that's I don't know if they're tied to George Washington University or they just physically sit next to it but they they reported back that they created a digital report and it was targeting a corporate partner and then they got back $100,000 donation so they credited the report as being one piece in the puzzle to helping get that not donation grant so you know it could be used for grant reports if you're allowed to submit a URL and I think that I think that's a that's like a really shiny example but overall it's about increasing the the time that your stakeholders are engaging in a different way than they had before and that's how we kind of cut through the clutter using the tool like this Brandy asks is yearly available to Canadian charities via TechSoup.ca the Canadian version and you know what I'm going to let someone else chime in on that a rethorical I don't know if you know the answer and if you want to answer it live that's fine or type it in but I'm not sure about the Canadian charities I'll type it in all right thank you all right Connie asks what support comes with this description to the software Kelsey I need a break from talking so I'm going to let you answer this question about support start with the onboarding and everything yeah definitely so I'm always here to onboard new clients so I'll go through show you the entire platform where all the buttons live and really how to get started on your report and once you get started I'm also available throughout your report creation to share my screen to answer any questions you may have I know people kind of get stuck at different areas and not everyone is super tech savvy so I'm just here to help with any scope of your report creation and I am here full-time so always here to help thanks Kelsey so Connie we just have ongoing support Brandy asks what is a good open rate for your report I don't consider myself an email marketing expert and that's definitely about email marketing but it really I mean I want to say you know five to 20% but it really varies on on your audience I mean do you have a database of thousands and thousands of people and only a few hundred of those give you know meaning a smaller percentage of your whole database is is is giving and what did you do last year so it's really hard for me to to dissect that without having more more details I would look at resources that are really focused on non-profit email marketing I know that 20% was about what was a nice open rate you know for the non-profit I worked for on a national level and not for any reports but just for general emails that went out any reports I would expect might be a little bit higher because it's an important email and it also varies by subject line too Jennifer asks how long will this offer be valid my organization doesn't do annual reports until the beginning of the new year so I want to make sure we're still able to use this I would look at the details and the terms that that TechSoup has but I think in the new year and that offer will will still be there so you know we're we're we're here to help and work with you Lucille asks diversity of presentation makes sense for diverse learners but what about the energy costs and land and water needed for the servers to house for all this online digital electronic content or societies be able to afford the energy and water years from now I think that's a great a great point a great thought and I'm certainly not equipped to answer all that but we try to find I guess the most efficient ways to host things that you know that makes sense like for instance you know we use Google servers they're already in existence and already have the space and already built versus going and starting around and another question here from Brandy will there be share links in the report for readers to share our reports can readers of your report subscribe to your email list through the report so we will be adding a share link at the end of the reports we don't we don't have that right now but you can embed the option for people to subscribe to your email list like say if you use Mailchimp for instance and they have an embedded newsletter sign up you can embed that within your report so you'd have to you'd have to take a look at that from an outside source and try to embed it within the report but I actually I like that idea I'll look at that for the future and then your last question here Brandy it just disappeared let me see if I can get that back yeah I'm so sorry oh no that's fine I can also can you add your organization's social media platform links yes you can add links on there in the future we'll have nice kind of icons that'll be represented but you can add any any hyperlinks you want within the report all right well thank you that's 27 really great more than 27 really great questions um if any more pop up um let me know I want to respect everyone's time because I know we're just past here but we have um one two three four five examples we didn't get to yet but we're going to make sure that these all go out through email so everybody can scroll through them and check them out all right thank you so much there are no more questions thank you so much for your time did you want to um close out josh yeah sure well thank you I really appreciate it and uh and setting this up Aretha and thank you Kelsey and thank you Gail at TechSoup uh you're amazing to work with and all the TechSoup members are so great to talk to as we start to work with so many of you so if anybody's interested in exploring the yearly platform more or if you just want to ask questions about the things we talked about today look out for that email or visit TechSoup and log in you can see the 50 off promo code that TechSoup is offering nonprofits that do under two million per year awesome take care everybody bye bye thank you bye